Bass Buddha: Practice & Jam

A calm place to pick up your bass and play.

Bass Buddha is a practice companion that stays out of your way. No streaks to keep. No goals to hit. No account to make. Just the songs and the time you spend with them.

LEARN SONGS
1,026 songs are built in — chords ready, no login, no download. Browse them by genre or by artist, or search the whole catalog by title, artist, or a chord you already know. Pull one up and its chords are waiting as diagrams; tap one for a big version you can hear. Transpose the whole song a semitone at a time, simplify the awkward shapes, or paste in a bass tab and watch a cursor track the notes while they play back on a real bass voice. Record yourself working it out, and the library remembers everything you've sat with.

PLAY WITH A BAND
Set a key and a feel, and drums, bass and keys lock in behind you — any of the twelve keys, major or minor, and eight drum grooves. Loop it, change it, record over the top, and export the take. Practice adds eleven backing-loop presets, from a 12-bar blues to a jazz ii-V-I.

TUNE UP
Nine tunings built in — standard E A D G, Drop D, Half-Step Down, D Standard, BEAD, five-string B–G and E–C, Bass VI and extended-range 6-string — plus an editor for four, five or six strings, and a library to keep the ones you actually use. The tuner is built for the low end rather than borrowed from a guitar: it resolves a low B at 31 Hz, calls you in tune inside ten cents, and calibrates from 432 to 444 Hz. Play any string and it works out which one you're on.

PRACTICE THE FUNDAMENTALS
168 chords, sorted by family and waiting at all twelve roots — the hand-drawn voicing wherever there is one, a movable shape worked out for you where there isn't. 70 scales, the modes of harmonic and melodic minor among them, and you can build your own when the one you want isn't there. Every shape is built for E A D G so it lands on real notes. 41 chord progressions in genre and mood packs, or build your own from the chords that live in your key. A metronome from 40 to 240 BPM, six bass groove patterns from down beats to ghost funk, a fretboard trainer, and an ear trainer. Three ready-made practice sessions are there to start from, or put your own together.

THE WOODSHED
Bring in an audio file, loop the bar that keeps beating you, and slow it to half speed without the pitch dropping with it. Shift the key to match your tuning. The app sketches the chords it hears, all on your device.

CAPTURE IDEAS
Hum it, play it, or write it down before it's gone — a riff, a line, a chord shape, caught in seconds and filed where you'll find it again.

ON YOUR MAC, AND ON YOUR WRIST
A native Mac app with a proper sidebar and keyboard shortcuts. On iPhone, an Apple Watch app with a metronome, tuner and chord diagrams, a home-screen widget, and Live Activities that keep the metronome on your lock screen while it plays.

YOURS, ON YOUR DEVICE
Your songs, takes and ideas live on your device. No account, no cloud sync, nothing to sign up for. Write the lot to a single file and read it back on a new phone — the practice log exports as a spreadsheet too. Optional anonymous analytics are off unless you turn them on. Every feature is free, and the tip jar unlocks nothing at all — there is nothing behind it to unlock.