We’re really excited to announce along with our partners at Guitar World, the world’s best selling guitar magazine, that Guitar World Lick of the Day for iPhone / iPad / iPod touch passed 500,000 downloads less than three months after its launch! We hope you’ll celebrate with us by downloading the latest release of Lick of the Day from the App Store and taking advantage of over 50% discounts on in-app subscriptions for a limited time.

Guitar World Lick of the Day provides guitar players of all levels with a fun and engaging way to improve their guitar skills across a wide range of styles: rock, metal, blues, country, jazz, and more. Lick of the Day can be downloaded for free to evaluate its instructional content and features. To receive a new and challenging lick every day, subscriptions can be easily purchased within the app.

It’s a bit striking to compare Agile Partners’ participation in NAMM (the music industry’s largest and most important event) this year versus last year. Last year, a couple of us simply walked the 2010 NAMM Show floor, learned what NAMM is all about, and frankly, were a bit overwhelmed by the 80,000 attendees and cacophony of sounds that permeated the Anaheim Convention Center. This year, not only did we set up a triple-kiosk exhibit that featured our AmpKit, Guitar World Lick of the Day, GuitarToolkit and TabToolkit apps, but we were also fortunate to share some incredible experiences with renowned artists that we’ll remember for a long time.

NAMM Media Preview Day
We started 2011 NAMM with the Media Preview Day on Wednesday, January 12, the day before the show opened. Agile Partners was honored to kick off the Media Preview event with a presentation of our AmpKit and Guitar World Lick of the Day apps to a swarm of reporters and photographers from around the world. Helping us to present our two highly acclaimed apps were none other than Alex Skolnick from Testament / Alex Skolnick Trio and Phil Collen from Def Leppard. Alex Skolnick went on stage first to talk about and play guitar with AmpKit on iPad. Next on stage was legendary rocker Phil Collen who also played guitar using AmpKit and talked about our Guitar World Lick of the Day app. Here’s Alex playing some incredibly beautiful jazz and serious metal tones, and Phil giving a Lick of the Day lesson to the NAMM media – all using AmpKit.

Following our presentation to the media, Alex and Phil walked over to Agile Partners’ exhibit with a crowd of reporters and photographers following closely behind. For the next three hours, the two kind and gracious artists continued to play guitar, answer reporters’ questions, and just make sure everyone was having a really great time. Phil and Alex are two of the kindest and most gracious — not to mention talented — people you will ever meet on this planet. It was a real treat not only to have them at our exhibit, but to hear them play amazing guitar using AmpKit!

While Alex and Phil were hanging out at our exhibit, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee was being honored on the NAMM Media Preview stage for his efforts to give more school kids access to musical instruments. When the press asked Huckabee if he could play a little bass, someone suggested that he jam with Phil Collen. Being the incredibly gracious person that he is, Phil agreed to do so. Taking AmpKit on iPad with him, Phil joined Huckabee on stage with Martin Guitar’s Dick Boak. What followed was a highlight of the entire 2011 NAMM Show.

Dueling iPads
Our memorable NAMM moments continued after Media Preview Day when our exhibit area became the scene of an amazing performance: Dream Theater’s Jordan Rudess came to our booth to jam on keyboard and his MorphWiz app with Rob Math, the guitar virtuoso who played guitar using AmpKit at our booth during the entire NAMM Show. Although the two musicians had never played together, their impromptu NAMM jam (which we billed as “Dueling iPads”) was a beautiful performance that gave many of us in the audience goose pimples.

Joel Kosche from Collective Soul
Agile Partners was also thrilled to have Joel Kosche, Collective Soul’s lead guitarist, play guitar using AmpKit at our NAMM booth. Joel recently released a full-length solo album, Fight Years, and has been playing guitar using AmpKit for several months. He says he finds AmpKit really useful for “practicing and recording ideas for songs, especially while traveling.” Joel is not only a talented artist, but also a gracious person as demonstrated by the many interviews he gave and autographs he signed while at our booth. He also emailed us several of his AmpKit presets to share with other AmpKit users. Many thanks Joel!

Last But Absolutely Not Least!
We also want to thank the thousands of people who stopped by our exhibit during the four-day 2011 NAMM Show. Our team particularly enjoyed meeting “NAMM families” – families that included moms, dads, and children of all ages. What a great way to enjoy not just the NAMM Show, but music in general! We particularly got a kick out of watching parents and their kids jamming together with guitars and AmpKit at our booth.

Finally, to all our customers who visited our exhibit and told us that you have been enjoying one, two, three or all four of our guitar apps – thank you! We assure you that Agile Partners continues to work hard at enhancing all of our products, ensuring they remain among the very best apps in the entire App Store.

Like our friends at Guitar World, Agile Partners appreciates the support that amazing artists like Joe Satriani, Zakk Wylde and Gus G have given to Lick of the Day.  Their Facebook posts and tweets have been a huge help in getting the word out about Guitar World Lick of the Day (check it out in the video below).

Finally, we’re proud to partner with Guitar World in providing guitar players around the globe with a fun and engaging way to continuously improve their guitar playing skills and broaden their repertoire. Lick of the Day is a wonderful addition to our family of guitar apps that already included Guitar Toolkit, TabToolkit, and AmpKit. We hope all of our customers will keep sending us feedback so we can continuously improve our apps. Rock on!

All of us at Agile Partners are excited to be partnering with Guitar World, the world’s best-selling guitar magazine, to release Guitar World Lick of the Day – a new app for guitar players who are serious about having fun while improving their guitar skills!

Lick of the Day is the perfect app if you’re a guitar player who has the basics down and is looking for a fun and engaging way to broaden your repertoire. After subscribing to Lick of the Day, a new Lick is delivered to your iPad, iPhone, and/or iPod touch daily. Each Lick is hosted by a Guitar World instructor or guitar celebrity and consists of a video of the host playing and describing the Lick, scrollable tablature and standard notation, and written performance notes.

Once the Lick has been downloaded to your device, you’ll have a day’s worth of instruction in your pocket (a large pocket if your device is an iPad). Watch the video whenever you can grab a few minutes. Or, sit down for an in-depth session to practice the Lick your way: adjust the tempo of the notation playback, turn a metronome on and off, listen to audio synthesis of the Lick, loop the playback for practicing, view a dynamic fretboard that shows finger positions, and more. On the iPad, the music notation even scrolls in sync with the video for the ultimate learning experience. Personally, I’m most excited about the one-touch button that sets the music notation tempo to 50% of full speed — at my skill level, I know I’ll be needing that feature a lot!

The Licks are demonstrated by a variety of amazing instructors, including the pros at Guitar World and celebrities such as Zakk Wylde, Joe Satriani, Gus G., and Phil Collen. Each daily Lick provides a fun new challenge across a variety of genres including Rock, Metal, Blues, Country, and Jazz.

When developing Lick of the Day, it was important to us that you be able to bring your Licks with you wherever you go. The app is available for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch and Licks purchased on any device allows you to download Licks to all your devices that are hooked up to the same iTunes account.

I hope you’ll download Guitar World Lick of the Day for free and check it out. You can easily purchase one, three, or six months of Licks to continue receiving Licks each and every day! Here it is in action below:

We are really excited about this engaging new way to learn music. Be sure to check out the killer axes the guitar celebs bring to the party. We know you’ll have a great time, too!

Just a couple days after launch, the AmpKit apps and AmpKit LiNK are already generating tremendous excitement among guitar players and reviewers around the world. Word-of-mouth communication and published reviews have already helped propel AmpKit and AmpKit+ to be among the most downloaded and Top Grossing Music apps in the App Store, and orders for AmpKit LiNK are flowing into Peavey authorized dealers worldwide.

Leading music and technology sites have published strong reviews of AmpKit and AmpKit+. Ars Technica, a leader in “original news and reviews, analysis of technology trends, and expert advice,” posted an in-depth comparative analysis (“App Store showdown“) of AmpKit and another app. Ars Technica concluded that AmpKit is “the winner in our book” stating that “Agile put in some serious time and effort to make an awesome product” while the competitor “more or less slapped its offering together with existing technology.”  The analysis and review by Jeff Smykil ended with the statement, “Agile Partner’s better hardware, beautiful graphics, abundance of effects, and the ability to use more than three effects simultaneously makes that application a winner in our book.”

Brett Terpstra at the influential TUAW exclaimed, “It sounds awesome! … I’ve been having a blast.”  Other writers have also commented on AmpKit’s amazing sounds. For example, Jay Donovan at CrunchGear wrote, “AmpKit’s guitar tones are great! From crushing distortion to kooky tremolo, there are many tones to choose from.”

AmpKit’s overall user experience has also received high marks from reviewers. Damian Erskine at Bass Musician Magazine commented, “All in all, I loved this thing.  It’s VERY intuitive to use, sounds great and just simply works like you’d hope it would,” and Travis Ehrlich at GearDiary.com wrote, “Agile Partners applications are always polished quality apps … AmpKit might just raise the bar even higher.”

A user review that particularly caught our attention was posted by a customer in the Germany App Store. Customer “Lennys Apple” wrote a detailed, five-star review in German and appended a full translation of the review in English! In English (and I believe in German), Lenny Apple expresses his delight that AmpKit enables users to record their jam sessions and email them to friends. We’re incredibly grateful for this level of interest and support from customers like Lennys Apple around the world!

Over on Twitter, there have been countless tweets from customers enjoying the AmpKit apps, including: “AmpKit looks amazing” (@buymeasoda); “Oh. My. Freaking. Gosh” (@eatpixels); and “Dude. Crazy awesome” (@fraserspeirs). And on the AmpKit Facebook page, a fan wrote, “Just so slick-looking guys! Should I have expected anything less from the creators of the amazing GuitarToolkit?!”

AmpKit LiNK, the high fidelity electric guitar connector and perfect companion to AmpKit, has also received outstanding reviews.  A particularly sophisticated and detailed review was written by YK at tehloft.com in Singapore. Noting that AmpKit LiNK is a powered device, YK articulately describes the achilles heel (i.e., heightened cross-talk between input and output signals) of non-powered guitar interfaces: “… once you use an effects simulator and crank up the gain on this small crosstalk signal, it gets blown into epic proportions and you will get an uncontrollable amount of (deafening) feedback.”  YK concludes, “This makes the AmpKit LiNK a technically superior device” and it’s why we’re proud that our customers can fully enjoy AmpKit’s high gain amps like the Peavey 6505+, Taos Rectifier, American Rebel and others.

We want to thank all the writers who have reviewed AmpKit and AmpKit LiNK in the first two days of its launch, and a very special thanks to our customers around the world for providing us with their comments and feedback.  Please keep it coming — we’re dedicated to continuously improving all of our products and keeping our customers happy!