There are two OS X modeling programs I’ve become quite enamored with: AmpliTube 3 Custom Shop (free, with in-app purchases for virtual gear) and Guitar Rig 5 Pro ($199). Both can also plug in directly to GarageBand for use in recording. To access them, create a new track as a Real Instrument and choose Edit from the right-hand palette. From there, you can choose from a variety of effect sources. Choosing AmpliTube or Guitar Rig from this menu will allow GarageBand to access these programs via a plug-in.

Plugging in

Unless you have one of the new Fender Squier guitars that has a micro-USB port built in (I have one; it’s nice), you’ll need an audio interface. For these purposes, I’m a big fan of Apogee’s Jam ($99). I also found that I needed to create a separate Aggregate input in Apple’s Audio Midi setup (not the Audio Midi setup in the programs) so I could use the Jam as well as my speakers. Until I did this, I’d get input but no sound.

Guitar Rig 5

At $199, Guitar Rig 5 isn’t cheap. I also found it the more versatile of the two programs. With gobs of presets you’ll have no problems finding the sound you want. Guitar Rig has 17 amps and 27 cabinets, as well as 54 different effects that will really let you dial in your sound.

My style tends to run towards ZZ Top, rockabilly and heavy metal. There were presets available that gave me all those sounds, including a Vai-type pitch shifter sound, so I was thrilled. In some ways, I was having too much fun trying out the different presets to actually get any recording done.

It’s important to note that these amps are “emulations” of popular amps, not licensed models. For instance, The VAN 51 amp is an emulation of Peavey’s 5150 amp. This doesn’t really bother me too much since even licensed simulations are just that — simulations. Even the 6505 model on my Peavey Vypyr is a computer’s best guess of that sound. There is also a Control Room module, where you can model different microphones and their placement which adds an extra bit of customization to your sound.

Native Instruments also has an optional $500 foot controller that would make it easier to swap between presets while playing. You could also use this live, accessing Guitar Rig 5 on a Mac. It’s not farfetched for me to think about having a MacBook angled up next to my stage monitors while I use the Kontrol as my footswitch.

AmpliTube 3 Custom Shop

With AmpliTube 3, The base software is free, with a minimal amount of basic amps included. To buy more amps and effects, you can purchase credits, which can be used to acquire more virtual gear. About $40 will get you get 45 credits. Most licensed amps run about 30 credits, and effects ranging between from five credits onward. Once you’ve bought a piece of gear, you’ll run AmpliTube to use the gear. Note: If it prompts you to authorize the software, you’ll find the key on your Account page.

During my testing of these two packages, all sort of sounds and squeals were coming from studio without much mention from my girlfriend, who is also a musician. However, one strum from the Carvin V3M I bought brought a “wow, nice tone” comment. Given that she likes Carvin amps, I took this as an endorsement that their official model was pretty damn close.

The chief advantage I see that AmpliTube has over Guitar Rig is that AmpliTube has official models of Carvin, Fender, Orange, and some Marshall amps, and more. When I started an app to play my guitar through, more often than not I gravitated toward AmpliTube and that Carvin V3M amp. It’s not that Guitar Rig’s settings were bad, I just found that Carvin model to be so pleasing to my ears. So pleasing, in fact, that I’ve added a real Carvin Legacy 3 amp to my wish list.

IKMultimedia also has a generous demo period for virtual gear. You can try a piece of gear for up to two days, every two months. This really lets you compare the sounds and evaluate how well they fit into your style.

I liked the customization in AmpliTube 3/Custom Shop. You can throw amps, cabinets and effects into a preset at will. While I found it look a little longer to get a sound I liked from AmpliTube than it did with Guitar Rig, I preferred the sound I ended up with more.

How I use them

It’s impossible for me to recommend one over another. My usage so far seems to fall into this pattern: my rhythm and general practice sounds come from AmpliTube (I love the Carvin V3M and the Orange Dual Terror amps), while my lead and exotic sounds come from Guitar Rig (there’s a setting called 1993 Hot Solo Rig I use for a vague hint of David Gilmour’s Division Bell sound, as well as just a cool echoey distorted lead channel). If you can afford it, I’d suggest getting Guitar Rig 5, and about $50 worth of amps and the like from AmpliTube’s custom shop. I think this will let you get some great sounds.

With any of these programs, even if using signature gear and settings, you’re still going to sound like yourself, not a famous artist. This is true even in physical gear. My live amp has a model of Joe Satriani’s amp. When I play it, I still sound like me, but with a better tone.

I’m thrilled with these two programs. With them, I can get any sound I want, and the presets usually spark some creativity just playing riffs while randomly cycling through them.

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While the original Ocarina app encouraged free play, letting people form their own songs or try and recreate tunes they already know, the new Ocarina 2 leads people through the actual process of learning a song. With a new Guitar Hero like interface in Play mode, users get prompted which buttons to press and how long to hold their notes. As they progress through the song, the app auto harmonizes with the user, giving them some nice back-up.

The app also features some gamification elements, letting people know how many “breath points” they earned on each song, how many notes were played and what their progress was toward mastery. Master enough songs and you can earn achievements like Jedi status for learning 100 tunes.

Users get four free songs to start with and one credit for an additional free tune. To unlock more tunes or premium songs from recording artists, users need to buy tune or premium packs that unlock more songs. An 18-tune pack can be bought for $2.99 while premium packs start at 99 cents for 2 premium songs. There are about 50 songs available at launch, split between tunes and premium tracks. Songs like Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” and Justin Bieber’s “Baby” are among the premium songs available.

After playing around with Ocarina 2, I think it will continue Smule’s track record of successful apps. I liked the first app, but it required some early investment in learning how to play. The sequel makes the experience a lot more accessible and shows people how to use it even when they’re not playing a song. That’s different than Guitar Hero, in which learning the sequence of button presses doesn’t mean you can play an actual guitar. Here, I can start internalizing the keys thanks to the prompts. And it means I can still go freestyle anytime I want, but now I’m armed with some songs I know how to play.

Smule’s co-founder Ge Wang goes into the history of the Ocarina franchise in a nice blog post and it’s cool to see how this app really was a great showcase for the iPhone’s app platform. It used multi-touch for notes, the microphone for blowing, the accelerometer for vibrato, GPS for location and the always-on capability to show what other people around the world were playing in real time.

I’d like to see more apps like Ocarina, letting people actually create content and express themselves. We have a ton of games and time-wasters on iOS, but the potential is there for apps to really do a lot more.

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The free app, which is now available on Google Play, recreates the Songify experience and should be a welcome addition to fans, who have been clamoring for an Android edition. The Songify app, with 9 million downloads to date, came to Smule through the acquisition of Khush in December, but Smule’s new Android interest won’t just be limited former Khush apps. The next app to get the Android treatment is Magic Piano, an original Smule title that will launch on Android next month. It’s unclear when and if Smule’s other big hits like I Am T-Pain, Glee Karaoke, and Ocarina migrate over to Android.

Smule’s executives have repeatedly tamped down expectations about Android apps. Smule’s co-founder Ge Wang said late last year that the audio latency in many Android devices made it very difficult to bring their apps to the platform. Prerna Gupta, a co-founder of Khush, told me in an email that Smule started with Songify because the app doesn’t have the realtime audio needs that other Smule apps do. But she said that Smule has come up with a work-around for Android’s latency problem that will be deployed in Magic Piano.

Gupta said that iOS is still the leading platform for Smule because it offers great hardware, a good SDK, critical mass, and distribution. But she said Android has grown to the point, it can’t be ignored any longer.

“The critical mass on Android has become very interesting to us. Ultimately, our goal is to make musical self-expression as ubiquitous as social expression is today. Having a presence on Android will be an important step toward reaching that goal,” Gupta said.

Ge Wang, the co-founder of Smule said even with the work the company is doing to address Android’s latency issues on its end, it still needs more improvement from Google and the device makers.

“At the end of the day, we want to delight users by making the best use of the underlying platform.  We hope to work backwards from the users and the platform, embracing both its strengths and limitations, to design our experiences to also make full use of devices on Android,” Wang said in an email.

Smule’s decision to develop for Android signals how even some of the biggest iOS-only apps are finding a way to make it to Android. Instagram made a big splash with its long-awaited appearance on Android, though it also prompted complaints from some iOS loyalists who complained about the influx of ugly pictures from Android users.

Gupta said Android is still a challenge to develop for because there are so many devices that need to be tested. And even with a lot of development work, there are going to be devices that have not been tested, which she said is “unnerving.” But she said Android is improving as an OS, which has been an encouraging sign for app developers.

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Back in the day, our best options for learning were either slowing down a song, having a friend teach us, or hoping it was featured in a guitar magazine. Apple has a surprising amount of available technology for picking the guitar back up — my iPhone, iPad and MacBook Pro are at the heart of my learning process. Here’s a look at how I’ve used them, and some tips for those who’d like to do the same.

The iPhone

Every Monday night, I take a lesson from an excellent blues guitarist. Rather than take notes and write down the various chord progressions he shows me, I instead shoot video of the homework parts of the lesson on my iPhone 4S. I then quickly edit the clip in iMovie to add a title and then re-save it to my camera roll.

I also have a few apps on my iPhone to help me out. I have an iRig, which I pair with their Amplitube app (free). While I don’t use the app as my main practice amp anymore after I bought a modeling amp, I do use the app as my tuner and for the Song feature to play along with a song I’m learning.

GarageBand for iOS ($4.99) is also a handy practice tool. I really hate using a metronome, but having something keep the beat is crucial. So my solution is to use a sample drum loop from GarageBand on my phone that sounds close to to the beat I want.

The iPad

My iPad is the device I keep on my music stand while practicing. I use Apple’s Camera Connection Kit to import the video from my iPhone onto my iPad. I’m also toying with shooting the video on my iPad and skipping this step, but I find the small size of the iPhone is easier for recording when I’m also holding a guitar. Then I watch my lesson video and follow along, pausing and fast-forwarding as needed.

I also use Songsterr to look up the tabs for songs I’m interested in, and then use its iOS app ($9.99) to “favorite” the song. Then the app becomes my music sheet when I’m playing. While Songsterr isn’t perfect — some songs are transcribed perfectly, some are good enough and some aren’t even close — I find it does an adequate job.

We’ve covered reading apps on the iPad already, so I won’t go into it too much here, but there are two apps I use for reference: Zinio and the Kindle app. I subscribe to several guitar magazines on Zinio, so I reference those while practicing. I also have some music theory books I’ve purchased for Kindle that I’ll look up chord fingerings on.

The Mac

While the iPad sees the majority of the music action, I still use my Mac. When I find (an accurate) song on Songsterr’s site I want to practice, I’ll mute the instruments on the web view of the song and then use Audio Hijack Pro to record the backing tracks. While my Amplitube setup lets me play along to the song, I find this is good if I want to do any recording, or if I don’t want to listen to the additional guitar parts.

After that I import those into GarageBand for Mac ($14.99)  and lay down guitar tracks on top of them. I have an amp (a Peavy Vypyr 75 watt) with a USB port, so I can hook my Mac up to it without having to mess around with mikes and the like. I’ll also use the drum loops in GarageBand to outline a basic song structure to jam over. If I want to try and mimic jamming with friends, I’ll use the Magic GarageBand feature to add some drums, bass, keys and harmonica to a track. One thing I don’t like about Magic GarageBand — the jam session feature in Apple’s software — is that I have to click “Open in GarageBand” to change the key; it would be nice to be able to do that from the main screen.

Coda

It’s been a lot of fun getting back into the guitar, and a lot of that fun has been how much iOS devices and OS X have aided me in the process. While I’m still in the early stages of getting going again, the skills and techniques I’m gaining with the software, in addition to the instrument, will form a great foundation for future work. It won’t be too long before I’m recording full demo tracks in GarageBand.

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We’re smack in the middle of holiday house party season. Can’t bear to hear “All I Want for Christmas is You” one more time? You are in luck — a new app actually gives you the power to do something about it.

TuneTug is an app that lets party guests request and vote for the songs they want to hear next at an event via their mobile phones. The app integrates with music that’s playing from iTunes libraries or streaming from Spotify Premium.

TuneTug, which is available as a native mobile app for free on iOS and can also be accessed through a mobile web browser, is super simple to use. If you are the party’s host, you can allow up to 600 songs from iTunes or Spotify to be included on the TuneTug playlist. If you’re a party guest, when you log into TuneTug, the app uses GPS signals to determine which party you’re attending. The host can opt to make it so that a passcode is required to access the playlist.

TuneTug voting (click to enlarge)

From there, using TuneTug is pretty straightforward, and really fun: Guests can vote up or down on what song should play next. If the songs are playing from Spotify, guests can add new songs to the playlist. Hosts maintain the right to veto song choice.

Making party DJing a democracy

According to TuneTug founder Rolf Rando, the app was built to solve a simple but real problem: “I’ve seen disagreements at house parties over what music should play next, or just a lot of silent spots where people are all in front of the computer trying to decide on music. This just makes the process really democratic.”

At its inception nearly a year ago, TuneTug was a project made within ImageChef, an app also run by Rando that lets you create slideshows with photos and clip art. TuneTug has since been spun out as an independent entity, and currently has four full-time employees of its own based in San Francisco. Spotify integration was added last month, since the libspotify API was just opened to third-party developers in August.

Making the leap to real revenue

For now, though, the company does not make revenue. Rando says it has not been a huge concern thus far, since ImageChef is comfortably profitable, but money-making plans are in the works. However, the path to large-scale monetization could be a bit rocky, being that personal music services such as Spotify and iTunes libraries are legally constrained from being used for large scale entertainment because of music licensing issues. Rando says he is in talks to raise seed funding to make TuneTug into a bigger concern. That way, the company could potentially build apps for use in retail environments and the like.

But even as it stands today as a consumer app, TuneTug is really cool — it adds a fun element to basic get-togethers, and I think it’s a no-brainer addition for anyone who owns a Spotify Premium account and invites friends over. It is also a really smart use of the Spotify platform which is just starting to get some traction, and it’ll be exciting to see how other third-party developers utilize its API in the future.

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With $400,000 of his original Stickybits funding still in the bank, Chasen made the decision in December to take a hard turn and abandon Stickybits for his favorite idea at the time, which turned into Turntable.fm, a shared interactive music-listening service that has gained about 1 million users since its launch in June. The New York City company just raised $7 million and put out an iPhone app. Chasen spoke at an event called Venture Shift on Thursday night in New York and shared some thoughts on his pivot. Here are some takeaways from his brief chat.

It’s hard to pull the plug on a mediocre success. He said it’s easy to spot a failure, and success is equally obvious. But the hard part is in making the decisions about a middling venture. But you have to be unsentimental about it. ”It’s your baby and you still believe in the idea and others do, too. The first thing I had to do is get everyone to agree that we’re not where we want to be,” said Chasen.

You need to telegraph your pivot well to everyone involved. Chasen said he worked hard to get investors on board with his shift. All of his investors stuck with him, save one who said he couldn’t get behind a music startup. The investor was eventually bought out by the startup. Chasen said he worked to make his investors aware of the fact that Stickybits was missing its goals. But while he got all of his investors aligned, he said he didn’t do a good job with his team. He basically just laid the new direction on them without much preparation. “It wasn’t as collaborative as it should have been. Some people were taken off guard. They asked, ‘What is this random product you’re talking about?’”

Do what you love. It should be obvious, but entrepreneurs need to follow their interests. Chasen said he had actually two ideas as alternatives to Stickybits, but he made the choice to go with Turntable.fm because he was really excited about music. Though he didn’t say it, it seems like his credentials along with his passion are what have helped keep his investors on board. Howard Morgan of First Round Capital, who invested in Turntable, said it took guts to change course but he saw that this was what Chasen was excited about, not Stickybits.

Keep a lot of ideas in your head. Chasen said he’s constantly thinking about ideas and has hundreds of them going at any time. When it came time to change direction, he was able to choose from the best of his collection of ideas.

When it comes to launching, draw a line in the sand. Chasen said he’s a perfectionist, but he knew that he had to launch at some point. So he drew a line in the sand to ensure that as long as he got to a certain point, he would feel comfortable in opening to the public. The temptation is to keep adding features, but he said you will never be able to launch if you don’t stop at some point.

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The Berkeley, California-based company just released new growth figures, and it turns out that the music platform launched by Facebook in late September has given MOG a major lift.

MOG said Tuesday its monthly average users reached 160,000, representing 264 percent growth for the month of October. And it’s only going to get bigger in the weeks ahead: The company now projects that it could have more than 2 million monthly users by year’s end, based on its current growth rate.

MOG attributes the boom largely to the Facebook integration it rolled out a little over a month ago. At that time, MOG launched a free version of its on-demand music streaming service for Facebook users. “This is the best distribution platform we’ve ever had,” MOG CEO David Hyman said in the release announcing the growth figures.

It’s not just good news for MOG — it’s also good news for Facebook. For months now, Mark Zuckerberg has been talking up the company’s strategy of enabling other companies to attract users and make money by using Facebook’s social network as a platform. At a press event announcing a partnership with Skype this past summer, the Facebook CEO said: “We want to leave as much as possible to independent entrepreneurs and companies who are going to be best in class at doing these things … We build the infrastructure.” Testimonials from happy Facebook partners such as MOG is a testament to the feasibility of this strategy, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out in the longer term.

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• The Facebook music dashboard
  As Om was the first to report way back in June, Facebook is planning to launch a wide-scale music platform at this year’s f8. The social networking site is set to add a new “Music” tab along with the tabs it already has for Photos, Friends, Places, Groups, Games, and the like. The company has been in serious discussions for months with a bevy of partners in the music industry in the hopes of making Facebook a top place for people to find music and share it with their friends. Though the company has reportedly scaled back plans to let people listen to music directly within the Facebook interface, the music platform is still very likely to be a significant announcement on Thursday.

• Reading news on Facebook
  The new revamp of Facebook’s user interface to make the site more like “your own personal newspaper” may well be priming users for a Facebook that contains breaking news from both your social circles and the world at large. Earlier this summer, Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici reported that Facebook is working with a number of news outlets including CNN and the Washington Post to produce editions that can be read within the social networking site. Perhaps as part of this, Facebook is set to announce new publishing partnerships at the upcoming f8 conference, according to AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes, who reported this week that the conference is operating under the tagline of “Read. Watch. Listen.”

• Big names
  Although f8 is billed as a “developer conference,” Facebook on Tuesday announced a solid lineup of speakers that will interest attendees beyond the hacker crowd. Among the speakers confirmed for f8 are MTV founder and current Clear Channel executive Bob Pittman; former MySpace CEO and current Zynga executive Owen Van Natta; Turntable.fm founder Billy Chasen; Spotify CEO Daniel Ek; Greylock Partners’ David Sze; and, of course, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

GigaOM will be reporting from f8 in San Francisco all day Thursday, so please stay tuned here for more news.

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Step 1: Get Spotify

There are two ways to get a Spotify account: either by invitation for a free account, or by paying for premium or unlimited accounts. Once you have an account set up, you’ll need to download and install the Spotify OS X client application. Then just start browsing for music and create playlists. Just a few more steps, and you’ll turn your house into one big Spotify jukebox.

Step 2: Extend AirPlay to any Mac music app with Airfoil

Next you’ll need Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil for Mac. Airfoil has been around since long before Apple introduced AirPlay and the second generation Apple TV. Any audio application on the Mac (including Spotify), or even the Mac’s system output can be made accessible to AirPlay devices with Airfoil.

1. Download and install Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil for Mac.
2. Choose Spotify in Airfoil as the application you want to play.
3. Choose the AirPlay and/or Airfoil device(s) you want to connect to.
4. Play music using Spotify.

Step 3: Extend your range with Airfoil speakers

One of the limitations of Apple’s AirPlay has been the fact that iOS devices themselves are not able to receive AirPlay streams, only send them. Luckily, Rogue Amoeba created an app called Airfoil Speakers Touch for iOS devices that allows Airfoil to play music on any and all iOS devices connected to your local network. This works great if you want to extend your playback to speakers that otherwise would not be connected. There’s also a version of Speakers for OS X (.zip file) that will allow you to extend your playback to all the Macs on your network. Keep in mind that you are limited to your local network, so this is not a workaround for taking your library on the go, which is only included in the premium and unlimited Spotify accounts.

Bonus: Remote control options to round it all off

Now that you’re playing music from Spotify around your house, how can you also control it remotely? There are two good third-party solutions to help with this: One will let you control Airfoil on your Mac, and the other will allow you to control Spotify.

• Reemote for Airfoil. Kai Aras’ Reemote lets turn on and off different combinations of Airfoil and AirPlay enabled devices on your network. You can even control their individual volumes, to some extent, and you can switch your audio source application on the host Mac. There is an iPhone as well as an iPad version of Reemote. To make this work, you’ll also need to download and install the Reemote Server application for Mac.
• Two Remotes for Spotify. To control what playlists you’re listening to from within Spotify on the Mac, there are two good solutions. Axel Moller’s Spot Remote and Anders O’s Remoteless. Both apps are universal, supporting both the iPhone and iPad. Both allow you to browse and start Spotify playlists, as well as search for tracks, artist and albums. Another thing they both share is the use of an open source library called SIMBL. The server software for Spot Remote as well as Remoteless requires that SIMBL be installed on the host Mac in order for either solution to work. SIMBL allows third-party developers to enhance the functionality of other applications from other developers. Unfortunately, while it seems to work for some, OS X Lion does not yet appear to be officially supported by either solution.

Since this does require a bit of setup, it isn’t quite as easy as just using iTunes and an Apple TV. But if you’re looking for an alternative that makes use of Spotify’s great new service, maybe this is the whole home music solution you’ve been waiting for.

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