Free Kindle apps for guitar players

Almost everyone on my dad's side of the family can play an instrument, and most of them play guitar. My dad can play the acoustic quite well, and one of my younger brothers can rock out on the electric or bass guitar. Me? I played clarinet. That should tell you a lot. Despite my inability to master a guitar, I can still find some useful tools for those who are more musically inclined than I am. Here are five FREE Kindle Fire apps for guitar players. These include tools to learn chords, tabs and riffs. You'll be able to keep your guitar in tune and even compose music. While these tools will benefit beginners the most, even advanced players can find some useful tips among them. Besides, a guitar player can never have too many tuners or learn too many songs. Enjoy!

Tun-d Free Guitar Tuner: This hands-free (except the hands on your guitar) tuner is a great tool to have handy on your Kindle (or your Android phone). It includes presets for standard, chromatic and alternate tuning. The app tells you whether you're sharp or flat and is color-coded to make things even easier. This version is supported by ads, but you can purchase an upgraded ad-free version. If you play several instruments, this app can also help you tune a banjo, violin, mandolin, ukulele, cello and any other stringed instrument. The app only works in landscape mode. If you'd like to double-check that your guitar is tuned after using Tun-d, try the Guitar Tuning Helper app. It is for guitars only.

RipChord: RipChord shows you all the different ways you can play chords on a guitar on a virtual fret board. If you're not sure what the chord should sound like, simply strum your fingers across the screen to hear it. This app is good for beginners, but more advanced players may find that it doesn't cover the chords they'd have questions about. Still, it's a great tool for learning or for teaching others, especially children. This app only works in portrait mode, which is unfortunate because most Kindle cases will only stand in landscape mode.

Guitar Chords and Tabs: Find chords or tabs for many of your favorite songs using this app. I'm actually surprised that there's a free version; you can access thousands of songs and their lyrics with this app and save them for offline use. You can use it in portrait or landscape mode and play as the song scrolls across the screen. Alter the speed of the song if you need to slow it down, or speed it up for a challenge. The ads can be intrusive at times, covering up important parts of the screen. The app gives you access to a lot of popular, current songs while still making some of the classics available, too. There's a wide variety of music to choose from, so you'll never get bored with it.

Guitar Riff Free: Learn how to play your favorite guitar riffs with this free app. The paid version features 250 riffs and songs; this free version has 45 to try your hand at. You can adjust the speed and volume of the songs to play along. The size of the fret is also adjustable to focus on one area or to pan out to view the entire fret. There are plenty of different genres to choose from. This app can be glitchy because it requires a lot of resources. Make sure you kill your unused apps before firing up this one.

Guitar Tools - iJangle Free: Guitar Tools does a little bit of everything. It has 400 interactive screens of guitar instruction with chords, scales, a fretboard map and more. You can play 15 tuning references to make sure your guitar is in tune. The song writing tool helps you compose and save songs. This is a good app for beginners and those who play by ear and would like to learn how to read music. The navigation could be improved because you have to scroll through quite a bit to find the reference information that you need. Still, the app offers a lot of different features; it's like having several apps in one.

What are your favorite guitar apps for Kindle? Share them in the comments.

Black and white photo courtesy hugochisolm via Flickr.

Color photo courtesy fmerenda via Flickr.