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Guitars101 Backing tracks for guitar, and more.
Very friendly forum about all things guitar. Of great interest to me is its backing tracks mp3 section. People post the tracks
they find elsewhere, and a good number of regulars make their own tracks (upon request even!) from midi files, after
tweaking and adjusting as needed, and rendering into audio. The realistic soundfonts often available these days means that
most of these tracks that started life as a midi are actually pretty good (bass and drums mainly). If you're interested in guitar
backing tracks, you must definitely visit this place.
PowerTab Free tablature editor/reader software for guitar and bass.
This is an amazing program that allows you to create your own tabs very easily, and looking great too. Remember ascii? ugh.
It's very nicely integrated with midi, meaning you can actually hear the written tab. Not only that, if you find a good midi
archive, open it from PowerTab, select the instruments and range... and voila! your tab in front of your eyes.
The printed tabs look professional, and although you need the (free) software to open them, you can easily make PDF files
from them.
There's a good archive of tabs at the PowerTab site, mainly (but not only) rock/metal oriented, and they use a feedback
system to rate the quality of the tabs... You can find good accurate tabs there. Remember old ASCII OLGA? ugh...
UKMG uk.music.guitar newsgroup
The nicest, friendliest, most useful guitar newsgroup on the net. But don't just take my word for it, take a look yourself.
The regular meetings (PUs in the local jargon) contribute to create a friendly atmosphere where lots of people know
eachother personally, culminating with the national meeting in Wigan around November, where we all meet for a weekend
of guitars, beer and decibels.
GuitarNuts Guitar wiring schematics, modifications, and more.
This is a great site full of information. It started with a focus on guitar wiring, modification and tricks, but now there's a
section on amplifiers and more. Very useful site, especially for the guitar wiring.
LickLibrary Guitar backing tracks, tabs, tuition videos, exercises...
This is a commercial site, where for a small fee you can download professionally made backing tracks (real band, not midi),
tablature, exercises, tuition videos showinghow to play step by step popular songs...
On their online shop you can buy tab books, CDs, videos and DVDs...
Greg's Midi & Tab Midi backing tracks for guitar, and lots more.
A site containing a lot of good midi backing tracks for guitar. There's also links to tabs to most tracks, although the quality of
these vary. In addition there's lots of links and useful information about MIDI, TAB, software, and all things guitar. Very
useful site!
GuitarPro Tablature editor/reader software with midi multitrack viewer.
This is similar to the free PowerTab, and as far as I have seen it does everything that PowerTab does, and more. PowerTab is
an excellent program, but I don't mind paying for GuitarPro and getting the extra features, plus access to the huge archive at
www.mysongbook.com and www.gprotab.net
I love its multitrack viewer, where you can deal with each track separately: guitars, bass, drums, keyboards... It's very easy
to use and it's a great tool to edit midi files. I use it a lot to create my own backing tracks. Just find a decent midi on the
net, load it onto GP, remove the guitar tracks, edit the others if needed, add a few clicks at the beginning... and export.
You can export as a .wav file, so your backing track is done. If you want better sounds than your general midi ones, you can
export the midi file, and use your favourite software that would allow you to use midi and soundfonts, vst fx and
instruments etc. I use Synthfont for this purpose (shareware). For more info on making backing tracks from midi files, I'd
recommend a visit to Guitars101, where there's a section on that subject, with a simple but very useful tutorial.
FlexiMusic Audio editor (wav/mp3), composition software and sound creation.
I recently came across FlexiMusic and their various pieces of software. They are not free, but quite economical (around $20
in July 2009, as far as I can tell) and they seem to do the job nicely.
I was particularly interested in the ability to edit MP3 files, so I downloaded the trial version of the Wave Editor and started
playing around with the menu (I'm impatient and I like it if I can start working without having to read a manual). You can cut,
copy, paste, apply effects, fades, graphic equalisation, etc... For my purposes, such editing 2-track audio from live
performances (gigs and rehearsals) of my band, I don't need very fancy audio tools, just some normalisation, EQ and little
else. The normalisation options don't seem as thorough as those in SoundForge or similar programs, but it works. What really
made me fall in love was the graphic EQ. You choose the number of bands, simple as that... It starts with 8 bands, and you
can add or remove extra bands. I went up to 42 bands before I got bored! How flexible is that??? It provides a very simple
way for the user to pick a particular frequency centre and make it as wide or as narrow as desired. That is a very nice EQ
solution. Top marks for that one!
I haven't explored yet all the possibilities, it does more than I need, and very intuitively... Nice one, FlexiMusic.
They make other software, such as a Composer (and a Kids version Composer), which seems to be a multitrack
sequencer-like software and a Sound Generator (synth) that looks intersting. I haven't yet explored these, but they look
promising.
Very friendly forum about all things guitar. Of great interest to me is its backing tracks mp3 section. People post the tracks
they find elsewhere, and a good number of regulars make their own tracks (upon request even!) from midi files, after
tweaking and adjusting as needed, and rendering into audio. The realistic soundfonts often available these days means that
most of these tracks that started life as a midi are actually pretty good (bass and drums mainly). If you're interested in guitar
backing tracks, you must definitely visit this place.
PowerTab Free tablature editor/reader software for guitar and bass.
This is an amazing program that allows you to create your own tabs very easily, and looking great too. Remember ascii? ugh.
It's very nicely integrated with midi, meaning you can actually hear the written tab. Not only that, if you find a good midi
archive, open it from PowerTab, select the instruments and range... and voila! your tab in front of your eyes.
The printed tabs look professional, and although you need the (free) software to open them, you can easily make PDF files
from them.
There's a good archive of tabs at the PowerTab site, mainly (but not only) rock/metal oriented, and they use a feedback
system to rate the quality of the tabs... You can find good accurate tabs there. Remember old ASCII OLGA? ugh...
UKMG uk.music.guitar newsgroup
The nicest, friendliest, most useful guitar newsgroup on the net. But don't just take my word for it, take a look yourself.
The regular meetings (PUs in the local jargon) contribute to create a friendly atmosphere where lots of people know
eachother personally, culminating with the national meeting in Wigan around November, where we all meet for a weekend
of guitars, beer and decibels.
GuitarNuts Guitar wiring schematics, modifications, and more.
This is a great site full of information. It started with a focus on guitar wiring, modification and tricks, but now there's a
section on amplifiers and more. Very useful site, especially for the guitar wiring.
LickLibrary Guitar backing tracks, tabs, tuition videos, exercises...
This is a commercial site, where for a small fee you can download professionally made backing tracks (real band, not midi),
tablature, exercises, tuition videos showinghow to play step by step popular songs...
On their online shop you can buy tab books, CDs, videos and DVDs...
Greg's Midi & Tab Midi backing tracks for guitar, and lots more.
A site containing a lot of good midi backing tracks for guitar. There's also links to tabs to most tracks, although the quality of
these vary. In addition there's lots of links and useful information about MIDI, TAB, software, and all things guitar. Very
useful site!
GuitarPro Tablature editor/reader software with midi multitrack viewer.
This is similar to the free PowerTab, and as far as I have seen it does everything that PowerTab does, and more. PowerTab is
an excellent program, but I don't mind paying for GuitarPro and getting the extra features, plus access to the huge archive at
www.mysongbook.com and www.gprotab.net
I love its multitrack viewer, where you can deal with each track separately: guitars, bass, drums, keyboards... It's very easy
to use and it's a great tool to edit midi files. I use it a lot to create my own backing tracks. Just find a decent midi on the
net, load it onto GP, remove the guitar tracks, edit the others if needed, add a few clicks at the beginning... and export.
You can export as a .wav file, so your backing track is done. If you want better sounds than your general midi ones, you can
export the midi file, and use your favourite software that would allow you to use midi and soundfonts, vst fx and
instruments etc. I use Synthfont for this purpose (shareware). For more info on making backing tracks from midi files, I'd
recommend a visit to Guitars101, where there's a section on that subject, with a simple but very useful tutorial.
FlexiMusic Audio editor (wav/mp3), composition software and sound creation.
I recently came across FlexiMusic and their various pieces of software. They are not free, but quite economical (around $20
in July 2009, as far as I can tell) and they seem to do the job nicely.
I was particularly interested in the ability to edit MP3 files, so I downloaded the trial version of the Wave Editor and started
playing around with the menu (I'm impatient and I like it if I can start working without having to read a manual). You can cut,
copy, paste, apply effects, fades, graphic equalisation, etc... For my purposes, such editing 2-track audio from live
performances (gigs and rehearsals) of my band, I don't need very fancy audio tools, just some normalisation, EQ and little
else. The normalisation options don't seem as thorough as those in SoundForge or similar programs, but it works. What really
made me fall in love was the graphic EQ. You choose the number of bands, simple as that... It starts with 8 bands, and you
can add or remove extra bands. I went up to 42 bands before I got bored! How flexible is that??? It provides a very simple
way for the user to pick a particular frequency centre and make it as wide or as narrow as desired. That is a very nice EQ
solution. Top marks for that one!
I haven't explored yet all the possibilities, it does more than I need, and very intuitively... Nice one, FlexiMusic.
They make other software, such as a Composer (and a Kids version Composer), which seems to be a multitrack
sequencer-like software and a Sound Generator (synth) that looks intersting. I haven't yet explored these, but they look
promising.
