There’s An App For That!
What can you not do on an iPhone?!
Check out these new inexpensive amp/pedal modellers for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad:
| Peavey AMPKIT LiNK | AmpliTube iRig |
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Not to mention there’s a whole bunch of guitar apps for tuning, chord dictionaries, etc.
Rock This Shirt
Amp up your mojo with this strummable guitar shirt.
You touch the frets and strum with a magnetic pick and it plays through a little clip-on amp stack, which goes to 11 naturally.
Who says we can’t be both geek and guitarist? 🙂
They also have a drum shirt with the speaker/battery-pack embedded in the hem.
See the ridiculous band video here.
Rock Band 3 and Real Instruments
Just wanted to pass this along in case anyone missed the news from E3.
Rock Band has been an entertaining way to introduce my kids to playing music. Cue my daughters singing Eye of the Tiger!! But it’s a bit frustrating for me that the guitar controllers really don’t introduce the gamer to the skills needed to play real guitar.
That’s about to change in Rock Band 3 with a new Fender Squier “hybrid” guitar which can be used as a controller for the game. It looks like a real guitar, plays like a real guitar and possibly actually is a real guitar- tuned strings, fretboard, pickup(s) and all. There are corresponding new “Pro Guitar” tracks in the game which feature a sliding fretboard and all 6 strings. There will also be a more toy-like Fender Mustang Pro guitar controller (pictured at right) which has 17 frets with 6 buttons each, and six little strings (presumably unpitched) to strum – it’s still a toy, but a big step up from the current guitar controllers which have 5 fret buttons and one strum switch.
Engadget has some great photos of both new Fender guitar controllers in action.
The new Rock Band will also feature a two-octave keyboard, and more realistic drums with cymbals.
I’ll be curious to see how this turns out as an actual tool for learning. I love the idea that Harmonix is tricking gamers into learning to play actual instruments.
Meanwhile, I’m giving my kids piano lessons the old-school way – with a book and a piano! 🙂
Reinstalling The Electronics
Finally! Time to ditch the cardboard and reinstall the electronics into my Epiphone Riviera P93.
In this two-part video, I demonstrate the trick to getting it all back in though the f-hole. It ain’t easy, but trust me- you can do it. Just be prepared that it may take a few tries to get right. Expect to get everything half way in and then realize that something’s twisted or upside-down, requiring you to pull it all out and start over. It’s no big deal if you’re expecting it 🙂
And how sweet it is to have it all back together again.
Another interesting tone cap article
Steven at S. K. Guitar Specialties has an interesting article comparing tone caps of different material types (PIO, Ceramic and polyester), with overlaid frequency plots. Check it here.