Robotic Guitarist Free

Summary

Robotic Guitarist Free is a guitar emulator for your Android phone. Obviously, it's virtually impossible to play the guitar on a cellphone. Find out whether it makes any sense to even try in today's test.

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Robotic Guitarist Free lets you play guitar on your Android Phone by strumming virtual strings on the display. Although you can forget about playing complicated rhythms and melodies, simple rhythmical patterns and arpeggios work fairly well. The chords can be selected according to their tone, which means that they harmonize together. That way even people without an ear for music can produce fairly decent sounding music.

Robot Guitar can be used for different purposes: playing a simple rhythmical accompaniment with just a couple of chords can be a lot of fun already. It's also a great way for you to try out tunes that you compose in your head. Robot Guitar is also a great tool for training your musical ear. For both musicians and amateurs, Robot Guitar can be both helpful and loads of fun.
 

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At start-up, Robotic Guitarist Free greets you with a friendly green Android holding a guitar and ready to play. Click on Let's Play to get things started. On your display you'll find six guitar strings that can be strummed with the help of your finger. You can select which chord to play from a list of small buttons on the right side of the screen. This way you can play a chord and switch to next one seamlessly. It works best (in my opinion) when you deactivate the Realistic chord change in Settings. With a little practice, you can quickly and smoothly change chords. Similarly, you can play arpeggios, strum three strings at once and create interesting musical patterns. By experimenting and playing around with the different chords and notes you'll notice that it's actually possible to play guitar...at least to a certain degree. Don't get too upset about the sound quality coming from your phone's built-in speakers. The sound is actually pretty good if you're wearing headphones.

Via the menu button you have the following options:

• Settings
• Chord preset
• Help

In Settings you can turn vibration (guitar strumming) on/off. The Realistic chord change option is supposed create a more realistic guitar playing experience by adding pauses between chords. I find that Robot Guitar works better without this feature because the chords tend to have a drawn out sound anyway. Finally, you choose between two different guitar sounds: acoustic and electric.

In Chord preset you can select your default chords. You can select between harmonies, power chords, all major and all minor. The best sounding ones are usually the major harmonies because they tend to fit well together.

In Help you can access information about the app and its controls.

Bottom Line:
I was surprised to find that it was actually possible to play guitar with Robot Guitar. What you want to use the app for – now that's a whole different can of worms. It's a great solution for those looking to have a little bit of fun and those trying to develop their musical talent. Playing guitar on your Android Phone doesn't get any better than Robot Guitar.

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Robotic Guitarist Free runs smoothly and quickly. No crashes or glitches.

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Robotic Guitarist Free can be downloaded for free from the Android Market.