iShred Pocket Guitar

iShred from Frontier Design is yet another guitar simulator for the iPhone, this time with an eye towards electrics, complete with stomp boxes and pedal effects. Unlike a lot of the other guitar apps out there, though, iShred looks fairly practical to use as a real instrument, allowing you to assign up to 10 chords to buttons at the top of the screen, leaving your other hand free to pick or strum. It’s the only practical way to do it—as cute as it may be to try to play chords on a virtual fret board, it’s nearly impossible to do so with any accuracy on the iPhone’s wide touch screen
PocketGuitar turns your iPhone into a virtual guitar. Choose from six instruments — Acoustic-Electric Guitar, Electric Guitar, Classical Guitar, Muted Guitar, Electric Bass, and Ukulele — then press and strum the strings to play. Even apply different effects such as Distortion, Chorus, and Delay. Not only can you play your own songs, but you can even play along with any stored music you have on your iPhone, too

Tone woods

When it comes to the guitar it’s all about tone so today we’re going to have quick look at how different tonewoods affect the overall sound of a guitar:

Wood for the top

Spruce is the most common wood in guitar tops. For a good top, you will need wood with a tight grain. This means that it must be wood that have been growing slowly, as it does in fairly cold areas..

Adirondac (red) spruce (Picea Rubens). Characteristics similar to high elevation European alpine spruce. Red spruce was abundant in the 1930s and used on Martin guitars of that era. Its extraordinary tone, prized for its projection and tonal clarity, has created a resurgence of demand for “Adirondack” spruce. It has one of the best stiffness to weight ratios of all spruces and is very hard. It is seldom used in Classicals.

Sitka spruce (Picea Sitchensis) (Canadian and Northwest Alaska) is probably the most common wood used for steel-string tops. Extremely vibrant , bright and loud, providing an ideal “diaphragm” for transmission of sound on any size and style of stringed instrument. Primary top wood for Martin guitars. Chosen for its straight, uniform grain, longevity and tensile strength. It is not very much used for classical guitars. But there are some excellent classical guitars with Sitka spruce tops.

European spruce (Picea Abies)typically from Germany or Italy. There are several names for this wood such as Alpine Spruce; German Spruce, Silver Spruce or Italian Spruce. What ever it is called, it is perhaps the best all around wood for classicals. Often used on premium priced acoustics from custom luthiers. At a recent luthier’s convention, four top classical makers in a panel agreed that they have the best results with European Spruce! The characteristic of this wood is to contribute a noble tone with shimmering trebles and good strong basses……..but you have to pay your dues. This wood takes time to play in and it can slowly mature over a period of years until it will match anything that Cedar or Englemann can do and excel them in overall quality.

Engelman spruce (Picea EngelmannII ) Prized for its similarity in color to European (German) white spruce as well as its extreme lightness in weight which seems to produce a slightly louder, more projective or “open” sound than Sitka spruce. Very light in colour. Expect to pay more for this type of wood. It offers a middle ground between Euro Spruce and Cedar. It plays in very quickly and gives a spruce like treble. It is a softer wood and will yield good basses right away also. It is the most popular spruce used by American Classical guitar makers. Englemann can come with “BearClaw” figure which gives some visual interest and there is a debate about it’s acoustic effect. I tend to believe that it lends some stiffness and therefore I work it a little thinner.

Western Red Cedar has rich mid to dark brown colour with an extremely open, played-in sound right off the bat and sounds good almost immediately. Has long been used for classical guitars due to its warmth and openness. In steel strings it is coming into its own largely due to the efforts of Seagull Guitars (Canada) and Lowden Guitars (Ireland). If you go to a show where (classical guitar) luthiers are displaying their instruments, you’ll probably notice that most of the instruments are Cedar. That is because Cedar can make the new instrument sound it’s best right away. The other good thing about Cedar is the aesthetic of the dark appearance which matches up well to many classical guitarists preferences. Cedar often sounds louder to the guitarist while Cedar’s basses are typically huge and impressive.


Koa (Hawaii) (Acacia Koa)
: Beautiful grained wood that produces a very bright sound with less volume than Spruce or Cedar.

Mahogany (South America) (Switenia Macrophylla ) has historically been used on less expensive guitars (and ukuleles too!). A mahogany-topped guitar is somewhat mellower in tone and has an
emphasized midrange.


Back and Sides

The most preferred wood in high-end guitars is Rosewood.

Brazilian Rosewood (Dalbergia Negra) has a very beautiful, often stunniung visual appearance. Highly resonant, with full, deep basses and brilliant trebles. Brazilian can yield a dark bell like sound that is both deep and brilliant. No other wood can quite match it. It is generally considered the best tonewood by most luthiers as long as the quality is up to standard. This species of rosewood is no longer harvested so when the available supply is gone, it’s gone! Fortunately, many builders and manufacturers still have some on hand for use in guitars. Unfortunately, due to its “nearly extinct” status it is formidably expensive (Martin rosewood models before mid-1969 were Brazilian rosewood, thus their exhorbitant price tag on the used market). One luthier says he charge an extra $ 1.500 for a classical guitar with brazilian rosewood, compared to the price of the same model with Indian rosewood.

East Indian Rosewood (Dalbergia Latifolia) is a very richly grained dark brown wood. Very resonant, with a deep warm bass. Sources of supply have been well managed, reliable and of consistently high quality. A tad heavier than mahogany. There is a reasonable consensus that Indian will give a warmer bassier sound relative to Brazilian.

Cocobolo Rosewood (Dalbergia Retusa) stands fairly close to Brazilian in tone and has a very beautiful wood with a lot of variation in figure. It is somewhat warmer that Brazilian but it can still produce brilliant guitars. It is a heavier, denser wood than Brazilian with all of it’s faults in terms of workability.

Mahogany: Much lighter in weight than rosewood, Koa or Maple. A nice loud sound with an emphasis on clear, bright trebles.

Figured Mahogany: Beautiful and rare (often quilted) variety of genuine mahogany occurs in a very small percentage of mahogany trees. Though difficult to bend, figured mahogany shares the same tonal properties of the unfigured mahogany..

Maple is available in a variety of figure and it is an excellent tonewood. It sounds very neutral and allows the top wood to bring out it’s own sound. It is very capable of brilliance and less capable of warmth until it plays in. Less common than Mahogany or Rosewood, it is used primarily on archtop (Jazz) guitars. It is extremely hard and reflective giving it a loud, powerful sound. But the classic Gibson SJ-200 has maple body.
Quilted Maple (Acer Macrophyllum). Quilted maple is of the Pacific northeastern “bigleaf” variety and is less dense than the European hard maple varieties. The tone is slightly darker and warmer.
Flamed Maple (Acer Pseudoplantanus). Also called Fiddleback or Tiger Maple. Traditional tonewood for violins. Highly dense and reflective, wood yielding a loud, projective, and sustained tone. The classic Gibson models SJ-200 and Dove both have bodies made from flamed maple.
Birdseye Maple (Acer Saccarum). Typically forested from hard maple stands in the midwest and northeast USA. Relatively rare figuring displays tonal properties similar to flamed maple.

Walnut: Walnut is becoming more common due to its availablilty and great sound. Similar in density and grain structure to Hawaiian koa. It lies somewhere between mahogany and rosewood in terms of tone, weight, density, resinousness, etc. George Lowden has proclaimed it to be a superior tonewood for acoustic guitars.

Koa. Again, very beautiful looking stuff which is less bassy than Rosewood and less trebly than Mahogany. A well balanced compact guitar with stunning good looks.

Cherry. Density and reflectivity approach that of maple. Cherry produces a rich, projective midrange and balance without favoring the bass or treble frequencies. Vibrant, beautiful grain.

ZEN guitar Practice.

After the nuclear war there will only be cockroaches and Keith Richards!! So let`s get practicing…with some general tips that you oughta bear in mind when you want to get all Zen on your fretboard.

1. Cultivate a desire to try and achieve excellence. When your lazy friends are down at the bar setting the world to rights you could stay at home beginning a journey to set either your own world on fire or even set the real world on fire.

2. Set yourself goals – both sensible & unattainable

Set yourself some goals and schedule your practice and STICK to IT. Perhaps consider two goals:

A.An aspirational one such as becoming as good as Jeff Beck (insert your favourite guitar maestro here) but also

B. A realistic, realtime short term goal: for example “In six months I will be able to play Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry”. Remember though it’s the journey not the destination that counts, a guitar is for life not just for Christmas if you want to go anywhere with it.

Don`t use your aspirational goal to beat yourself about though. Expecting to be able to play like Jeff Beck is akin to expecting to replicate the Cistine Chapel Ceiling on the interior of a ping pong ball – it’s a long hard difficult road walked only by those with a unique, god-given gift.

3. Find an environment that really works for you it may be outside beneath your favourite weeping willow or it may be in a quiet corner of your barn – make it as comfortable and as appealing as possible with few, or no distractions or interruptions.
If you can and you are serious about progression try to practice alone in a silent area. Also get the right chair, I`ll sometimes find myself thirty minutes into a jam session only to realise I`m curled up like a pretzel…no good man!

4. Make it easy – as the playing will initially be hard enough make it easy by using the tools that help. Buy the best guitar you can, buy a decent tuner and invest in learning materials that suit where you want to take your playing. Read this blog for more advice on the learning tools available. There is a veritable cornucopia of new digital practice tools such as the Ovation iDea guitar, the Fretlight guitars, Loopstation pedal or Fender G-Dec amplifier.

5. Develop Routines and excercises

A. start off with easy rewarding warm up work before moving onto your structured learning path (or course) – this may be a couple of songs you really enjoy, so write them down, and maybe singalong.

6. Join a band – the fastest way to leanr is from other more competent players. Use your ears and your eyes, ask questions.

7. It`s never too late to start and whatever happens don’t give up. If David Geffen isn`t ringing you up don`t worry. The journey is usually far more interesting than the destination.

8. Make mistakes and try stuff well outside your usual playing boundaries. Experiment as much as possible and try unusual positions. Try sliding chords around or even moving them across the strings.

9. If your fingers, hands and wrists are hurting then stop awhile.

10. Enjoy using effects and guitar toys but don’t fall into the trap of letting them do all the playing for you – one day you`ll want to be at the stage where you compliment the effects and not vice versa.

8. Reward yourself afterwards with something you enjoy like “icecream”.

12. Try and listen to the right records for a start but don’t limit yourself to the world of guitar. Choose your poison for example saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Roland Kirk and Miles Davis play some fantastic lead lines.

11. Most importantly – make sure it’s fun.

12. Have alook at “Zen Guitar” by Philip Toshio Sudo – it’s about motivation and fulfillment, not technique.

Sustain

Sustainability, in a broad sense, is the capacity to endure. It can be defined as the ability of an ecosystem to maintain ecological processes, functions, biodiversity and productivity into the future. In ecology, the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. Sustainable maintenance of the natural world and the responsible use of natural resources is a defining issue of our time.

In musical terms sustain is the duration of a sound before it becomes inaudible. Guitars have a lot of sustain, which is one reason for their rich sound and tone. Rosewood, maple, mahogany, ebony and spruce, are some of the more popular tonewoods because they are workable as well as durable and beautiful. Unfortunately it has become highly important for the guitar manufacturing industry as a whole to consider preserving the trees from which guitars are made so that they do not become irrevocably lost.

Bob Taylor, cofounder and president of Taylor Guitars, says it’s a simple function of “More people, more goods and a higher rate of harvest than regrowth.” And, he says, “We need good, quality wood.”

Gibson, Fender, Martin, Taylor and Yamaha have put their best foot forward though and joined forces with Greenpeace to create the MUSIC WOOD COALITION:

The Greenpeace Music Wood Campaign is partnering with the music industry to protect threatened forest habitats and safeguard the future of the trees critical to making musical instruments.