Tools For Learning – Dheeraj Chand

The working tools of a guy learning jazz are…

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Learning is hard, but it doesn’t need to be as hard as it is, and it doesn’t need to be hard in all the ways that it’s hard. One of the big problems with learning music is figuring out what tools to use. It’s not just a question of what to learn, which is already hard, and how to learn, which is another problem, but what you use to learn what you learn. There are so many choices, so many approaches, so many opinions. My view on this is that you should just pick something and go with it. These days, most of what you find online is good information. Choosing between things is a matter of taste, more than substance. So, here are the tools that I have found helpful.

Also, always practice with a metronome. Even if it’s on your phone, practice with a metronome.

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Guitar

With luck, you’ve already decided on a guitar and setup. I hope it makes you happy. If you haven’t, then go find one. Go visit an independent guitar store and get some advice on what to try out.

Electronics

I use a few pieces of technology to help, all made by Apple. They are

MacBook (laptop)
- Create and edit charts
- Create and edit backing track files
- Write about practice here
iPad (tablet)
- View charts for practice
- Play backing tracks
- Metronome
- Practice scheduling app
iPhone (smart phone)
- Practice scheduling app
- Tuner

Software

This is where things get a little crazy. I have a lot of software that I’ve bought over the years for different reasons, but here’s what I intend to use, and to what end.

Modacity – This is a very cool piece of software that allows to define practice routines by assembling items, giving them durations, etc., and then creating schedules. It keeps track of what you’ve practiced, for how long, etc. and it has a simple metronome built in. Very cool software.
Fender Tune – I bought this because it seemed like a good idea at the time, and while it was and is a good idea, it hasn’t remained as good an idea as I’d thought it to be. This app is on both iPhone and iPad.
1. Pros
  1. Cheap, around five bucks
  2. Lots of built in drum patterns and highly configurable metronome
    1. Traditional metronome sounds
    2. Drummer sounds
2. Cons
  1. It’s a paid app
  2. For some reason, it has trouble detecting A2 as a guitar string. This matters if you use a seven string guitar in Van Eps Tunings.
GarageBand – This is a very cool piece of software. It’s better than what digital audio workstations were in the nineties, when I first started playing, were. You can make backing tracks on here pretty easily. I don’t really use it, but it’s cool to have. You can add lots of instruments and play through something, but it requires a lot of work to make a track.
1. Pros
  1. Free with your Apple device, built in
  2. Lots of sounds
  3. Highly configurable drum patterns and metronomes
  4. Constantly updating with new sounds and packs
  5. Opens and writes lots of formats
2. Cons
  1. Very difficult learning curve
  2. Laborious to create tracks
  3. Doesn’t make lead sheets easily
iReal Pro – iReal Pro was a tip from a friend. You can copyright a melody, but you can’t copywriter a chord sequence. That’s where iReal Pro steps in. The software allows you enter sequences of chords, which it can then play back to you in a few different styles, so that you can play melodies over them.
1. Pros
  1. Very straightforward to use
  2. Huge library of songs available
  3. Easy ability to share charts
  4. Very impressive playback styles, you can really hear the differences and they do motivate you to play differently
  5. Very fast customer support by email
2. Cons
  1. Paid software, around twenty bucks
  2. Charts are ugly and not easily configurable
  3. You can’t add new playback styles easily
  4. Separate licenses for laptop and iPhone/iPad, which is a real bummer. I paid for both.
GuitarPro 8 – I am honestly not sure why I bought this, but I am glad I did. You can make some very cool charts in GP, with multiple lines, and the output is very, very configurable. You can also create, read, update and delete (CRUD) charts using programming languages, which is cool.
1. Pros
  1. Highly configurable and designable output
  2. Easy ability to share outputs
  3. Usable with programming languages
  4. Highly configurable instrument sounds
  5. Multiple instrument lines
  6. Large chord libary
2. Cons
  1. Paid software, around eighty bucks
  2. Sounds are not extensible, you can’t add sounds for instruments you’d want
  3. No easy way to have it play through a lead sheet with a realized harmony and melody
  4. Chord charts don’t support Ted Green style charts
  5. You can’t easily compute things like inverses, retrogrades, etc., if, at all, frankly.
MuseScore – This is software that I really want to like but I haven’t figured out how to use, yet. My friend and advisor, Trevor Hanson, swears by it, though, and it does support Ted Greene style chords.
1. Pros
  1. Highly configurable and designable output
  2. Easy to share outputs
  3. Usable with programming languages
  4. Huge chord library
  5. Supports Ted Green style charts
  6. Plugins market that allows extra functionality, like computing retrogrades and inverses
2. Cons
  1. I haven’t figured it out, yet.
  2. They charge a monthly subscription fee, which is guaranteed to raise my ire. There’s nothing I loathe more than subscriptions.

This is what I have in mind. Let’s see how it works out in practice.

The working tools of a guy learning jazz are…

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