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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Cult of Mac Favorite: iRealBook – iPhone Music App

shapeimage_3.pngWhat it is: iRealBook is an iPhone and iPod Touch compatible version of the iconic Real Book, a venerable “fake book” that has been the music bible for jazz musicians and vocalists for many years. A repository of chord sheets for some 700+ Jazz standards, Jazz classics, Latin and Brazilian classics and more, the Real Book has long been an indispensable tool for professional Jazz artists and students alike.

Why it’s cool: iRealBook (iTunes link) improves on the paper copy by providing chord charts of every song in the catalogue, each of which can be easily transposed to any key. Where the physical copy of the Real Book provides only sheet music with standard notation in the originally written or recorded key, this iPhone version gives players easy-to-read, chord-based notation that fits on a single screen, in extra large fonts that make the sheets easy to read in both profile and landscape modes. It even offers a “Night View” with white text over a black background that makes charts legible on darkened bandstands. Songs in the catalogue can be browsed by style or composer when a user is stumped for ideas, and the developer, Massimo Biolcati invites requests for additions to the database.

Where to get it: iRealBook is available on the iTunes App Store for $7.99 and is worth every penny for the jazz and standards aficionado who wants to have the critical oeuvre at hand on the go.

Hit the jump for screenshots.
All Or Nothing At All.jpg          All the things key change.jpg
title-list.jpg          Nearness-Of-You-black.jpg

About the author

Lonnie Lazar

Lonnie Lazar is a writer, musician, web designer attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.

Email the author | Read more posts by Lonnie Lazar.

3 comments

    This is a brilliant app! I just don’t get it’s this cheap in the App Store, and the real Real Book is around 40 dollars…

    This is great, but can you get this for your MacBook? That would be even better…

    Man is that an incredible app. Well done and a perfect example of what an iPhone can do. Really well done interface IMO as well – very impressive design.

    @ real RealBook is $40 – no melody line, no lyrics, no hits/emphasis or rhythmic exceptions other than time changes. So it’s considerably more lean than a normal fake book. Also, no paper or ink LOL

    It’s kind of tiny on the iPhone tho … I am looking forward to seeing what they do with a media tablet ;)

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