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—Awesome Guitar Lessons in Austin, TX.
 

iPad App Review: Planetary

Note: There are critical problems with Plantetary at the time of publishing this blog post. The author has not yet uploaded any fixes to the bugs seen in the app.

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If by chance you and I are friends on Twitter, you may have noticed some of my tweets about NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. I love seeing beautiful pictures from space. Sometimes, it looks like fiction, it's so real. It comes as no surprise that once a friend showed me the iPad app Planetary, I was all over it. Planetary, by Bloom Studio, is the best app I have ever seen for the organization of a music library.

Planetary's concept is simple. Your galaxy is your music collection. Stars in this galaxy are artists you like. Albums of that artist appear as planets, and the songs of that album appear as moons. The concept alone is good, but visually? This app is beautiful. The animation is beautiful too. There is a feature that allows the user to have slow animation of the camera view. It is gorgeous.

The author of the app also documented his creative process. I really got a kick out of reading it. I love how it basically started with an incredibly random idea:

Ring

This photo, taken by the Cassini probe, was the original inspiration for the Planetary app. We decided to model the iPad music library after a model of a solar system. Several solar systems in fact. Each star in our universe will be an artist in your music library. Each of these stars will be orbited by planets representing albums. Each planet will have a moon system with each moon representing a track.

The full text is a fascinating read. The result is that those of us who drop the money to have an iPad are lucky to have an amazing app for visualizing our music collections.

http://planetary.bloom.io/

Download it here: http://itunes.apple.com/app/planetary/id432462305

Posted by Dave Wirth
 

Capo: Guitar Transcription Tool

My good friend Gary hipped me to an application called Capo about a month ago. This app is nothing short of incredible. Capo is the most intuitive guitar transcription tool I have ever seen.

Transcription is the best process that guitarists have to learn how to solo. Basically, a person learns to play a solo by figuring it out by ear. Jazz and rock guitarists before taps were limited because they had to literally drop the needle on the record over and over again in order to figure out melodies. That process was cumbersome. Tapes made transcription easier, and cd's even more so. Digital recording made it very possible for a certain song to be recorded and looped, but it meant one had to learn how to operate the software (not easy).

Then, Capo came and made the entire process dead simple and fun. Basically, any song that you have in your iTunes library can be uploaded into Capo. From there, Capo allows you to slow down the song, loop it, and figure it out by ear. Naturally, you can adjust the speed of playback. When you feel you have the song at one tempo, you can readjust the tempo so that you can practice it faster. Eventually, you'll be able to play the song at full speed.

Like I mentioned above, the technology has been around for a long time. It's very possible to use Pro Tools to do the same exact thing, or you can use Capo. It's more intuitive, and it's far more affordable anyways.

Test Time!

I put Capo to the ultimate first test. How about the introduction to Cliffs of Dover?

Cliffs of Dover by Eric Johnson is possibly one of the most difficult guitar solos in the repertoire of guitar hero-esque songs. It has always bothered me that I couldn't totally figure out what he was playing in the opening cadenza of the song. It's too fast! I was almost ready to buy some sheet music. Unless Eric Johnson himself edited both the tablature and the notes on the staff, I wasn't going to buy it.

Instead, I just imported Cliffs of Dover into Capo, slowed down the beginning cadenza to ¼ speed, and then figured it out note-for-note. Then, I gradually upped the speed until I was playing along. I couldn't believe it. I finally had it. Now all I need to do is just play it about 100,000 more times, and I think I'll have it for good.

All in all, this program is amazing! If you like to play solos, Capo will be a great friend.

Where To Get It

Want to learn more? Here's their site! http://supermegaultragroovy.com/products/Capo/

 

Posted by Dave Wirth