More than anything else, with guitar, you can learn things intellectually, but until you actually start putting it to practice, your learning will not be complete. The idea behind this app is to simply PLAY. Some players may stay within each box, others may figure out that they can use the patterns to “walk” the fretboard. What I realized is that they give you the patterns, then it’s up to you play around, plain and simple.
GUITAR JAM TRACKS IN A SERIES
In his series of instructional videos, Chuck is all about situational awareness, and that has been more helpful to me than memorizing scales.Ĭircling back to Jam Tracks, it doesn’t give you any of that fluff because it’s not important.
For instance, Chuck D’Aloia of “Blues with Brains” fame completely changed my approach to playing. The problem you see with lots of instructional stuff is all the extra fluff like, “In this situation, play this, unless you’re faced with this, then you should play this…” That’s fine for more advanced instruction. I was originally looking for more with this app, but then realized that it’s absolutely perfect for what it’s trying to do.
GUITAR JAM TRACKS IN A HOW TO
I’m not very academic with how I jam, I typically just go for it, and I found that the app actually helped me a lot.įor beginners, this can be an invaluable tool for learning how to improvise. I picked a key, started following a pattern, then when I felt comfortable, started playing outside the patterns and exploring different possibilities. Such was the case when I started playing through the jam tracks yesterday before work (and just prior to writing this article). Then I’ll use that to break into other scales not that I actually think, “Okay, I’ll now go from this major pentatonic into a Mixolydian.” I’ll admit that I use the pentatonic as a crutch, but it’s a good crutch because it gets me comfortable, and helps me get my mind off of thinking about what I’m playing and really trying to feel the music. For me, especially when I’m playing live, if I’m not quite “feeling it” when it comes time to do a lead break, I will almost invariably revert to a 1st position pentatonic in the key that I’m playing. Also, the more experienced and adventurous can use this as a way to explore variations and joining and linking other types of scales. More experienced players may poo-poo this app, but I actually found it to be a very cool way to review the different positions. Pick a key you want to play in and the five pentatonic scale patterns and their respective positions on the fretboard appear on the screen. You get five jam track styles: Acoustic Blues, Humbucker Blues, Jazz, Reggae and Rock in both major and minor styles, so 10 tracks in all. I was not disappointed in the least.Īt first blush, I found myself saying to myself, “Is this all there is? Just the pentatonic scale in the major keys?” But then I realized that that’s the power of this application. I’m usually pretty leery of being contacted out of the blue, but in this case, I figured it was just an app, and I was willing to check it out. So along comes Ninebuzz wanting to promote their new app, Guitar Jam Tracks.
With its integrated web browser, you can search songs on the internet, and you can import them into the app!!! That’s the feature that sold me on the app! It’s so convenient! And inputting music? No problem. But then recently, I discovered LINKSoft SongBook, a wonderful app that has allowed me to put my binder away, and use my iPad to display charts.
Such was the case when I was looking for an app that would help me replace my song binder which over the years, had grown to about three inches thick. That’s to be expected, but it takes a lot of time wading through user reviews to make a decision if you’re looking for a particular type of application and there are several that do the same thing. As a result, there are lots of crappy apps in the app store. Though all apps loaded to the app store are vetted by Apple, they’re only vetted for general functionality, and not on the quality of the user experience or making sure the app doesn’t do anything illegal. The bad thing about the iPad or the iPhone is that there are lots of apps. The great thing about the iPad or iPhone is that there are lots of apps.
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