Guitar Musings

Earlier, I wrote a review for the Guitar Toolkit for iPhone and I mentioned that it’s a decent little app but still needed some work.  I love it when developers do this but the listened to their customers and released a new and much improved Guitar Tools.

New Features Include:

• More time signatures for the metronome, including subdivision.
• Support for left handed players
• Support for 12 string guitar
• Support for Scales and there are a ton of them (Currently my favorite)
• Fretboard can be resized using the pinch feature
• The chords are now strummed (great for ear training)
• Improved slider bar for the metronome
• Much More!

Like I said before, I love it when developers listen to their customers and Guitar Tools for iPhone is now a must have for any guitar playing iPhone or iTouch owner.

I look forward to the next updates. 

Links:

http://guitartoolkit.com/

Sometimes when I’m writing or jamming, I get stuck in the same old I, IV, V progression.  Not that it’s a bad thing but sometimes I want to mix it up a bit.   I found a nice little reference guide at The Guitar Suite that gives you the chords for each degree in scale of the key.  The nice thing is that the chart addresses major, natural, harmonic and melodic minor scales which are useful when you want to mess with the feel or color of a song.  I recommend using the progressions to warm-up with by playing the scales using the chords. 

I will turn to the charts from time to time,  especially when I’m spinning my wheels and I find it useful.  I hope it helps you as well.

Links:

Guitar Suite Chord Progression Primer

Chord Progression Books

The Internet has become a wealth of information for any subject and I am so grateful for what I’ve learned from its contents.  I have found gear, books, and lessons for a decent price, delivered right to my home.  This convenience is wonderful but with budgets tightening a bit, buying a book or services on the Internet may not always be an option.  It would also be nice to get out of the house every once in a while.

I would like to remind everyone of a resource that is free, full of information and is usually within minutes of your home.  I’m talking about your local public library, a wonderful resource that many in the Internet age forget.  I had the day off and found my way to our local branch that is only a few blocks away, with the goal of finding some books to help me with my playing and broaden my musical knowledge.  When I arrived at my branch, I was pleasantly surprised by how many were waiting to get in.  A scene that contradicts my earlier, “Internet age has forgotten libraries” statement.  Lots of moms and their kids and people like me looking for little inspiration.  

Our local branch is a bit small so the music section didn’t have too much but I did find a few books that peaked my interests.

• “Bernstein, A Biography” -  One of my favorite composers and not because of West Side Story, which is great, but because of his Mass.  I was privileged enough to be part of a performance of The Mass when I was in College and it was an incredible experience.
• “Written in my Soul” –  I’m always looking for insight in songwriting and this book contains stories from some of the great songwriters like Paul Simon, Sting, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, to name a few
• “John Renbourn, Fingerstyle Guitar”  -  I was going to buy this book and still might, but I get to try it out for free first.

So if you got a couple hours spare time, give your local branch a try.  You might find something there that you might have never thought about otherwise.

In past posts, you have read my recommendations on Pandora Radio offerings.   I love listening to the diverse music online and the musicology podcast is the one of the best out there.  There was something missing, however.  I couldn’t listen to Pandora on the iPhone, until now. 

I recently updated my iPhone to the new version 2.0 software and with that we got the new “App Store.”   Pandora has written a sweet app that will let you listen to you’re selections on your phone.  I know, I know!  I have an iPhone with a ton of music on it, why would I need to stream music now?  I like it because I hear new music that would otherwise be unknown.  Pandora gets me to listen outside the box.  Anyway, if you have the new 3G iPhone or upgraded the older one, give it a shot.  You would be disappointed.

Note:  I did this on the original iPhone so I didn’t need the high speeds of the 3G network to stream the music effectively.

Links: www.pandora.com

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I broke my nail and was relegated to work on my flatpicking skills until my nail grows back. I thumbed through my Acoustic Guitar Magazine’s and found some great exercises for learning scale patterns and mixing them up to better my soloing.  The only problem is that I wanted more than what the magazine was giving me. 

A couple of nights ago, I came across a site called GuitarCardio.com and I’m loving it.  It’s a scale exercise program where you choose a key (or all keys), select a difficulty level and a starting place for the scale.  A series of scales will then be given for you to work on.  It’s like a workout plan for you fingers, hence the name “cardio”  I’m thinking.  The dynamic nature of this system sings to me because I’m not getting bored with the same scales over and over again. 

This program is still in it’s infancy so there are some drawbacks like the scales don’t cover the entire fingerboard, lack of customizability and no metronome, to name a few.  Brad Heintz, the creator of GuitarCardio.com addresses bugs and feature requests in his blog and  has great plans to extend the features and functionality of this program.  So maybe we’ll see scales over chord changes and modes in upcoming versions.

Check out the site and give it a whirl and let Brad know what you like and would like to see at GuitarCardio.   Brad is open to suggestions and critiques which should make this program the best it can be. 

Keep Practicing!