I was lucky enough to get my hands on a preview copy of TabToolkit, the latest in creative musical software from Agile Partners.

I’ve been a huge fan of their first release, GuitarToolkit, which is a fantastic, must-have app for guitarists. It includes a tuner, a metronome, a chord book and a scale chart for just about every variation you could think of on a guitar (it also supports bass guitar and ukulele now, too).

TabToolkit is an incredibly ingenious app which can pull guitar tablature files from your favorite tab website, format them specifically for the iPhone or iPod Touch and then, depending on the type of the tab, allow you to play along with it as it shows you proper fingerings for each chord. TabToolkit supports Power Tab and Guitar Pro files as well which will show more than the simple text tab pictured above.

According to Agile Partners’ press release, “TabToolkit has a built-in synthesis engine to let you hear the music for your score. The ability to hear an instrument play notes is a huge help in learning new music. If things are moving a little too fast, you can slow the tempo down to a crawl and learn tricky parts one note at a time.”

Aside from a metronome that plays along side of you and a variety of instruments to choose from for note reference, there’s a built-in web browser that allows users to navigate to their favorite tablature websites, look up the tab that they want and after it recognizes the tab, TabToolkit will download it and store in the tab library. I’ve been using this app non-stop for days.

TabToolkit is an incredible companion app to go along with GuitarToolkit and frankly, any guitarist should own both. They’re beautifully designed apps created by active musicians who just happened to be very skilled in Objective-C programming too.

TabToolkit retails for $9.99 and is available in the App Store now.