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.