JasonShadrick

Fender® Co-Develops Limited Edition Full-Scale Wooden Stratocaster® Replica Videogame Controller

For $299 you could invest in playing some real music.

via Harmony Central

At the Premier Guitar website they have a great review of  some possible choices for your Guitar Hero axe collection.

At Premier Guitar, we’ve made it a point not to cover Guitar Hero and Rock Band—they aren’t real guitar, after all. But after talking to some friends, reading interviews with famous fans, and admitting to ourselves just how much we all actually enjoy playing the games, we decided it was time to look at the games through PG glasses. That’s right, focusing on the gear.

While the guitar decisions for rhythm games are generally made for you with a bundled controller, inevitably you’ll find yourself in the market for another axe. So whether you’re looking to upgrade from the original bundled controller, replace a broken one, or get into the games without buying a bundle, we have a guide to the most popular options out there. We spent time playing both Guitar Hero and Rock Band on Xbox 360 with all four of the major controllers from Guitar Hero II, III and World Tour, and from Rock Band. Then, we got our hands on one of Peavey’s full-scale models. Which one’s for you? Read on to find out…

Read all about it here.

Many times in a musician’s development (for me this happened a lot in college) they are required to learn a standard very quickly. In certain cases this is a requirement of a class and other times it is actually during the gig. Below I have outlined the approach that works best for me to learn new material.

As a guitarist, the difficult part to internalizing a tune has always been the voicings more so than the melody. Considering the seemingly infinite number of variations on extensions and inversions for each chord, it is easy to fall into a rut and rely on several stock voicings.  A good friend of mine, Jody Fisher recommends the following method for working on the changes to a tune.

• Divide the guitar into 7 regions as follows
  • Top 4 strings
  • Middle 4 strings
  • Bottom 4 strings
  • Frets 1 through 4
  • Frets 5 through 8
  • Frets 9 through 12

This allows you to break the fretboard up into more manageable pieces and gain a better understanding of how the mechanics of the guitar work.

For each region, you would find as many voicings of a particular chord as you can taking into consideration both alterations and extensions.

Take the following progression for example:

Gm7 / C7 / Fmaj7/ Bbm7/ Eb7/Abmaj7/ Fm7/Bb7//

If this was the first time I am working with this method, I would take the Gm7 chord and work through as many inversions, extensions and alterations as I could in each region.  Once I felt comfortable with being able to grab a Gm7 voicing anywhere I happen to be on the fretboard, I would repeat the process with the C7 chord.

As you can see, this isn’t something that you can accomplish quickly.  Once I have the first two chords worked out, I would practice going from Gm7 to C7 in each region.  Slowly but surely the process is repeated with each chord of the progression.

By the time you get through the first A section of a tune, the harmony is so internalized that hearing the melody in your head becomes easier.

To work this method over an entire tune could take several months, but as with many things the more you do it, the easier it becomes and the less time it takes for each tune.

Check out Jody’s book The Total Jazz Guitarist to see this method written out with detailed examples.

What are the most effective ways you have found to learn changes?