Archive for: September 2007

We all have our ways of approaching things we don’t understand, but here’s a little problem that everybody has to some degree:
“I have a student, who shall remain nameless but not blameless, who has often illustrated very nicely how NOT to go about learning the guitar. She will come in for her lesson, and in a helpless little voice, ask me something like “Oh Jamie, I need your help with this, I don’t understand what to do here. How do I play this chord? It’s so HAAARD!
I will then do a couple of things. First, I calm her down, and have her collect herself, and focus. Then, I ask her to take a hard look at the “problem”. I have her take a really good look at that chord that is so “haaard”. We look at each note, one by one. We look at each finger written next to each note. I ask her questions, like where each note is. I don’t TELL her anything. I only ask her questions, which she answers. Within a few minutes, she has figured it all out, and solved the problem.
There is much to learn here about the right and wrong way to go about practicing, and much to understand about why some people progress so slowly. It has nothing to do with musical ability, it has everything to do with HOW WE THINK, WHETHER WE THINK, AND WHAT WE ARE FEELING EMOTIONALLY ABOUT OURSELVES WHEN WE PRACTICE.”
Aggressive Practicing by Jamie Andreas

Technorati Tags: learning the guitar

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Do you want a practice amp with amazing DSP effects like tremolo, chorus, flanger, phaser and separate delay/reverb with no bulky pedal decks?
The Roland Micro Cube’s COSM settings allow you to replicate the tone of several amps, including Brit Combo, Classic Stack and the legendary JC-120. This means you can make a complete Duane Eddy/Noel Gallagher/Angus Young or even Eddie Van Halen out of yourself without switching amps. As if that wasn’t enough there’s even an electronic tuning function. Just press the touch-sensitive tuning button and you get an instant reference tone with support for flat tunings up to two semitones.
Roland Micro Cube weighs only 7.5lbs, but, despite its 2 watt rating the beautifully-built Micro Cube is far louder than many of the higher wattage amps within its price range. Read more.

Technorati Tags: practice amp

The Scale and Chord Tone Fretboard Printer is a free fretboard generator for any stringed instrument.
This free scale and chord generator allows you to view and print out the fretboard notes or fingerboard charts to most any scale, chord, or arpeggio on any stringed instrument in any tuning. The default tuning displays a bass fretboard, but don’t be fooled. It supports all stringed instruments — like guitar, bass guitar, violin, cello, mandolin — for any number of strings in any standard tuning, dropped tuning or alternate tuning you can think of. It’s a very powerful fretboard diagramming application.
Some things you can do with the scale and chord tone diagram printer:
Generate guitar scales or bass scales on the fretboard.
View and print scales for drop-D tuning on a guitar or bass fretboard.
Display the notes to guitar chords on the fret board.
Find your own guitar chord voicings by assembling the arpeggio notes of chords in various ways.
Print out all the guitar notes on the guitar fretboard or bass notes on the bass fretboard.
Create printable blank fretboard diagrams for any number of strings in any shape or size.
Create and print scales for violin, cello, double bass and other fretless string instruments.
Show the notes of natural harmonics on the guitar, bass guitar or any other stringed instrument.
Generate diagrams for almost all scales and chords from the vast scale and chord dictionary.
Make left-handed guitar fretboard diagrams.
You can easily create a custom instrument by simply typing in the tuning note for each string seperated by commas. For example, if you type in E,A,D,G# and click set, you will create a 4-string instrument tuned from lowest-pitched string to highest E,A,D,G#. You can use any number of valid notes (natural, single sharp, or flat) you like: A, A#, Bb, B, C, C#, Db, D, D#, Eb, E, F, F#, Gb, G, G#, and Ab.
When you click the set button a new diagram is generated with the new tuning and correct number of strings. It is also saved on your computer into your own personal list of custom tunings. To access these saved custom tunings, select custom from the instrument menu, then click to select the custom tuning saved in memory.
Scale and Chord Tone Fretboard Printer

Technorati Tags: scale and chord generator, fingerboard charts, bass fretboard, blank fretboard diagrams, left-handed guitar