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6 Useful and FREE Tools for Guitar players
Introduction
Learning guitar is not only a long process but it can also be a expensive one, aside from gear there are loads of other prices that seem to creep up to ramp up the price of learning guitar. So we thought we would put together a quick article just going over a few useful and tools for guitar players you can find online for free! This is just to help any beginners out there that are looking for thee kinds of tools but don’t want to fork out for another version.
Like we said, we aren’t going to be showing you a place to get free guitars or anything, rather we will show you the basic tools you will need to learn and advance on guitar (or any instrument in that case). So let us start with the one i used the most when i started! GarageBand!
GarageBand
For anyone who doesn’t know, GarageBand is a few Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) that comes with any Apple Mac (and now IOS). Is a a “advanced” recorder that you can do various things with. You can record guitar, load up amp simulators and drum machines, import and creat your own loops. for the price of nothing, it is fairly powerful and overlooked in by it’s bigger brother Logic (which retails at £200).
When i first got GarageBand i used it for making basic backing tracks with their drums samples and software instruments. It was very simple to work out and easy to use and i found myself mastering the software fairly quickly, it was then i invested in a Audio interface so i could connect my guitar and start recording and creating songs. What i did but didn’t know at the time was i was using GarageBand as a kind of metronome, however, as i was using drum loops i was also developing my sense of groove.
GarageBand is also available for iOS. So if you don’t have an Apple Mac but do have an iPhone or iPad you can still download and use GarageBand.
YouTube
The next one is where most people go two for learning songs. YouTube! We know that there are hundreds of tutorials for almost every song on the website. however, that isn’t the reason that we have included it. The reason we have included it is because of a few useful features i find it has. The first is the ability to slow down videos, without losing pitch. I am sure you can already imagine what this is useful for! Learning new songs, being able to slow a track down is such a important tool!
It also has so many videos of bands playing there songs either live or doing a play through! Why is this important? Because if you pair it with the feature above you can learn any song from the actual artist who wrote it and slow it down and see how they play it exactly! So powerful and great for learning songs and licks.
Google Metronome
After a metronome? No need to go downloading any apps or buying any fancy devices, simply type in Metronome into Google and you will get a free, easy to use metronome. Set the tempo, click Play and away you go!
Worth mentioning that this metronome is fairly simple, if you are after one with more features just look at the Google results or download the Ultimate Guitar app. However if you just need a simple, fast to load metronome then the Google one is just perfect!
Fender Online Tuner
Want to learn to tune by ear? well Fender has a really helpful online tune. Click the string you want to tune, it will play the note and then you can tune to it. Great way to learn to tune your guitar by ear using a reference note.
The tune also has the ability to do different tunings allowing you to tune to open tuning or even drop tunings. It also has different instruments, Acoustic guitar, Electric guitar and also Ukulele and bass guitar. As with the Metronome, it is a very simple application but very useful, fast and best of all free!
Native Instruments
This one is more of a brand. Native Instruments create a selection of software instruments for DAW’s. They are high quality and used by professionals, however, they have a load of free plugins and are always doing deals on others. I always check back to their website to see what they have on offer, or if they are giving any plugins away. It happens more than you would think. I highly recommend signing up to their newsletter.
The main reason we have included them is because of their free plugin “Kontact Player”. Kontact player is a free plugin that is used by not only Native Instruments but also other plugin manufacturers to load in plugins. It is like a plugin for plugins. You can find some amazing free plugins around the web which run inside Kontact Player. Really worth downloading and installing into your DAW.
Audacity
Audacity is a free music player, however it can be so much more than that, It is can be used as a basic audio recorder and editor as well. It is completely free and always being updated and improved so new feature are being added and any bugs are being fixed. It has so many plugins and features to go over in this blog however, the one i do want to mention is the ability to change pitch.
This is a feature i use a lot with my band. if we are learning a song but find we need to transpose it up or down a key. When i am practising at home i can drag the original song into Audacity and change the key using the Pitch Shift tool. It will allow you to select the original key and the new key then make the change. Hit play and then you can play along to it as you would! Super, Super useful for cover and wedding bands.
There is a load of other effects and uses for Audacity, if you want to find out just how powerful it really is you can search on YouTube for “Audacity Tips and Tricks” and find thousands of videos. Such a great bit of software and a must for anyone looking to get into music.
EXTRA: UltimateGuitar.com
I have decided to put ultimateguitar.com into this list just due to the fact it is a cult classic among guitar players! I think I learned my first song using a tab on this website! The collections they have is huge and almost any song you require will be on there! I use it a lot if I need to learn a song quickly I can look up the song, see the chords, work out the key and go from there.
One thing that is worth mentioning, although the website is free you get almost full access to it for free. If you are a gigging musician then I highly recommend subscribing! The features it gives you are amazing! Like Offline tabs, and the Guitar Pro tabs (Which I mainly use for Backing tracks and slowing songs down when learning them). I subscribe through the iPhone app and pay £14.99 a year! For that, it is a steal!
Conclusion
That was our top 6 free tools for guitar players. Writing this we did think of some more so we might do a part 2 to this as people are always on the hunt for free gear to help them out. As we said at the start, playing guitar can be expensive so anything that will help you out that is also free is a great help.
If you have any ideas on what we could include in the next one, or in fact make your own free tools for guitar players then make sure you get in touch! We would love to hear all your suggestions and try out your own free tools for guitar players.
If you want to check out our other articles you can head over to our blog page and view them all! We have so many articles in the works! Reviews, Advice and maybe even a few gig articles coming up. If you want to keep up to date with us then give us a follow over on our Instagram here.
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