There are a variety of expensive “boutique” guitar tone capacitors out there, which I haven’t tried and didn’t include in my tone cap comparison project.
I just came across this audio comparison by “Kernel of Wisdom” which examines a bunch of the more expensive tone caps including a vintage bumblebee, modern bumblebee, Jensen Paper-In-Oil, Vitamin Q, and Luxe Grey Tiger.
Have a look and a listen!
When learning a new song, it’s really helpful to be able to play along with the original track, and slow it down while preserving the original pitch.
Without special processing, if you just slow down audio playback, it’ll get lower in pitch (remember slowing down a spinning record and hearing it get low and slow?). And if you speed it up, it’ll raise the pitch (chipmunks!)
I use the tape deck in Native Instruments Guitar Rig, which is great. It lets you slow down the audio, independently change the pitch if you want, set loop points, and speed up/slow down the track.
Being able to control the pitch independently of speed is great for playing songs that are not tuned to standard A440, without having to retune your guitar. Some examples I like to play are Weezer’s Say It Ain’t So (which is tuned down a half step), and Police Every Breath You Take (which is tuned down about 70 cents).
Of course Guitar Rig models an entire rack of gear and effects, along with a nice looper, so it’s a pretty amazing tool for playing and learning.
I also found (but haven’t tried) some simpler standalone slow-downer tools like:
Guitar & Drum Trainer
The Amazing Slow Downer For Windows
Free online Shockwave app Slow Notes (which looks promising but didn’t work for me).
Update: my favorite tool is now the Amazing Slow Downer app in iPhone / iPad.
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.
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! 🙂
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.
Here are the recordings lifted from my most recent Tone Cap Comparison Video, split into individual files. The files are named using generic numbers, rather than labeling them by cap type – so you can listen to these without being influenced by preconceived ideas of what a particular material type should sound like.
Download them all as a single 2Mb zip if you’d like to use a double-blind tool (like WinABX or foobar with ABX).
Or try this. Before checking the legend (linked below), listen to the examples and choose the one you like best. After you’ve decided what you like, only then check the legend which says what cap type is used for each recording.
Having a somewhat obsessive personality, I tend to get very focused on what I’m working on. Hours can go by with me forgetting to stand up and stretch, rest my eyes, have a drink, etc.
A long time ago, I wrote a little break timer program to run a countdown clock in the background. When the time was up, it would blank my screen out, and say “Time to take a break”. I configured it to do a series of 30 second micro breaks followed by a longer 5 minute break (all configurable). It worked great for a while, but then I added a Cancel button for situations in which I wasn’t ready to take a break. Oh how lame I am! Pretty soon, the cancel button was king.
Now here’s a pretty cool windows sidebar gadget called stretch clock. (Turns out to be written by another programmer/musician named Shane, from the Washington band Fanny Alger). It’s a very simple idea. It just counts down a user selectable number of minutes, and when the time is up, it pops up a web page with a short video of a stretch to do. There are a bunch of different videos, less than one minute each, and it randomly selects one each time.
The big difference with this compared to my old program is that the videos are compelling enough that they make me want to stand up and follow along. Yes, the guy in the video is a total geek, but then hey, who am I kidding? So am I! And surprise surprise, these stretches always feel really good.
As a professional programmer by trade, I spend most of my days sitting in front of a computer. Many of my hobbies put me right there in the same chair too.
Every few years, I go through an ergonomic wake-up call – the really depressing, getting-old variety like “oy, my <body-part> is <depressing-pain-symptom> from <computer-activity>”.
Some typical examples:
“oy, my left hand is numb from trackball-clicking”
“oy, my right-shoulder is getting tendonitis from mousing”
”oy, my back is killing me from sitting all day”
When my years of right-hand mousing starting torquing my shoulder, I switched to left-hand trackballing. Now that’s been a few years, and I’m getting lots of bad left-hand pains and numbness. A couple years ago, I went to the sadistic pins-and-needles doctor who poked me and sent electric shocks through the nerves in my arm (fun for about a minute, then downhill after that). The conclusion was that I don’t have carpal tunnel, yet, but it’s obviously some form of repetitive strain injury.
Clearly the human body isn’t designed to sit in a chair all day, typing. I’m only 40 and my body is falling apart. I try to take breaks during the day, but programming requires an obsessive mind – the kind of focus that has you sitting in your chair for long hours not noticing that you’re freezing cold, starving, dry-eyed and tired. I go to the gym a couple evenings a week, which really does help, but it just isn’t enough.
This obviously affects my ability to enjoy guitar, keyboard, woodworking, even holding hands with my kids. It’s a sad moment when you have to tell your four-year old daughter, “Ouch sweetie, please don’t hold my hand so hard- it hurts my fingers”.
I definitely need an ergonomic overhaul. I’ll write up some of my experiments in the next few weeks.
Updated 6/29/2011 with notes about the “Remove from Project and Delete Files” command
As I prepare and edit a video in Sony Vegas Pro, I tend to get a bit disorganized, bringing in source pictures, video and animations from various places on my hard disk. I’m especially bad about saving pictures temporarily on my desktop.
Sometimes, I do a bazillion takes of voiceover audio, and end up with countless unused wave files in the project.
So, in order to eliminate those unused takes, and to consolidate the files into a single location, ready to be backed up, here’s what I do.More