News

If you play bass or have friends that do please tell them about the new bass guitar tuner. I don’t play bass myself but everything is functional and it works.

If you come across any problems or there is some alternative tuning that should be added as default please let me know by posting a comment below. You can also download a free mini bass widget to put on your website, profile page or blog.

After alot of blood, sweat and tears, I’ve finally finished a new guitar tuner.

Here are the improvements I’ve made on the old one:

• 8x higher quality sound files
• mutiple guitar sounds including Clean Electric, Classical Acoustic, Distorted Electice and Steel String Accoustic
• still has custom mode and some default tunings – you can use all the new sounds with these modes
• you can customize the settings including:
  • auto advance – you need 2 hands to tune a guitar so this will automatically advance through the notes without having to click buttons each time
  • note delay – the time between the sounds
  • note repeat – how many times you’d like the note to repeat before it plays the next one or if your not in auto advance mode the sound will stop after this many times
  • default tuning mode – this will load your favorite tuning when you visit howtotuneaguitar.org
  • default sound – this will load your favorite guitar sound when you visiit howtotuneaguitar.org

I hope that this tuner will work for everyone. You can check it out here.

If you have problems with it or feedback please leave me a message below.

If you ever need to tune your guitar and all your have is your cell phone or some other device; check out howtotuneaguitar.org – which should redirect to howtotuneaguitar.mobi. I designed this mobile website sometime ago but totally forgot about it until tonight.

If you end up trying it out, drop me a line and let me know how it goes for you. Because wireless devices are kind of all over the place it will be interesting to know what works and what doesn’t.

I did make a back up simple tuner that should work on any wireless device…

JamLoop.com is a Vertical Search Engine that only searches new or used gear.

You can select whether you want to find new or used gear as well you can also compare different prices for different instruments.

It would be a really good tool even just to research gear before you start going out to stores if you prefer to buy locally and in-person.

SAN FRANCISCO/LOS ANGELES, March 12 (Reuters) – Gibson Guitar Inc has told Activision Inc that its wildly popular “Guitar Hero” video games infringe one of Gibson’s patents, and Activision has asked a U.S. court to find the claim invalid.

Gibson said the games, in which players press buttons on a guitar-shaped controller in time with notes on a TV screen, violates a 1999 patent for technology to simulate a musical performance.

Read the full article at Reuters.com

Was just perusing some websites that I haven’t visited in a while, and since I’m taking a break from my daily demands thought I’d make a little linkfest post.

• A wicked live Subway Performance, I love stuff like this; so awesome to fill a public space with good music or art. A boring daily grind it out ride the subway home day becomes an experience.
• A whole bunch of tabs that are sure to be really great judging by past work from Heartwoodguitar.com – if you feel like learning a song tonight check out that list, there will likely be something you like on it.
• A really unique guitar by Ken Butler.

I was up at the local pub having lunch today and was reading the newspapers that were laying around and came across this good article from Exclaim! by Allison Outhit. You can read the full article online by clicking here.

In the wasteland of the music business, hundreds of truckloads of CDs wind up every year in the landfill. How does this happen? For starters, the practice is to manufacture in bulk, regardless of sales viability, because it’s cheaper. If half of the units manufactured actually ship to retail, a big chunk of those — perhaps half again — may end up coming back to the warehouse anyway. ‘

Add to this pile the promotional copies, many of which don’t even exit the shrink-wrap before getting chucked in the bin by whatever totally uninterested executive or editor they’ve been sent to… Well, that’s a mountain of plastic. A recent report in the U.K. Guardian claims that one million unsold copies of Robbie Williams’ last CD Rudebox will be shipped to China to be crushed (and hopefully used for road-surfacing). Dealing with product waste like this reportedly costs EMI millions of dollars a year.

Read full article…

There is a new kid on the guitar video game block – and this one looks quite promising in terms of actually helping people learn to play guitar.

Guitar Rising was recently unveiled at the Independent Game Conference in Austin, TX. At the conference’s Game Demo Night, players – both guitar newbies and hobbyists alike – strapped on a real electric guitar and fretted and strummed their way though introductory and skilled game levels. Unlike games like Guitar Hero, where gamers use a small fake plastic guitar, this one actually requires the gamer to use a real guitar. Check out the cheesy video ad below.

Gibson actually released their self-tuning guitar a few months ago, though I was too busy to notice, but I did come across this video tonight which shows you how the Robot Guitar works. It kind of looks like a ghost is tuning the guitar. I wonder why there are still tuning machine heads if the guitar is self tuning – is their really any need to have thumb pegs? They probably just left them in so the guitar would still look normal.

If your still “old skool” like myself you can still use a web based tuner. ;)

I hope it’s a good one!