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Guitar Pro 5 – Tablature Composing and Playing Software Review

Matt — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 16:54:45 +0000

Tabs are really great for learning how to play guitar. They show you exactly how to play a song note for note and you don’t have to know very much about playing a guitar to understand them. However, a major problem with tabs is they do not represent tempo or timing accurately. This can be a real problem when you are trying to figure out the rhythm of a riff. Unlike sheet music, a tab will tell you everything about what to do with your fretting hand, but very little about how to strum.

I found this program called Guitar Pro a few years ago. Basically what it does is it takes a tab file and it plays it back to you in the form of a MIDI. If you aren’t familiar with the sound of a MIDI, it’s similar to the sound of a polyphonic cell phone ring. Now although you wouldn’t want to jam with a cell phone, it does the trick for helping you learn a song because you can see the tab being played as you hear the notes. Also, the program gives you the ability to slow down the tempo so you can hear and see it played slowly. This feature alone is what makes it an amazing tool. Guitar Pro isn’t a simple program either, it interprets all different forms of guitar technique including slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs bends, muting, harmonics, tapping, tremolo and much more.

The program is also a fully featured tab editor. It allows you to easily enter notes using a keyboard, mouse clicks, or a midi instrument. The program displays both tablature and standard notation and an array of different instruments and tunings. You can create a tab that plays back as an acoustic song tuned half step down, or as an electric in standard tuning. You have complete control over the sound of the instrument.

There really are way too many features to go over in a post like this, it would require 10 posts to really cover the feature list. However, I have to mention the ones that apply to developing guitarists. There is a fully functional digital tuner, a scales tool with dozens of exotic and mainstream scales in every key, and a chord database with pretty much everything you would need.

Here is a short screencast video that I made that shows some of the basic features of Guitar Pro 5. In the video I play a tab of the live version of Stairway to Heaven. I show you how you can slow down and speed up the tempo, mute individual tracks, and change the tuning and type of strings. These are the best features for the learning guitarist.

As you can hear in the above video the sound quality is very good considering it is synthesized. That is due to the Realistic Sound Engine (RSE) that is new in Guitar Pro 5.

Here is a video of Guitar Pro 4 from the Guitar Pro website that shows how to compose a tab. Guitar Pro is in version 5 now, but this video still applies.

Here is a summary of the long list of Guitar Pro 5 features:

Mac OS X and Windows compatibility
Realistic Sound Engine (RSE) for better sounding instruments
Create, Edit, and Play tablature
Select 25%, 50%, 75%, 125%, or set your own tempo
Supports all guitar playing techniques (hamer-ons, bends, and so forth)
Mute individual instruments or mute all but one track with one click
Select from hundreds of instruments and tunings
Includes learning tools like chord and scale charts
Digital tuner included
An active online community with thousands of tabs to download
The ability to import text tabs, midi files, MusicXML, PowerTab, and more
Amazing print features that print professional looking music sheets
Export to PDF
So many more features it’s mind boggling.

I can’t stress how powerful this tool is. I can accredit so much of the skill that I have learned over the past few years to this program. I am just learning sweep picking now and I would have been lost without it. Once you get yourself a copy of Guitar Pro check out GProTab.net and MySongBook.com. They both have an awesome collection of song and lesson tabs as well as an active forum community.

Zakk Wylde Guitar Lessons Instructional Videos

Matt — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 16:03:33 +0000

Zakk Wylde has been one of my favourite guitarists since the first time I heard him back in about ‘97. His style of pure speed shredding mesmerized me. For those of you who are new to Zakk, he started as Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist in 1988, he had a side band Pride and Glory in the early 90’s, and then formed Black Label Society after that. His style is unique and is nobody’s but his own. Obviously he is famous for a few things like his use of pinch harmonics and “chickin-pickin”. But he still preaches the basics: Start off slow and build up speed.

Zakk Wylde – Pentatonic Hardcore

The following video is probably Zakk Wylde’s most famous. I believe it was originally distributed by the magazine Young Guitar. The instructional video is an hour long and has Zakk going through many different basic and advanced skills including Pentatonic scales, chickin-pickin licks, vibrato, pinch harmonics, alternate picking and much more. If you follow this video and practise it every day for about 3 years, maybe you will be able to shred like him.

Zakk Wylde – Machine Gun Man Video (Headbangers Ball)

Now this next video I think is my favourite ever. It is Zakk playing Machine Gun Man (Pride and Glory) on an acoustic at Headbangers Ball. Not only does he show of his insane acoustic shredding skills, but he blows me away with his amazing singing ability. Some people can sing, but you can always tell a good singer when they can maintain their tone when singing at full volume. This video gives me goose bumps pretty much every time I watch it.

Zakk Wylde – Pentatonic Speedballer

This last video is title “Zakk Wylde – Pentatonic Speedballer”. Essentially it is just him shredding and you watching. If you happen to have the book that goes along with this though you would get the tabbed music so you can follow along. I find it entertaining to watch, but from a learning perspective it doest really have much to offer on its own, unless you are already that good. I like it because he plays a lot of bluesy riffs in there and tosses that in with his shredding.

These three videos should give you an idea of Zakk Wylde’s playing style. I suggest you just do some searches on the video sites like Google Video and YouTube to see what else you can find. He has quite the cult following and I’m sure there are a lot more out there.

Happy shredding.

Learn Chords from your iPod with iRocker

Matt — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 17:17:13 +0000

iRocker is a little program for your iPod that has a whole bunch of essential guitarist tools. The software package comes complete with a guitar tuner, chord dictionary, scales, metronome and riffs practice program. The chord directory has over 200 essential chords with correct fingering illustrations. It even lets you hear the chord. The tuner has settings for standard, drop D, half-step down, among others. Another cool feature is the riffs. It plays five different chord progressions that you can jam along with to help improve your soloing technique. Best of all, it runs for a cool $30.

MacNN reviewed the iRocker and said “The guitar tabs are easy to follow, but it made James wish that he could import his own tabs to practice on the go. Beginning guitarists will find it useful – especially the different tuning charts and the ability to tune by listening to the note on your iPod. The chords and tunings are displayed as well as played, so you have no one to blame if your guitar is flat! The sounds are crystal clear and the Riffs section is good for practicing with accompaniment without embarrassing yourself publicly. The metronome also offers ten different rhythms.”

You can purchase the iRocker at the Talking Panda website.