Matt's comments

After compiling and writing the material for lessons etc, there are always things that come to mind later, tips and advice on using the material, or just some useful ideas, or suggestions and feedback from users.

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Notation & listening: I recommend to listen to the solos first, and check the notation later. Unless you are a very experienced reader, the notation will not give you the overall feeling of the solo, many subtle details are anyway lost in any notation. So, use the notation to see what you are hearing, don't try to read without listening. Anyway, in jazz and improvisation, listening is the most important thing of all. If you use the fretboard plugin, you may not want to use the notation at all, but that's up to you.

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Changing the tempo: In all VSTi programs you can change the tempo. Usually this will de-synchronize the audio from the fretboard display, so not useful. In Reaper, there is a 'Rate' slider which will slow down everything so that synchronization is maintained. However, it also changes the pitch of the audio. An other option is not to use the audio for very slow practicing, but link an other sound to the midi track. The video below explains it.

Using a guitar sound plugin: Sometimes you may want to study the recorded solos at different tempos than they were recorded in. The audio files have a fixed (recorded) tempo, while the midi tracks can be played at any tempo. But, if you use the midi track alone, without audio, you need something that produces sound from the midi track. A nice free plugin that can be used to generate guitar sound from the midi track is PlugSound Free, a VSTi plugin that you can load like the fretboard plugin. You can get it for free here.

Just install it, just like the fretboard visualizer. To use both the visualizer and the sound module at the same time, you can put two instances of the same midi track on two tracks, connect one to the visualizer, the other to the sound module. Some VST hosts (such as Reaper) may also allow you to connect both the fretboard and Plugsound plugin to the same midi track simultaneously. Select a guitar sound and then play and hear/watch in ANY TEMPO, from dead slow to real speed.

See the demo video below. To see the details its best to view it in full screen more on YouTube.

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Band-in-a-Box

Band-in-a-box (BIAB) is a very popular accompaniment software.

The Guitar Window in Band-in-a-box performs the same function as the fretboard plugin, and uses the same 6-channel midi format, so you can use the midi files in Band-in-a-box. You can load them as a melody tracks or soloist track, as well as the corresponding audio mp3 track, and mute the BIAB auto-accompaniment (because the backing is in the audio already). Then you can open the guitar window to watch the notes on the BIAB fretboard. In this way you don't need the (Windows) plugin, so this can also be done on MacOS if you have BIAB.

Using the Fretboard Videos: if you have a package containing fretboard videos, you can play them on all platforms that play wmv format. If you want to use them on a tablet, just copy the CD content from a computer onto your tablet, via USB or whatever connection you have available. On Mac you can install a plugin (Flip4Mac) to play them as they are, or you can convert them to Quicktime. There are many free video converters available, such as SUPER or FreeMake. With Quicktime you can also a program called Transcribe, to slow the viideos down.