User Profile for rayk86ss

FretPet X 1.1d7 (Mac OS X)

A lot of thought and effort.  

Someone obviously put a great deal of effort into making this product, but I'm not sure that it addresses the needs of many guitar players. Opening the application causes at least five small windows to appear. These windows show notes on a guitar neck, keyboard, and sequencer at the same time. The images are too small to look at while holding a guitar. I had to put the guitar down and peer intently at each image over the top of my glasses. A magnifying glass is a recommended accessory. The program comes with several demo music like things with and extension of .fret. Opening one of them causes the computer to begin playing and the notes to flash on the guitar neck, etc. The demo music is rather mechanical sounding and uninteresting. As the chords change the display also shows mode changes from Ionic to Dorian to Myxolidian, etc. If I wanted to learn to play guitar so that I sounded like a machine this program could teach me in minutes. I am sure that I am being unfair in my criticism. I think that this application could be a tremendous resource for someone that could learn how to use it. For an old fashioned guy who is uninterested in the modes of the major scale Fretpet is perhaps overkill. For example: Suppose I have a midi file of a Lester Young or Charlie Parker sax solo. I can already play the song in garage band and learn it by ear, but suppose I want to work out the most efficient fingering with a guitar neck display. Fretpet may allow such work, but I could not figure out how. All in all it may be a lot quicker and easier to learn to read sheet music instead. [alert admin]

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Saturday, November 17 2007 @ 05:15 PM PST

FretPet X 1.1d7 (Mac OS X)

A lot of thought and effort.  

Someone obviously put a great deal of effort into making this product, but I'm not sure that it addresses the needs of many guitar players. Opening the application causes at least five small windows to appear. These windows show notes on a guitar neck, keyboard, and sequencer at the same time. The images are too small to look at while holding a guitar. I had to put the guitar down and peer intently at each image over the top of my glasses. A magnifying glass is a recommended accessory. The program comes with several demo music like things with and extension of .fret. Opening one of them causes the computer to begin playing and the notes to flash on the guitar neck, etc. The demo music is rather mechanical sounding and uninteresting. As the chords change the display also shows mode changes from Ionic to Dorian to Myxolidian, etc. If I wanted to learn to play guitar so that I sounded like a machine this program could teach me in minutes. I am sure that I am being unfair in my criticism. I think that this application could be a tremendous resource for someone that could learn how to use it. For an old fashioned guy who is uninterested in the modes of the major scale Fretpet is perhaps overkill. For example: Suppose I have a midi file of a Lester Young or Charlie Parker sax solo. I can already play the song in garage band and learn it by ear, but suppose I want to work out the most efficient fingering with a guitar neck display. Fretpet may allow such work, but I could not figure out how. All in all it may be a lot quicker and easier to learn to read sheet music instead. [alert admin]

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Saturday, November 17 2007 @ 05:15 PM PST

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