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!

I did find is the Musicology Show from Pandora. which is a true instructional show that digs inside the nuances of music it’s styles.  One show will teach you about metric modulation (aka time signature changes) and the next week you will learn about aspects of composition or what a madrigal is.  For some it will be a refresher course and for others, it will expose you to different aspects of music that would otherwise stay unknown to you. 

Give the Musicology Show a listen and tell me what you think.  Are there any good guitar/music instructional podcasts you would recommend?

http://blog.pandora.com/podcast/