Guitars, Music, Reviews!

After a long portion of time with my recording setup down I finally spent three days trying to fix it, I’ve got it nearly back to normal but my monitoring is acting up so forgive me for anything that’s off-beat.

I’ve been wanting to get some good FREE VST stuff, actually I was looking for VSTi but found this instead. It’s a really awesome Delay/Reverb effect thing. I also wanted to do a post so I figured I would do some examples of what this software can do. Please keep in mind that I am an amatuer and the results in my examples don’t necessarily show the full abilities of the program.

So, here is the recording I will be working with. This is the unedited clean original recording. I actually run through my Line 6 so it’s not the complete original signal from my guitar but close enough.

FXtest1

And this is the same recording with the “L Cathedral 1″ preset.

FXtest2

If I weren’t trying to keep a steady example going, I could tweak the preset to my liking. For guitar, I think that preset is a little drawn out and big, it would sound great for a piano or something but I want a different sound. EpicVerb has a Rever/Ambience switch. This is the same thing as FXtest2, but with the switch set to ambiance.

FXtest3

So that’s a few examples for you, if you would like to read more, check out this webpage.

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I love harmonics particularly Pinch and Natural harmonics. A harmonic on a guitar is a note that is sounded by lightly pressing your finger across a particular fret and playing that note. Much like if you were going to mute that string.  There are lots of different ways and sounds you can get out of harmonics and I’ve sound some videos that should help learning them.

First off natural harmonics. They are the basis or all of the harmonics. This guy is using a nylon string classical (A Martin actually, that’s probably at least a 6-10k guitar) so its a little harder to tell what fret he’s on but its not too bad. One other thing about this one is he only shows you three different frets to play it on, these are they good basic ones but you can do it on all but a few frets.

The vid won’t load right so here’s a link to eHow where I found it.

http://www.ehow.com/video_5727055_play-natural-harmonics.html

There’s also Tap harmonics which are really cool, they’re harder than other forms but sound great.

Tap Harmonics in Metal Guitar– powered by eHow.com

Now For Pinch Harmonics, these are my favorite and probably the hardest so I’m putting two videos. I you happen to be a JamPlay member, they have a really good video that I learned from but they’re not ree videos so I cant use those.

With this one, he does pinch harmonics and then he shows you a really cool way to play natural harmonics, and his method is really just a version of the “Divebomb” which is often used by people like Joe Satriani and the like.

How to Make Your Guitar Scream– powered by eHow.com

And here’s one by the same guy who did the tap harmonic vid.

Pinch Harmonic Techniques in Metal Guitar– powered by eHow.com

One really important thing about pinch harmonics neither of these talk about is that it sounds different depending on where you pick the note. Basically just like how he slid his finger around with the tapping.

If you guys get really good, maybe you can do something like this:

http://vodpod.com/watch/2526178-erik-mongrain-air-tap-music-live-show-2009-birmingham-uk-binaural-sound-for-headphones

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Ibanez is starting a very unique contest. The winner will get a limited edition guitar (more about that later) which only 2 models of it will exist, one model belonging to Steve Vai.

What we have to do is design a JEM. From what I’ve read it must be generally the same as far as hardware and body shape.  If your design wins, it will be posted on the front page of the Ibanez website and then Ibanez will make 2 of your design, you receive one. 

Here are the official rules:

1. May not have been made commercially available, won any other prize/award, or previously submitted to any other contest;
2. must be the exclusive original work of the entrant and made for the JEM contest;
3. must be in keeping with Ibanez’ image;
4. may not be inappropriate, offensive, libelous or defamatory, pornographic, sexually explicit, unlawful or plagiarized, as determined by Hoshino in their sole discretion;
5. must not be harassing, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, profane, obscene, excessively violent, racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable or offensive in any way, as determined by Hoshino in their sole discretion;
6. may not violate or encourage others to violate any applicable law, statute, ordinance or regulation;
7. may not defame or invade publicity rights or privacy of any person, living or deceased, or otherwise infringe upon any person’s personal or property rights or any other third party rights;
8. may not contain commercial/corporate advertising, including but not limited to corporate logos, brand names, and slogans, other than those relating to Hoshino/Ibanez or Steve Vai;

The official website for the contest is here.

As far as I can tell there isn’t really a limit to how many designs that you can send in. The only thing I was upset to find out was you weren’t allowed to change the body style and they didn’t really want you to do something crazy with the materials.

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A FREE APP

Chords is a basic guitar chord teaching tool. It’s great for beginners trying to learn they’re basic “cowboy” (open major) chords. The way it works is you have a little wheel at the bottom, you take and pick a root, say C, then you pick wether you want it major or minor or whatever.  Once you pick that out it will show you the little chord diagram for that chord.

The only things I didn’t like about it were that you cant change the positions and you can’t pick whether or not you want it to be a barre chord, its just what the creator thought was the best way to play that chord.  For a beginner, this is, for the most part, a fine way to do it. The only problem being that when your starting off barre chords are really hard and funny shaped open chords are even harder.

So ultimately this is a great app for a beginner. People like me or intermediate to advanced players won’t find themselves using it alot.

Sorry for the lack of screenshots, the guy who made this app doesn’t seem to have a running website. You can search him if you’d like to learn more or just find the app on itunes. His name is Adam Zapletal.

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Fretboard Warrior is designed to teach guitarists all the notes on the fretboard.

     They way it works is you open up the program and you pick how long you want to do it for. I usually do 1 minute (not sure why). Then it brings you to a picture of a guitar neck and a dot shows up on a certain note. You have to select what note it is.  Then it repeats.

  The goal is to get as many notes right in the set time frame.

   The idea of how it teaches you is that it comes across as a sort of memory game where the more you play the more you learn.  Some people don’t recognize the importance of memorizing your fretboard. I suppose if you just want to play open chords forever it doesn’t matter but to be any type of lead guitarist it’s really helpful.

    Fretboard Warrior is also available for PC and Macintosh.  This review is on the Lite iPod version. There is a paid version but I’m not quite sure between the differences.

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I haven’t updated my apps in a while and I went to the app store today and was very excited to see that TabToolkit has come out with a new update! I personally think its just about better than Guitar Pro now, and it doesn’t hurt you can take it anywhere. 

      There have been a few minor updates since my last review on TabToolkit, but the latest was a large update which I promised to write about. Among the features up until now are some minor tweaks, the biggest of these adding support for playback of bends (for beginner guitarists or  those new to TabToolkit, Bends are where you push or pull the string sideways along the fret to bring the note a little higher and this wasn’t supported in the original version). But one thing I’ve been really wanting is a way to mush all the different instruments of a GP or PT file into one playback. When I say that I mean to have all the different virtual instruments playback at once.  

     Agile Partners has now made that option avalible along with a few more tweaks and upgrades! The way they have it set up is you pick the part of the tab you want to view and press play. By default it will play all the tracks together like a song. You can mute any tracks you want if there are a few your focusing on or whatever. The Part I really like was that you can set the volume for each track. For instance, your trying to learn a solo but you want the drums and rhthym and all that but you want to focus on the solo. You can easily mute the tracks you don’t want (e.g. vocals) and turn down the volume to the ones you want in the background and crank up (to 11 of course ) the track you want to pay attention to.  This is great for me, I’m also into DAWs and the different volume thing is just really cool to me.  Also, I personally am not a huge fan of metronomes so I have that turned off, but the addition of a drum track in the background really helps keep me in time when practicing along with it.

      So pretty much, this app which you can buy for $9.99 is as good if not better than major programs like Guitar Pro. The only thing that I was hoping for that wasn’t included in this update was to be able to veiw multiple peices of a tab at once, similar to the way text tabs work. But otherwise its my most used app (next to Shoutcast radio).

There were many different additions and such and you can read about them all here or on the App Store.

P.S. This is a new update and if I notice any other really cool features I’ll be sure to write about them.

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Alot of people want to learn how to improvise on the guitar ( or any instrument for that matter) . I think its essential for lead guitarist. Lots of people have no idea where to start other than buying a ear training cd. I prefer to play along with somebody to learn, and blues is the best to leanr with. Any simple pentatonic scale will work. If yur going to practice with blues, keep it in E because thats a great blues key.

But what about when your buddy is nowhere to be found? The best way to do this is:

1. To record a basic ryhthym and play over it.

2. listen to the radio and when you see a chance improvise over it.

If you mess around with this stuff you should learn pretty fast.

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There are a lot of tab websites that aren’t really worth much as far as the site layout but they have the tabs you need so you spend hours looking for the right ones. But really, these websites just take them (mostly) from other websites, and I’m pretty sure there’s nothing wrong with it. Kind of like putting a YouTube vid on your website that was created by some guy 1,000 miles away from you. Actually alot of times the major websites put a signature on all their tabs so you can find the good site.

My favorite tab websites are:

www.ultimate-guitar.com

UG has all kinds of tabs. They kind of lean more to the rock genre but its all user generated so it is really everything you can think of. I use powertabs and Guitar Pro tabs, and usually they will have every instrument that’s on the recording ( and are almost always RIGHT so you don’t have to waste your time repairing the tabs). UG also has video lessons and what I believe to be (I never use it) a pretty large community and  forums which are often helpful, especially for beginners.

www.chordie.com

Chordie, is sort of like google for music. It is a search engine type thing for tabs from websites like UG and others (it doesn’t show nearly all of them though) but they also have lots of tabs created for chordie specifically. Chordie also has a mobile style setting that you get when you go to it with a iPod or a cell phone which is often helpful (see below post if you’re interested in mobile tabs). The major downside to chordie is that it only shows text tabs or chord tabs, which are basically the lyrics of the song with the chords placed where they should be played. I prefer chordie for acoustics and UG for everything else.

If you have a powertab or gp5(6,7 whatever version) viewer you can go to the company’s website and usually find some good ones there.

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     Recently,  Agile Partners ( the creators of GuitarToolkit, a best selling music app) came out with a new app for music tablature on your iPod or iPhone. It’s basically like a updated version of  Guitar Pro or Power Tab for your iPod, except you cant create tabs from the program itself, just view and play  them.  It has capability for alot of instruments with GP tabs or Power tabs. The sounds aren’t great and it doesn’t play bends ( though according to the developers they are working on that) it runs smoothly and sounds pretty good for a small mobile program.

     I was just gonna write a long explanation to how it works but I figured I should just write a short tutorial, which will show you how it works.

When you first open the app, it has some default tabs in it, like the Star Spangled Banner (the regular version, I prefer to play the advanced version which you can learn from www.JamPlay.com). To add your tabs, there are two different ways to do it. I will warn you that this app uses a pretty good bit of battery juice so the second option may be better.

1. There is a built in web browser with the app, get there by pressing the + symbol, and download tabs. This will bring you to the web browser ( and obviously this feature requires a Internet connection), from there just go to your favorite tab site. Search a tab and pick one you want. If it is a Power Tab or Guitar Pro tab, click download file on the page ( TabToolkit supports Guitar Pro tabs, Power Tabs, Text tabs, and PDF tablature). I use www.ultimate-guitar.com and I know that they’re tabs work, as far as I know all tabs do but I have heard otherwise. That will start downloading the file, which only takes a few seconds.  If its a text tab, load the page and wait a minute then you will probably see this:

Tap the red thing at the top and it will download and ask you to put in some info about it which isn’t necessary but very helpful.  That’s pretty much it for the first option.

2. Upload from your computer. At first I though I’d never use this but I actually love it. What you do is open the app and tap plus, but leave it on that page rather than tapping download tabs. It gives you a URL which is really http:// [your IP address]. Go there in your computers web browser, and if you should see this:

(I am assuming you have a GP file on your computer or a Power tab, or some form of tab.) Click “Add Files” and find the file if its a GP tab, etc. If its a text tab copy and paste it into the lower box. When you do this it sends it over your IP to your iPod, and your iPod downloads it. I usually do this while my ipod is charging. Please note that you have to be at the upload files page in the app, otherwise when you go to the page on your computer it won’t work and you’ll get an error from your browser.

So that’s how you get what you want on there, you just tap whatever tab you want to view and it shows up like this:

or if its a text tab like this:

 That’s the basics, but there are so many great features I decided to just add a couple videos from the developers.

This one is pretty much the commercial for it.

TabToolkit Intro from John Berry on Vimeo.

This one is demonstrating the sounds.

TabToolkit Instruments Sampler from John Berry on Vimeo.

Well that’s all for now, I will probably be putting some more posts involving any major updates. I really love this app and it can be purchased from the App Store for 9.99 it is a more expsensive app but it’s comepletly worth it.

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