Afinar
Afinar vs forScore
They’re built for different rooms, and it’s worth being blunt about which. forScore is the best music stand there is: a real library, deep annotations, setlists, synced across your iPad, iPhone and Mac. Afinar is a practice room. It plays the actual recording, turns your pages in time with it, and records you playing along through your own rig. If you gig from an iPad, forScore is the right tool and we’re not trying to replace it.
What forScore does better.
It’s on the stand. forScore runs on iPad, and that’s where sheet music belongs when you’re performing. Afinar is a Mac app for a desk. An iPad version is on the way.
Annotations. Fingerings, cuts, circled bars, years of marks on your library. It’s the heart of forScore and Afinar has nothing like it.
Setlists and performance. Programmes, running orders, the machinery of playing a gig from a screen.
Your library, everywhere. One purchase covers every Apple device and iCloud keeps them in step. Afinar is one machine, local, on purpose.
And a few things people assume we’d win. forScore slows audio down from 25% to 200%, shifts pitch by up to an octave, and loops a section with draggable handles. That’s parity, not a gap.
Where Afinar is different.
It works out where the bars are by itself. forScore turns pages when you tell it to: a fixed duration, or a pass where you perform the turns so they can be replayed against that one recording. Afinar reads the music and matches it to the recording, so chart files arrive already following and PDFs get there without you doing a pass. Repeats jump back on time because it knows they’re repeats.
It records your instrument, not the room. forScore records through the microphone and files the memo under the score. Afinar takes your instrument through an amp rig, mixes it with the backing straight from the source, and hands you a recording you’d play for someone. Your raw DI is kept underneath, so you can change the amp weeks later.
The song can come from anywhere. forScore plays audio files you own. Afinar does that, and also plays a tab site, a lesson video or a YouTube link, and records you against any of them.
You can take your instrument out of the track. Separate an audio file into stems and mute the part you play, so the band is there and the chair is empty.
| forScore | Afinar | |
|---|---|---|
| Platforms | iPad, iPhone, Mac, Vision | Mac (iPad on the way) |
| Annotations and markup | Yes, deep | No |
| Setlists | Yes | No |
| Library synced across devices | iCloud | Local only |
| Slow down, pitch shift, A-B loop | Yes | Slow down and loop, no pitch shift |
| Page turns | A timer, or a pass you record per track | Worked out from the recording, no pass |
| Records you | Microphone memo | Your instrument through an amp rig, mixed with the backing |
| Play along to tab sites, lessons, YouTube | No | Yes |
| Separate a track into stems | No | Yes, with Pro |
| Change the amp after recording | No | Yes, with Pro |
| Price | $24.99, Pro $14.99/yr | $24.99, Pro $14.99/yr |
Which one you want.
forScore, if you read from a stand, mark up your scores, run setlists, and want your library on an iPad at a gig.
Afinar, if you practise at a Mac with an instrument plugged in, want the record playing while the page keeps up, and want to hear yourself back afterwards.
Plenty of people will want both, and that’s a perfectly good answer. They cost the same and they don’t do the same job.
Free for 14 days.