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Review: Coldplay Songbook App for iPad [Software]

"Overall, this app is great if you are a fan of Coldplay and want to learn how to play their music"

by SerenaB, July 29th, 2012 and has been Read 1229 times.
Last Edited by: Ffion Davies August 5th, 2012.

Chris Martin, Jon Buckland, Will Champion and Guy Berryman are the four talented artists that make up the group that many of you will know as Coldplay. The group formed in 1996 and since then have had numerous hits such as 'Yellow', 'In My Place', 'The Scientist', 'Viva La Vida' and most recently 'Paradise' and 'Princess of China' feat. Rihanna. Throughout the years they have had albums that have dominated the charts, won several awards and released five studio albums. I think it’s safe to say that Coldplay have placed themselves in the midst of pop music’s elite.

With devices such as the iPad, Microsoft Tablet, BlackBerry Playbook and the Sony Tablet, the demand for new apps has increased. There are more and more music apps appearing from audio editing software apps to virtual DJ’s, audio recorders and software synthesisers. Now Musicroom have brought out a songbook app which features some of Coldplay’s biggest hits and is meant to "help you play just like Chris Martin himself.’’



Once I downloaded the app I was intrigued to see what was in store and upon opening it for the first time I was greeted with a list of the available songs and in the background an emotional picture of Chris Martin singing. The second page is dedicated to the biography of Coldplay with which you can learn more about each member of the group. There is also a tab for ‘more apps’ and a help page.

The app has 15 songs for you to choose from, these are:

1. Amsterdam (with backing track)
2. Clocks (with backing track)
3. Don’t Panic
4. Fix You
5. Green Eyes
6. In My Place
7. Sparks
8. Speed of Sound
9. The Hardest Part
10. The Scientist (with backing track)
11. Trouble (with backing track)
12. Violet Hill (with backing track)
13. Viva La Vida
14. Warning Sign
15. Yellow

Once you have selected a song it then appears as the digital piano score where you can scroll through the whole song before you play. You can play the song with or without the backing track, adjust the volume, turn on the metronome, annotate the score with your own notes and you can choose 0-4 bars count in. The screen adapts to the orientation of the iPad so it can change from portrait to landscape. The portrait view however is much easier to read because the screen can show more bars than the landscape view.

The app is powered by Noteflight, a company that is focused on developing innovative online music notation software and delivers interactive musical content to tablets. It is easy to scroll through the score and what’s great about the app is the sheet music is turned automatically for you whilst it’s playing, however if you want to turn the page manually it turns the automatic page turner off which can be a little frustrating. It is easy to read and to follow the score and the score reads ahead for you which is a handy feature.



The quality of audio playback is better than I had expected, the piano sounds are reminiscent of the MIDI sounds from digital audio workstation’s like Sibelius or Cubase. The app has been designed well and there are some good features for example, you can play along solely with the backing track by separating and taking out the piano part. You can also loop a section of the song, so if you feel that you need to practice a certain phrase you can press the icon in the transport bar and drag the brackets to the section you desire.

Overall, this app is great if you are a fan of Coldplay and want to learn how to play their music. With intuitive features, like being able to preview the score in real time before the music comes up to play and a good range of songs to choose from you can’t really go wrong.

WATCH // 'Viva La Vida'

Additional information:

• This App requires iOS 4 for optimal performance.

For more Apps from Musicroom visit: Musicroom.com - Sheet Music for Musicians