That’s right, you’ve got another chance. The generous folks at Positive Grid have given me a second JamUp bundle to bestow upon Guitarify fans. If your a fan of Guitarify’s Facebook page, your already entered. But if you’d like to increase your chance of winning, leave a comment under this post over on Facebook and I’ll put your name on the ‘big-list-of-winner-picking’ a second time. I will choose the winner next Wednesday, January 18th.
The JamUp bundle consists of JamUp Pro, a program for the iPhone, iPad or Touch, that emulates guitar amps and FX pedals. You also get a JamPlug, which is the adapter that lets you connect your guitar to that iOS device. I reviewed both products recently HERE.
Running scales, modes, arpeggios and all kinds of other patterns are a fact of life for guitarists. Usually the point of such practice can be to help your brain and fingers connect with where a note is on the fretboard. Or they could be methods for improving speed, accuracy or stamina. The downside of this is that if you play the same patterns all the time, when you try to improvise, these patterns are going to find there way into your music. Not to mention it gets boring playing the same thing all the time, and you’ll stop getting any benefit from the exercise after a while.
To keep your playing fresh and innovative, you should vary how you practice these skills. I found a cool site that will help mix up your practice routine. It’s called GuitarCardio.com where first you choose from a set of options – the root of the scale you want to practice, the scale type(major, minor, pentatonic minor, etc), and the difficulty level. You can even choose the root string if you want to start on a particular string. You then just choose how many exercises you want generated, up to 10 at a time. Here’s the options screen:
The creator of the site says he is currently working on an iOS app. He also is creating several other online music study tools, the first of which is “IntervalQuiz”.
There is a similar app already available that I also use called “Scale Variator” which is published by none other then Berklee College of Music. It’s a similar idea but gets more specific in letting you choose which intervals will be in the generated patterns as well as a few other options you can see in the screengrab below.
The full version is $4.99 and there is a free version that is limited to scales in “A”. Click the appstore link below to see more.
What tools do you use in your practice routine? I’d love to hear about them!
This is the mobile version for iPhone/iPad of the popular desktop program that allows you to read, write and playback tab files. I have this app and think it works great as a sketchpad for song ideas when you don’t have a guitar with you. And it’s great as a tab reader since it will play back the tab for you which is really helpful when figuring out tricky timings. It also shows the notes on a virtual fretboard.
It’s normally $8, but is only $o.99 until December 29th. Click the App Store icon below for more info.
