The iPad was quickly embraced by musicians and those aspiring to be musicians. You can do all sorts of cool things with the tablet with the right app. Hook up a guitar with a guitar interface and use it as an effects processor. Record and tweak music using your iPad as a digital workstation. Turn the iPad itself into a musical instrument or learn an instrument by using it as your teacher. Read sheet music while you play. Where do you even begin with all this musical goodness? Try some of the top-rated iPad apps available for musicians.

Yousician is the perfect app if you’re new to learning to play a musical instrument. It’s free to download, but requires a monthly or yearly subscription after a trial period. Even if you’ve been playing for a while, it can be a useful tool. It lets you play along in a way similar to music games like Rock Band. However, instead of the notes coming straight at you, they appear on the right and scroll to the left. This is similar to reading music, and almost the same as reading tablature, so if you’re learning to play guitar, you’re learning to read tablature at the same time. For piano, the sheet music works in a similar way, but you’re given a cheat sheet of piano keys that light up to help you.

Fans of the forScore app say it’s the best music reader out there. Its clean interface is designed exclusively for iOS devices. Use it to download sheet music or load PDFs onto your tablet and be playing in seconds. The forScore app works with Musicnotes to give you instant access to purchases. You can take notes, play along with an audio track, and create setlists.

The app supports split-view and slide-over multitasking on iPads with these features. Play hands-free with page-turning devices and MIDI signals, or use the built-in remote control. Serious collectors can add composers, genres, tags, and labels to the metadata of each score in the library.