by Guitar World’s Lick of the Day is my newest, and most favorite, iPad App. We love all sorts of Licks, but Lick of the Day delivers a unique Lick home to your hands for enjoyment and memorization without any effort on your part.
Lick of the Day relies on a subscription model to make money. You decide if you want a one, three or six-month subscription cycle.
I chose the half-year deal for $20.00USD. I have the App set to automatically download new Licks each day without my intervention.
The video teaching is thorough and enhanced with text.
The “movable tab” and virtual fretboard are great learning tools.
You can set each lesson to play the Lick in real time.
You can start and stop and pause the video lesson at will.
Or you can choose to have the Lick slowed down and played more clearly for teaching.
The angle of the camera changes depending on which speed you’re using to view the Lick lesson.
You buy one subscription, but you can run it on other devices.
For me, the App works best on the iPad because you have a much more immersive experience.
For the purpose of this review, I installed Lick of the Day on my iPhone and then entered my iPad setup information to put my subscription content on my iPhone.
Moving content was almost immediate.
You can always check your Subscription Settings to see how many Days of Licks you have left.
Here you can see the Licks downloading to my iPhone.
Guitar World’s Lick of the day is a high-quality and inspirational iOS App that any guitar player can use and enjoy every single day.
Here is how I would improve the App.
I want to Pick My Lick of the Day. I don’t like having an anonymous and random Lick automatically downloaded for me every day and I have no idea if I’ll even want to view that Lick.
There are seven genres of Licks in the App: Blues, Country, Fusion, Jazz, Metal, Rock and Rockabilly; and four levels of Difficulty: Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert.
Most guitar players have a specific genre they like to learn. I don’t think many Easy Jazz Lickers will have much interest in learning Hard Metal Licks — the guitars and strings and setups are quite different — and that’s the major problem with Lick of the Day. It’s too generic in its want to deliver a Lick — any Lick! — once per day.
If you wanted to get only “Medium” Licks in the “Blues” genre, you would have to wait — according to my man math skills — 28 days for the One Lick a Day Cycle to come around again and hit you with a Lick you want to play and have the ability to play. That means, for a Medium Blues Licker with a three-month subscription, you’re only going to get three Licks during that time that interests you.
I realize delivering one Medium Blues Lick a day for six months is likely unreasonable, so I have another suggestion that might work even better: Give us access to the Guitar World Lick Library from inside the App. Let us Pick Our Licks in advance — say 10 at a time — that would then be delivered one-by-one every day over the next 10 days. That would, at least, give us some mix-and-match sense of control over the Licks we want to learn without having Guitar World decide which Licks we are worthy enough to download every day.
It sure looks like a pretty program. Are those pictures from your iPad? How is the sound? Do the videos take forever to download?
Hey Anne!
Yes, the images are from my iPad. The sound is surprising good! The videos download really fast. It’s an amazingly rich experience.
Wow, THIS.
THIS is exactly why the iPad is genius.
Right-O, Gordon! Lick of the Day uses internet updating, sound, video, images, animation, teaching, learning and incredibly comprehensive text and visuals to put together the entire package. It really is magnificently done. Today’s lick is “Three Octave Pentatonic Run” at the “Hard” level in the “Metal” genre.
Hey –
Anthony from GW. We really appreciate your very thorough and well thought out review of our App here. One of the best we’ve seen.
We are already moving in the direction you write about for 2.0 – good catch. Allowing users to choose the content they want.
Best,
Anthony
Welcome to Boles Blues, Anthony!
I appreciate your feedback. It means a lot to me. I read some of the other reviews for Lick of the Day before I wrote mine and those reviews either read like a copied Press Release, or it felt as if they installed the App, poked around and wrote of a first reaction. I didn’t get the feeling that many of the reviewers understood the long term value of the product or that they even played guitar.
You are smart and keen to be first to market and I hope it quickly pays off for you — and the more control you can give us over picking our content will be appreciated — because once Hal Leonard brings GuitarInstructor.com to the iPad, and we are able to access our pre-existing Digital Library of content there, and also purchase new content we can “watch and play anywhere” — a whole new standard of learning integration and manipulation will be set.
David:
You mention that the app relies on subscription. What is also very important is that the app itself is free to download and that you get FIVE free licks to let you see how great the app is. If the app cost money it very likely would intimidate people from getting it given the subscription cost that comes after you get past the initial download. 🙂
Hi Gordon —
Yes, I didn’t mention the App is free because it really is not — as a “Lick of the Day” App — and some who have reviewed the App, feel ripped off and misled that they actually have to pay to get a daily Licking. You’re right that the free Licks are good, but they really aren’t what the App is about in the end.
True — however I would like to posit that more people would have been scared off of the app to begin with if they would have had to pay for it without being able to test out how it worked in practice versus in theory. 🙂
I would love to see the metrics on that analysis.
I switched from acoustic to electric guitar and have been loving the lick of a day app. Nothing like going over and over a lick at a slow pace and then speeding it up. I haven’t approached some of the blazing speeds of the artists on the video, but I have been making solid progress. One thing I wanted to add is that I do enjoy the variety of the licks and would hope that future releases can have some spontaneity in the licks: I’ve enjoyed being confronted with music I am not into and then see how the lick works and get the rhythms down. It’s great to soak up other types of music, except for a few country riffs that I just have absolutely no interest in, I’ve been surprised at some of the stuff I’ve taken to: for instance there is a medium level jazz lick that I am really excited to get down even though I’m more interested in blues and rock.
Yes, I enjoy the Lick of the Day, too! I’ve moved more into Jazz from Blues, so I wish they had more Jazz licks for me to learn. I can sometimes take a Blues lick and “Jazzify” it — but having a natural lick is better than creating a lick of your own that may not be precisely right.