I’ve had the idea of working on an application that would help me with my guitar learning journey by centralising some of the tools I think I need and information I want to keep track of.
I am a developer by trade but no longer program for fun, however this was something I really did want to do.
When I got up this morning I wrote the gpTools (Guitar Practice Tools) application (Windows and macOS) with three basic functions that I will find useful:
Timers:
A Session timer and an Exercise timer. The idea being I would start the Session timer when I sit down to practise and leave that running, and then use the Exercise timer to see how long I spent on a particular exercise. I can reset that at the beginning of each exercise. I did buy a kitchen timer but its small and fiddly and makes my desk more cluttered, so I will use this function daily.
Clapboard:
This is another timer, but the idea here is that if you are recording yourself and want to leave the recording going so you don’t have to sort through it later to find the good bits, bad bits, cool riffs etc. you start the Clapboard timer. Every time you do something that you may want to reference later, you click the button and the current timer value is written to a list, latest entries at the top. You can edit the list if you like to document the reason for the entry. Once you have finished recording you can save the export file with the recording if you like and then in future you have a reference of where in the file is the bit you want. Again, it’s basic but it’s going to work for me.
Numbers:
This simply shows two random numbers on the window every three seconds or so. The first number is between 1 and 12 and the second number is between 1 and 5. This useful if jamming to a blues backing track for example, the idea being that the next phrase you play has the amount of notes shown on the screen, and is played in the position shown. It just helps keep your jamming practice from becoming repetitive by playing the same licks and shapes over and over again.
Obviously this is just the start, features I will add in future include:
Stopwatch
Practise Log
Chords Learned List
Practice Schedule
Ultimate Song List
Randomised Practice Sessions
If anyone is interested you can see the quick demo video on Youtube at this address:
This application is designed purely for my own use and as such it’s not pretty, but it works and will provide a basis on which to build something more significant.