Tools for musicians are plentiful on the App Store. There are a number of apps that help you learn basic theory and then there’s Jamn. Jamn is a great app for your iOS device that will help you learn music theory with its lovely interface.
Jamn’s look is heavily inspired by the original iPod with a click wheel. If you’ve used Convertbot by Tapbots, you’ll know exactly what I mean. The main portion of the screen has a movable wheel with holes in places to show you chords in a key. For example, the key of C major will have C, D, E, F, G, A, and B in the open positions of the wheel. The top of the screen has your instrument with note markers on positions within the key below. The button on the top right lets you toggle between the visibility of current key, the relative minor and all the notes on the instrument above. By default the instrument chosen is the guitar but you can swipe to the left to switch to the keyboard, ukelele or all the way to the right to summon the tuner. The in app tuner is really great as well and uses the built in mic. The overall feel and look reminds me of those chord wheels you get at music stores except Jamn has a great faux leather look with realistic sounds as well. Jamn also has a great feature called Chord Fingers that allows you to see the finger placement for multiple chords on a fretboard. You can access this by going into landscape mode. The base app has a few sets of chord fingers and all the others are available via in app purchase.
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Jamn is a nicely crafted app for musicians. It is really useful if you just want to jam with someone and are unsure about the key. The sounds within the app are a nice touch as always and you know how much I love sounds in apps. There’s a wealth of great music apps available for iOS and Jamn joins the group of apps you need on your iOS device if you’re a musician. It looks stunning on the iPad with Retina display as well. Jamn is available on the App Store as a universal app for only $1.99.