How to Tune your Guitar

January 25, 2012 — Leave a Comment

As we already mentioned in past articles, we always receive emails from users with interesting questions. Some of you already know how to tune a guitar but some of you don’t! For you, here is a reminder on how you can tune your guitar.

Learning how to tune your guitar is an important skill to learn if you want to become a guitar player. Having a guitar that is in tune will make a massive difference to how good your playing sounds. There are quite a few methods for tuning your guitar, some that you will use more than others. Still, it is good to know how to use all the methods that are available.

The most common way of tuning a guitar, is to itself. To do this you tune all your strings from the bottom (thickest) string up to the top string (thinnest). To do this you press down on the fifth fret and tune the A string (second thickest) so that is sound perfectly in tune with the bottom string with the fifth fret pushed down.

Repeat this process to all the strings except for the B string (second thinnest) which you press down on the forth fret on the G string (third thinnest) to tune.

The electronic tuner is probably the easiest and most effective way of tuning your guitar to correct pitch. With an electronic tuner you can get a very accurate tuning because it actually measures the sound wave frequency of your strings. Take your tuner and pluck each string individually until each string is perfectly in tune. Remember a guitar is tuned from top to bottom EBGDAE.

You can try tuning your guitar to another guitar. For this method take the guitar that is in tune and try and tune each string on you guitar so that you can hear that each string vibrates in tune with the other.

Regardless of whether you set out to learn a few simple chords, or if you just want to be the next biggest thing to grace the music world. When you pick up an instrument you are going to have to practice if you are to have any hope of getting better.

Try all these methods to tune your guitar to see which one works best for you.

Posted by Ben Edwards

Posted in Uncategorized

Harmonic Capo

January 24, 2012 — Leave a Comment

If you’re into alternate tunings and experimenting with new and interesting sounds on your guitar, then you’ll love the Harmonic Capo created by Bob Kilgore. Unlike a regular capo that presses the strings down at the desired fret effectively changing the placement of the nut, the Harmonic Capo gently rests on the strings.

newsletter26 gear bobkilgore hc Harmonic Capo

The effect is what you would get if you lightly placed your finger over the strings at a harmonic node and struck the strings. The most common and strongest harmonic nodes are at the 5th, 7th and 12th frets (and 17th if you can reach it).

Also, unlike conventional capos that allow you to only play in-front of where the capo is placed, the harmonic capo, allows you to play both in-front and behind the capo opening up a whole range of possibilities worth exploring.

The harmonic capo works in tandem with open tunings such as open C (Low to high: CGCGBE) open G tuning (low to high: DGDGBD) or open D tuning or DADGAD. With an open chord being played with no fingers being placed on the fretboard, this enables you to explore different melodic runs while adding in colorful harmonics throughout.

Of course, if you’re new to open tunings, it’s worth taking some time to familiarize yourself with the different shapes to produce chords of one tuning, before moving onto another. It might be helpful at this point to write down all the notes of the fretboard as they have changed with the tuning to get a better picture of what your working with.

newsletter26 gear harmonicapo Harmonic Capo

With all this in mind, use of a Harmonic Capo really benefits finger style playing but that shouldn’t really stop anyone, who is interested in exploring the possibilities the Harmonic Capo offers from having a go. If you’re intrigued to hear some examples, head over to Bob Kilgore’s site and watch a few of his videos. Check out the video below, a number of excerpts from his latest CD offering.

His playing is sure to inspire you to push your playing in a new direction, even if you return having decided that it’s not the path you wanna take.

Enjoy!

ab4e2097d32a3cfb2d407817c82c42dd Harmonic Capo

Posted by Dan Orr.

Posted in acoustic guitars, art, Artists, fingerpicking, gear, Guitar Tools, music | Tagged , , , , ,

Agile Partners Guitar Tool Kit 2.0

January 24, 2012 — Leave a Comment

If you haven’t already searched the slew of music apps available for the iPad, you won’t be surprised to learn that are some great guitar apps worth checking out. One such app is Agile Partners’ Guitar Tool Kit 2.0 featuring a number of essential tools any guitarist will benefit from.

For a very reasonable fee ($9.99), you can load your iPad, iPhone or Ipod Touch up with a tuner, metronome, chord, scale and arpeggio library. The tuner will give you accurate tunings not just for 6 string guitars, but also 7 and 12 as well. It also support 4, 5 and 6-string bass, banjo, mandolin and ukulele, with alternate tunings for each instrument. You can also dial in your own custom tunings.
newsletter25 review agilepartners Agile Partners Guitar Tool Kit 2.0
The metronome can be run in the background while you use other Guitartoolkit tools. It features a tempo tap pad, 25 sound effects and 22 time signatures meaning you’ll be keeping rock steady rhythms from now on.

The massive chord library gives you over 2 million chord diagrams, scales and appegios so you’ll never get stuck finding a chord and if you need to transpose a song, you can add in a capo and the chords will automatically adjust for the new key. For scales you can simply click on a note and a range of possible scales will be displayed. You just need to know how you use them.

There’s also an app upgrade ($4.99) that will give you the Advanced Metronome (for your iPad now and iPhone/Touch soon), giving you the ability to create your own drum beats with 32 instrument tracks and 75 distinct sounds to make your practice sessions all the more fun.

You’ll also be able to create your own interactive chord sheets and print or email them to a band member or friend. Click on any chord in the progression you’ve created and hear how it sounds.

And if that wasn’t enough, you will also have 60 instrument sounds at your fingertips to create custom instrument sounds for both acoustic and electric guitar through Agile Partners’ AmpKit tone engine.

For a quick video overview, check Agile Partners’ release video.

If you want essential guitar tools at your fingertips then Agile Partners’ Guitartoolkit 2.0 is well worth considering.

ab4e2097d32a3cfb2d407817c82c42dd Agile Partners Guitar Tool Kit 2.0

Posted by Dan Orr.

Posted in acoustic guitars, computing, Electric Guitars, gear, Guitar Tools, learning | Tagged , , , , ,

What do the pros use?

January 19, 2012 — Leave a Comment

If you’ve ever wondered how your favorite artist gets that unique sound you can wonder no more. The guys at GuitarGeek, have dedicated their time and energy to compiling a comprehensive list of the amps, effects and guitars that artists use.

Over time their images of the artist’s setups have changed so that now they are both easy to understand and very nice to look at.

newsletter24 gear pros clapton What do the pros use?

Ever wanted to know just what Clapton was using in his days with the Bluesbreakers? The year is 1966 and Clapton is playing his 1950s Les Paul’s Standard through a Marshall Combo. Wanna know what speakers and tubes were in that model? Those details are all but a few clicks away.

While it might be hard to track down this particular model with a modest price tag, the information provided gives you a decent head start on what to look for and what could be possible.

And if nothing else, this information will add to your ever growing understanding of great tone. You can be pretty sure that the information provided on the site are sound, given that most of the information comes from the artist’s or their guitar tech’s mouths.

And with this type of direct contact you’ll find the occasional gem of behind the scenes takes from the artists themselves on their gear or band members and/or techies on the artist.

A great resource for geek-ing out and putting together the dream set up, should all your stars align and you win the lottery. Take a look.

ab4e2097d32a3cfb2d407817c82c42dd What do the pros use?

Posted by Dan Orr.

Posted in amplifiers / pickups, Artists, buying guitars, Electric Guitars, gear, guitar effects / pedals, Guitar Tools, Rock | Tagged , , ,

Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier Head

January 19, 2012 — Leave a Comment

Since the days of designing and building amps in an old converted dog kennel in the hills of Northern California, Randall Smith and his band of music obsessed, tone junkies have been baking up new designs to push high gain, multi-valve, multi-input guitar amps to the next level.

The Triple Rectifier Head is one more example of this ongoing development of great sounding amps. Following on from the success of the patented Dual Rectifier ® series, they introduced a third channel upping the gain to a massive 150 Watts (switchable) and adding more switchable modes to increase the sonic possibilities.

newsletter23 gear triple rectifier Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier Head

Each channel has a separate 5 way EQ to control the Bass, Mid, Treble, Presence and Master settings as well as a separate gain for each channel. There’s also the option to choose what power setting you want: 150 Watt or 50 Watt, so you can play at a lower level while maintaining the high gain crunch.

In addition to these individual channel settings you have and Output section that allows you to alter, up or down all channels in one go. The Main output allows you, once you’ve locked in each channel to your desired sound, to boost or lower the overall output volume of all channels at once. The Solo switch, gives you another volume setting that is applied (in parallel) over all channels for Solos – which is also foot switchable.

Each channel gives you the choice between two types of rectification to apply; Silicon Diode for tighter low end tracking, more head room and a more articulate sound and Vacuum Tube for less head room, a sweeter and less articulate sound.

And for tuning in silence, they now have a dedicated Tuner output so you can tune without everyone listening in.

Not only is this amp packed with great sound options, you also get a choice of front panel from the iconic diamond plate, black taurus or jute to match the look and feel you best matches you.

There are so many options packed into the Triple Rectifier that you’ll want to spend some serious time experimenting with. Of course, the Mesa guys give you heaps of tips and technical know-how within the user manuals, which are available online and make for easy and informative reading.

I’ll admit, 150 watts is a massive amount of noise potential and not one that I’m accustomed to using. But that wouldn’t stop me from taking a test drive. Check out the video below to hear some of the boundless options the Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier is capable of.

ab4e2097d32a3cfb2d407817c82c42dd Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier Head

Posted by Dan Orr

Posted in amplifiers / pickups, buying guitars, Electric Guitars, gear, Rock | Tagged , , ,
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