http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/f440/

I want to share with you guys this tool that I have been using for a few weeks. Since i started taking class with Pebber I always used to think "Man, I wish that I had a mini guitar that could fit in my pocket that I could take it everywhere i go".

You can work on your left hand spider exercises, chords, trills, scale sequences and pretty much anything that you wanna work on.

I absolutely love this tool and it goes everywhere I go. There is no better way than starting my day early in the morning sitting in the bathroom with this tool in my hand. I take it to movies, 2 hours of sub-conscious practice. Always use it in the car when sitting on the passenger seat. This tool is involved anytime when I am not around my real guitar and I am free or half-free like watching tv.

Does anyone uses this tool right now? Please share your opinion after you try it and if you have any questions please let me know. If anyone knows about any other guitar practice tool, please share..

Awesome DUDE !
I play ukulele in my car and take my pick with me all the time to practice sarod and moving the pick around to switch from fingerstyle to picking(back and forth).

I was always reluctant to bring my Uke into a movie theatre haha, but now I no longer have that problem!!!!

Look what I found....

http://www.random.org/jazz-scales/

Interesting, no?

:D

Quote: John567 wrote in post #3

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Look what I found....

http://www.random.org/jazz-scales/

Interesting, no?

:D

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Practific Ipad App


If you have an ipad, this app is fan frickin tastic. I use it to keep up with my practice time, and it helps keep me on task--set up categories for each type of practicing & keep up with how much time you're spending doing a given thing

I've got an iPad but I hadn't heard of that one. I'd like something good to help me record progress somehow. Like I played 4/4 on 50 bpm on this and that date. And keep logging it like that. Of course, I could do it on Excel on the PC (Numbers on the iPad was such a hassle), but don't want to run between the two. Old fashioned paper and pen works also.

For the iPad, I've got TabToolkit, GuitarToolkit+, Capo, JamUp, and Jammit. Use of them:

- Capo: never. Not much use for it since it doesn't offer any good way to hear the guitar.

- Jammit: almost never. They're in bed with Line-6, so it's probably better with a Line-6 guitar interface. But it has some songs from the master recordings and have isolated drums, song, guitar 1/2/3, and so forth, so you can turn off and tune up/down instruments. I've seen somebody play a cover where they'd manage to extract the drums from a song in Jammit. Not sure how that's done, but I'd like to find out. Songs come with notesheets and tabs. I'd say it's a cool tool, but the Line-6 integration makes it less useful to me.

- TabToolkit: infrequent use. I could find it useful for playing along with tabbed excersises, but their tab-store is very, very limited. Does allow you to speed up/down.

- GuitarToolkit+: my favorite metronome. The + version includes a basic drumkit and more control where you can program what it does between clicks, so you could set a click (or a snare-drum there instead) and bass-drums in-between. It also flashes lights for each entry. The benefit here is instead of that 1 metronome-click, you could get something to flash and noise to keep you on time between clicks. It's got some libraries for scales, chords, and what not, but I haven't explored that -- the helpfile didn't explain how to read it to me, so I skipped.

- JamUp: use it as "amplifier & effects". Has a metronome and tuner, but I'm not too much in love with the metronome. Tuner is good. Basic recording facilities, too. I've seen some YouTube where folks make very good use of that, but I've not played too much with recording. Lets you load songs from your library to play along with, but I find the sound quality here to be too difficult to configure to make it useful.

To my gripe with all this ... I use JamUp for amplifier and effects. There's always some disturbance or junk when I switch between apps. Say I start JamUp and set it to run in background, switch to Jammit to play to a song ... well, because I don't have Line-6, I can't set the levels to a satisfactory configuration where I hear everything, including my guitar, good. Same goes for TabToolkit. I can't turn down its midi-sounds. Switching to the GuitarToolkit+ metronome with JamUp going will replace the click-sounds with a distorted click. Guess it's the nature of iPad. I've ordered me an external speaker I can connect, and hope for some better sound.

Got the Apogee Jam connector (works for my iPad and Mac) and Griffin guitar-connect. The former uses the speaker on the iPad, and the latter is a special cable that lets you plug in a headset. The latter has the benefit of not using the same input as the charger, so you can charge it while you play without disturbing anybody. I can't speak of the quality between the two. My guitar is garbage with useless pickups. I'll wait with a verdict for when I get my new guitar I'm waiting on.

That does look handy for practice in the madness of modern life. I was wondering how the spacing on the strings is in terms of right hand practice? The videos I saw only show the guy playing with his thumb and looked like he was mostly practicing his left hand/chromatic shapes. Do you feel like it's useful for picking exercises? Do you use it with a strap?

Maybe I should change my handle to "questiondaddy" lol. One more please.

Have you guys seen the shred neck? A bit bigger than this but looks handy.

Quote: macdaddy wrote in post #7

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That does look handy for practice in the madness of modern life. I was wondering how the spacing on the strings is in terms of right hand practice? The videos I saw only show the guy playing with his thumb and looked like he was mostly practicing his left hand/chromatic shapes. Do you feel like it's useful for picking exercises? Do you use it with a strap?

Maybe I should change my handle to "questiondaddy" lol. One more please.

Have you guys seen the shred neck? A bit bigger than this but looks handy.

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Thanks for your experience. I had a feeling that was the case about being left hand only. I know they don't plug in. I was thinking the same way about getting some practice here and there but I'm so new I'm still on picking practice. I agree the shred neck is much bigger and more trouble to carry around. I also saw the pignose travel guitar looks very interesting and not much bigger than the shred neck. My main interest is getting some more practise time in to my daily responsibilities. Same as you outlined but I'm not even to my left hand yet.

Appalled by my weak fingers, I purchased an Iron Powerball. I tried it out today and it's definitely hitting the spot. As an "athletic background", I've religiously done the "dumbbell with weights on one end only"-wiggle to left and right for years in my teens while boxing, and I've got years of wrestling and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which I still do to this day. I do have a very strong grip in those sports, but definitely not with the guitar, and evidently from trying this Powerball and not even getting close to high speeds, there's a lot of room for improvement. I plan on practicing it a lot with gripping using just the fingers. If it doesn't improve the guitarstrength, I'm sure it'll improve the sports strength, so it's a win either way.