Whether you are practicing rhythm along with a backing track, perfecting your guitar solo, or expanding your improvisation skills over a jam track, you will find it a true joy and it’s SO good for your guitar playing.

Practicing with jam and backing tracks develops and enhances your rhythm, feel and timing for music and your ability to lock into the groove of the drum and bass, which is an imperative skill for any musician.

When you study a lead guitar solo it’s good to play along with the track without actually hearing the original notes of the solo and learn to fill in your solo between the spaces while keeping up with the right tempo, timing and feel of the song.

It’s the perfect way to practice what it’s like to play with a real band and what that requires from your playing. You have to learn and memorize songs, practicing them over and over until you get it right from beginning to end, until you feel comfortable enough to play it in front of an audience.

If you want to get good at soloing & improvisation, jam tracks are the best tools to exercise, drill, explore and train yourself for the challenge of playing over chord progressions. It’s a must-do.

So today, we got some great hiqh quality sounding jam & backing tracks for every kind of musical style and purpose. 

Now you know what to do. Set aside a part of your daily workout to practice with jam & backing tracks and watch your playing improve and unfold.

Enjoy!

BLUES, FUNK, MINOR & MAJOR KEY JAMTRACKS

1 – Tom Bailey Backingtracks

2 – MyDarnJamTracks

3 – JamTracksChannel

4 – GuitarBackingTrackVideos (Artmant Studios)

5 – MegaBackingTracks

SONG BACKING TRACKS

1 – Guitarbackingtrack.com

2 – Karaoke Version (custom backingtracks) 

3 – Best Songs Backingtracks

4 – Professional custom made backing tracks

DRUMLOOPS & BEATS

1 – Jim Dooley Drum beats 

2 – LumBeat – Simple Beat 4/4 straight

JAZZ JAMTRACKS

Quist Jazz jam tracks

Quist Dorian jam tracks

Starter tracks for guitar players – PlayJazzNow

Rhythm Changes in 12 keys – PlayJazzNow

COUNTRY JAMTRACKS

Cool country backing tracks

Country Rock jamtracks

ROCK AND PROGRESSIVE ROCK JAM TRACKS

Elite backing tracks

Hard Rock JamHQtracks

Please share your comments below. I really appreciate it. I read them all.

Have a great one!

Sometimes you just want to really nail a song, and make sure you get it right. You want to save yourself the precious time searching for the right tab without mistakes or missing pieces. In that case, you can choose tablature transcribed by professionals and go to one of the websites in this post.

You can find links to get complete tablature books of your favorite artist or download or request tablature music sheets for one particular song. It’s all here. You might want to bookmark this page for when the time comes you need that great song.

Happy playing :)

Amazon Guitar tabs
Amazon is pretty much the most visited website to look for anything guitar related with an amazing amount of guitar tablature books. Just type in your favorite artist and add “guitar tab”.

Musicnotes
At Musicnotes you can find guitar tablature books as well as single downloadable digital tab sheet music if you’re searching for that one particular song. You can view each first page of the tablature notation to see how it looks.

Ebay
Ebay is loaded with second-hand tablature books. Great for looking something that isn’t available in the stores anymore or if you looking for a bargain.

Sheetmusicplus
Sheetmusicplus has over 1,000,000 Print & Digital Sheet Music Titles, so that’s definitely worth a try to find what you need. They got books as well as single digital tablature sheet music.

Sheetmusicdirect
Sheetmusicdirect has a nice and clear easy to use interface with search categories like “GuitarTab”, “Guitar Tab Play Along”, “Easy Guitar Tab”, “Easy Guitar”, “Solo Guitar”, “Guitar Chords/Lyrics”, “Guitar Lead Sheet”, and more. They got more than 150.000 titles including top music publishers like Hal Leonard and Music Sales.

Mysheetmusictranscriptions
Mysheetmusictranscription are a team of 15 musicians, professional music transcribers, arrangers and music composers who are ready to transcribe your favorite song. And that’s great if you’re after some particular version of a song or something can’t find anywhere else. I haven’t tested this one, but it looks promising, so I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. If you purchased a tablature transcription from these guys let me know what you think. I appreciate it.

Have a great one!

I always try to find effective and easy interface guitar apps that you can really use as a guitar player and musician. If you like these apps you might want to check out some of the earlier posts as well 6 Cool Guitar Player Apps for iPhone and iPad and 10 Awesome Guitar Players Apps for iPhone and iPad

Enjoy!

1 – Riff Meastro
Riff Maestro is a free riff learning app for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Android. You can load up your favorite songs, set loop points, slow down riffs and pick ‘em out note for note until you’re a maestro yourself. If you want to transpose songs to a different key it requires you to upgrade and buy the additional feature. Riff Maestro

2 – Songtree
Songtree is a collaboration app that let’s you sing and play over original or cover songs, create your own musical idea or unfinished song and get other musicians to play along or finish it. It’s for iOS and Android but you can also work with it on your Mac or for Windows. Check out the website here: Songtree

3 – Wiretap riff
Absolutely love this app! Wiretap Riff let’s you capture your musical ideas quick and easy. It’s got a built-in peak meter, and you can tag, trim, name, group, save and share your riffs from the app. A high-quality recorder app for Android and iOS.

4 – Chordbank
Chordbank let’s you learn and look up thousands of guitar chords and scales and accompanying lessons to really get it all under your belt. Android and iOS

5 – Soundcloud
Soundcloud is a popular audio distribution platform where you can upload, record, promote, and share your originally-created sounds. It attracts more than 175 million unique monthly listeners. A free account gets you started where you can upload up to 3 hours of audio and then share them with your listeners. Follow others. Like and comment on music. The more active you are in the community, the more you’ll grow your fanbase.

6 – Coach me
Coach.me is a goal Tracking, habit Building & motivational Coaching app. Although it’s built for any kind of habit, I use it for my guitar goals and it keeps me reminded and triggered of what I need to practice daily / weekly and stay committed. It’s a great tool for busy people. It definitely works for me! It’s available iOS and Android but there’s also a desktop version to make sure you’re fully covered.

Do you know any great guitar apps for both iOS and Android? Please share them in the comments. I appreciate it.

Have a great weekend!

Back when I was 15 I had a cassette recorder with a slow down function, so I could figure out the notes of a guitar solo. The only problem was the slow down function also lowered the pitch when you’d slow down the song.

So when I had to deal with a fast blazing solo I set the pitch exactly an octave lower than the original key so I could transcribe the solo by ear. The downside was that some notes were so low they became undefinable and I couldn’t tell what notes they were playing anymore. :)

The tools we have today are something I could only have dreamed of back then. I’m not complaining, because I learned a lot from those limitations, but I also enjoy the benefits of the technology today. And oh, what makes it transcribing fun and easy!

Working out a song by ear is an important skill that is often overlooked. It takes your guitar playing to a higher level and gives you a deeper understanding and insight in many aspects of guitar playing. So, try to develop the skill of transcribing and use the appropriate tools to improve your skill and take it to the next step.

I created a list with the best tools that make the process of transcribing and learning a song or solo going as smooth as possible. These tools will help both guitar players who can already transcribe and guitar players who can you use some extra help.

Enjoy!

1 – YouTube Speed Selector
For those who (are learning to) transcribe songs by ear and eyes the YouTube speed selector is a pretty convenient tool. It’s easy to miss because it’s somewhat hidden in the “settings”. Click the Settings icon in the lower right corner of the window, then click “speed”. You can choose 0.5 for half-speed or even 0.25 for quarter-speed playback.

This is really great for learning guitar solos that are too fast for the eyes and ears. I just finished transcribing the solo of “Get the funk out” by Extreme. And what better way than learning it from the master himself, so I checked a lesson video from Nuno Bettencourt where he attempts to explain the solo slowly. He is not so good at playing slowly :) For me, the Youtube slowdown setting was a great help to figure out the tapping part successfully.

2 – Amazing Slow Downer
The Amazing Slow Downer is absolutely my favorite go-to app for figuring out guitar parts. You can import any song from Spotify or Apple Music into the app and then slow down or speed up the music, you change the pitch and create a loop from any part of the song. It’s only available for iPhone.

3 – VLC Media Player
If you want to keep things simple VLC Media player is a free software tool for playing any kind of audio format. It has a slow-down tool, a great advanced EQ and even a loop function. It’s for both Windows and Mac.

4 – Anytune
Anytune helps you learn, transcribe or practice songs by slowing down the tempo, adjusting the pitch, repeating loops, setting navigation marks, sharing timed comments and much more. Only for Mac and iOS.

5 – Tablature
The tablature you find on internet can be a great help, but there are still a lot of flat-out-wrong tablature transcriptions out there. If you want better quality and precision then get yourself a tablature book with some nice solos.

If you don’t want the entire book, but just one song, Musicnotes allows you to buy a single copy of your favorite song on high quality tablature. You can view online how it looks. You can learn to transcribe by ear using one of the slow down tools and have the book or musicsheet as your backup support whenever you need it.

6 – Aural Skills
Here are two posts that will help you develop and train your aural skills to transcribe solos and songs by ear. 8 ways to develop your aural skills and 12 Ways How to Transcribe What You Hear.

7 – Guitar Pro and Mysongbook
Guitar Pro is a great piece of software along with their Mysongbook project to learn songs and solos, read tabs and sheet music, create your own tabs (I use it myself to create tabs for Guitarhabits), mix your sounds and share your music. A beautiful combination.

8 – TuneTranscriber
TuneTranscriber is a free online tool where you can upload your mp3 or paste the link of a YouTube video and then slow down the music. Using mp3 you can slow down the tempo anyway you like. YouTube can only slow down 50 percent. You can also add markers, add a loop really easy and save your work. Love it!

9 – Capo
If your using Mac or iOS then Capo and Neptune are very cool tools for learning all your favorite songs and solos. You import the song and it automatically detects the chords in your music. You can switch easily between different instruments like bass guitar, mandoline, ukelele and banjo. Capo is used by pros like Vernon Reid from Living Colour and Hanan Rubinstein (Guitarist for Alicia Keys, Pharrell, Rita Ora, Carole King and Ellie Goulding.) Here’s how it works.

10 – 50CBLI
It is great to learn and copy a guitar solo from tablature and online lessons, but eventually you want to know what you’re playing and how a solo comes into being, so that eventually you will be able to transcribe a solo by ear.

Most Blues, (Classic)Rock, Pop and heavy metal solos are based of the pentatonic/blues scale. The The 50 Cool Blues Licks Improvisation course will help you develop a thorough understanding of how to play the pentatonic/blues scale all over the neck and how to use it for soloing and improvisation, which will make the process of transcribing guitar solos a lot easier.

Do you know a great music transcribe tool? And what song or solo are you going to transcribe today? Please share in the comments. Love to hear from you!

These guitar apps are really cool. They all have an easy interface design that will make you start practicing within a minute.

Here you go:

Riffr
800,000+ Guitar tabs & Chords. Riffr is daily updated with the latest tabs and chords from various guitar websites. Built in Chord Dictionary. Video lessons and audio playback. Just awesome and it’s free!

GuitarTuna
A ridiculously accurate guitar tuner and easy to use. Works for Guitar, Bass, 12-string guitar, mandolin, ukulele, banjo and other string instruments, and contains most of the alternative tunings too! It also includes ear training practice. Yes it’s free.

iReal Pro
iReal Pro simulates a real-sounding band that can accompany you as you practice, and also lets you collect chord charts from your favorite songs for reference. You can import 1000’s of songs from the forums. Especially if you want to learn to play jazz, this is the bomb. It’s rather expensive for an app, but a must for the jazz student.

Spreadsheets
This isn’t necesarily a guitar app, but I use this app to write down my guitar practice goals. I create my guitar goal lists on the computer in google spreadsheet and when I practice I use my Ipad to check what I need to be practicing, add stuff I need to work on later and keep track of my progress. It’s free.

MTSR
While Garageband can do many things, sometimes I just want to record and export a musical idea. Nothing more nothing less. Multi-Track-Song-Recorder is my savior. It’s an easy to use 4 track recording app. Export your songs via Dropbox, Email, SMS and iTunes File Sharing. Great for musicians. It’s free.

Ear Trainer
Every musician should work on Ear Training (or Aural Training) and Interval Ear Training is a very important element of ear training. You will learn to recognise the relationship between two notes (by distance), when they are played together or apart!

Do you know any cool guitar apps? Please share in the comments.

When the urge comes to play, I want to grab my guitar out of the stand and start playing. I rather not waste time looking for stuff like sheet music, a tuner, a metronome, jam tracks and so on, because I might get distracted in the process of trying to find these things, which would be such a shame.

The iPad is the answer to this rather ridiculous inconvenience. Guitar, iPad, Play.

But hey it works and my guitar playing has improved because of it. Everything I need is in there and it works fast. I love it when my jam tracks are just one click away from me and I can start improvising. I usually use jam tracks CD’s that I imported into iTunes. I tune my guitar with Guitar Toolkit and use sheet music that I uploaded to Dropbox, Tab Toolkit or Pocket.

Here’s a list of some pretty awesome apps that makes life easier and better for guitar players.

There are two apps (Bias and Hokusai) that I haven’t tried yet, but having read the reviews of users and professional guitar players they are really worth checking out.

Here we go:

1 – Guitar Toolkit
GuitarToolkit is a collection of essential guitar tools for your iPhone and iPad including an excellent tuner, metronome, chords, scales and arpeggios.

2 – Drum Beats +
DRUM BEATS+ is a simple and fun collection of drum loops for stress-free jamming and songwriting accompaniment. No assembly required! Ranging from 1 to 4 bars in length, these loops are great for casual practice, exploring song ideas or even live performances. Plug into Hi-Fi speakers for the best sound (or just play right from your device!).

3 – Guitar Jam Tracks
Practice jamming, learning guitar scales and soloing to 5 great sounding jam tracks in different keys right from your iPhone/iPad! Add more styles and scales with our in-app store. Styles included: Acoustic blues, humbucker blues, jazz, modern rock and reggae.

4 – Anytune Pro+
Slow down music, choose the perfect pitch, and learn to play by ear. Import your music from Dropbox, Email, Download from the Web, and more. Mark and loop song sections for practicing and sharing. Import Audio from Videos.

5 – Tab Toolkit
All your sheet music, wherever you go. TabToolkit supports Guitar Pro, Power Tab, PDF and text tab formats. With “rich” file formats (Guitar Pro and Power Tab), you can view both standard music notation and tablature notation. If you’ve got tab files on your computer that you’d like to move into TabToolkit, no problem.

6 – Garageband
Play, mix, and record your own songs. Then share them — across the room or across the globe. Build your songs with up to 32 tracks using Touch Instruments, audio recordings, or loops. And edit single notes or entire song sections simply by dragging them where you want.

7 – BIAS Amps
BIAS is an Amp Designer, Modeler and Processor for iPad. It’s warm, accurate and more versatile than any other modeler, processor in hardware or software ever created.
BIAS starts with stunning replications of 36 of the most sought-after vintage and modern amps in rock ‘n’ roll history and then lets you customize them to respond perfectly to your unique touch and feel.

8 – Hokusai
Multitrack audio editor for iPad, iPhone & iPod touch. Record with built-in mic, line in or USB. Transfer audio to and from your iPad via USB or Dropbox. Import tracks from your iPod music library. Import from Wave .wav, Core Audio .caf, .aiff, MPEG .mp3, .m4a and .aac files. Convert between mono & stereo. Split & merge stereo tracks to edit left/right channel only. Mix multiple tracks down to one.

9 – Earbeater
EarBeater is an ear training tool designed for people who wants to become better musicians. You can train your musical ear in more than 200 individual exercises covering intervals, chords and scales.

10 – Pocket
Save and keep all your favorite Blog posts, websites, articles, videos and TABS that you find online in your pocket app.

Do you know some cool guitar apps or apps that are convenient to guitar players please share them in the comments. Thanks!

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I have to admit the iPad has made my life as a guitar player and guitar teacher a lot easier.

Having all the tools I need at hand from metronomes, tuners, jam tracks to music sheets, mp3s, videos, recording applications and writing tools. And the best thing about apps is that they are fast, efficient and effective.

The productivity apps are getting better and better and they are so useful for so many people including musicians. More and more I begin to wonder if there is anything that you can’t do with an ipad? :)

There are tons of great apps for a small price, but sometimes the best things in life are for free.

Enjoy!

1 – PA TUNER LITE
Plusadd Tuner Lite is a chromatic instrument tuner and pitch pipe that allows you to quickly and accurately tune your instrument using the built-in mic in your iPad or iPhone.

2 – METRONOME+
Retina display graphics, realistic tempo scroll wheel, tempo range from 30-300, incredibly accurate metronome engine, subdivisions- quarters, eighths, sixteenths and triplets, accents- program accents to occur on any beat, sounds are among the loudest possible on iOS and four distinctive sound sets.

3 – LIFT
Build habits and stick to them. Practice improvisation regularly, increase your guitar speed everyday for 10 minutes, improve your blues chops, etc. This app keeps you on track.

4 – GOOGLE DRIVE, DROPBOX or SKYDRIVE
For storing and organizing all your files: sheetmusic, docs, mp3s, videos, etc.

5 – EAR TRAINER LITE
Ear Trainer Lite is an educational tool designed for musicians, music students and anyone interested in improving ones musical ear. It has exercises covering intervals, chords, and scales. This is the LITE version with 24 exercises. The full version has over 160 exercises.

6 – RECORDER PLUS HD
New generation audio recorder. easy to record, easy to review, easy to edit and easy to share.

7 – YOUTUBE
For listening to your favorite music and searching for guitar backing tracks.

8 – REVERBNATION or SOUNDCLOUD
Tools for bands and musicians. Selling your music, reach fans, stats, money, promotion, distribution, opportunities, etc.

9 – OTTER
Writing lyrics or creating chord sheets without having to write. Top quality speech recognition.

10 – DOC SCAN APPS
Scan your lyrics, chords and music sheets. Save them on your ipad and email them to your fellow musicians or guitar students.

If you know a cool free guitar or productivity app please share in the comments.

Thanks in advance,
Klaus Crow

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Guitar playing and the stuff that comes with it like backing up your audiofiles, writing down your lyrics and music becomes even more enjoyable if you got the right tools for the job.

Or some nice blues backingtracks to improvise over. It makes practicing a hell of a lot more fun.

Let’s take a look at these guitar productivity tools:

– Blanksheetmusic.net Notation sheets for every instrument and vocals

– www.guitarvoice.com Awesome guitar backingtracks. Search by artist, random or genre.

– Crashplan.com Unlimited Online backup storage for all your precious audio files and everything else for only $3 a month

– Audio.online-convert.com Online audio/video/ebook converter

– Spotify is a really good sounding/looking Online Social Music Streaming Tool next to, Last.fm and Soundcloud

– Audio speed tempo pitch changer (reducing audiospeed while remaining pitch and vice versa)
for Windows: Windows Media Player 12
for Mac: Audiolobe

– Masterwriter.com Songwriter tool used by famous artists and producers including Rob Thomas and David Foster.

– The 150 Essential Chords Ebook I would be a fool not to recommend my own 150 Essential Chord Ebook. A good organized, categorized and easy to read chord book with a nice layout. Free to download.

– Reading sheet music:
A short version:www.musictheory.net
An extended version: www.readsheetmusic.info

– More Tools 21-must-have-online-musician-tools-for-guitar-players

If you know some cool guitar productivity tools, please share it in the comments.

I appreciate it.
Klaus Crow

Today I present to you a list with 21 online musician tools so you don’t have to download or install anything. Just click the links and you’re up and running.

19 out of 21 tools are free to use. Most of them are virtual tools, a few of them are blogs but they can be a great tool as well.

The tools come quite in handy whenever you are practicing, playing, transcribing, improvising, songwriting or promoting.

I’m a big fan of online music tools and resources. It’s great to have access to these tools from any computer where I happen to be. It makes life a lot easier.

One of my personal favorites is tool #8 for improvising over blues backingtracks. They sound really cool.

In case you are going to copy/paste this list on a blog, a spreadsheet or mail it to someone, (which you are free to do) I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on my own blog so that’s why I put Guitarhabits on #21.

Enjoy the ride and good luck with it.

For your convenience:

1 – Audacity
www.audicityteam.org
Audacity is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux and other operating systems.
Developed by a group of volunteers as open source.

2 – Ultimate Guitar

https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/
Great for chord and tab sheets

3 – Virtual band
Jamstudio.com
Jamstudio is the virtual band that is always ready to accompany you.

4 – Drummachine
www.rinki.net/…
Monkey Machine is a free online drum machine for creating drum loops and providing rhythmic accompaniment for musicians.

5 – Guitar Tuner
www.gieson.com/…
Gieson interactive is a nice looking tuner to help you tune a guitar by ear.

6 – Metronome
Metronomeonline.com
Online metronome is ideal for quick and easy use while practicing music, this music tool helps with your rhythm as well as tempo selections.

7 – Famous Backingtracks
Guitarbackingtrack.com
Guitarbackingtracks contains free guitar backing tracks for popular songs as well as jam tracks. The backing tracks can be played in flash format onsite or downloaded in MP3 format.

8 – Blues Backingtracks
www.youtube.com/…
Excellent blues jam tracks on Youtube.

9 – Circle of Fifths
www.randscullard.com/…
Interactive Circle of Fifths tool showing all modes and keys.

10 – Guitar Tab Writer
www.guitartabcreator.com
Great for writing tabs and then copy/paste it in word or google docs.

11 – Online Music Notation software
www.noteflight.com
Noteflight is an online music writing application that lets you create, view, print and hear music notation with professional quality, right in your web browser. Work on a score from any computer on the Internet, share with other users, or embed into your own pages.

12 – Music database
Spofity.com
Free online music database with millions of songs.

13 – Scale Finder
www.all-guitar-chords.com
An extensive application of scales, chords and much more.

14 – Chord Player
Oolimo
Chord Generator that works brilliantly.

15 – Play along backing tracks
www.youtube.com/…
Major and minor chord jam tracks, blues and jazz backing tracks including chord progressions.

16 – Music Marketing
www.reverbnation.com
ReverbNation.com is a web site that focuses on the independent music industry. It provides a central site for musicians, producers, and venues to collaborate and communicate.

17 – Tablature and chord sheets
www.e-chords.com
E-chords is renewed. It now has a proffesional design and layout and contains a premium section with guitar lesson videos, tab editor, tutorials and more.

18 – Online music production
www.themissingtrack.com
The Missing Track works with you to make a polished recording, whether you need help arranging your song, or just lack the instruments to make it happen.

19 – Loop drummachine
www.drumbot.com
An online drum machine for those who can’t find a real drummer to jam with.

20 – #1 Songwriter Blog
www.bloggingmuses.com
The main focus of the site is the creative disciplines of creating songs, with a secondary focus on Web 2.0 music marketing and evolutions in the industry as it pertains to songwriters.

21 – Motivational Lifestyle Design Guitar Blog
guitarfirstchord.com
Guitarhabits is a guitar blog full of articles related to guitar playing, songwriting, recording, performing, practicing, motivation, inspiration and lifestyle design.

If you know a great online musician tool or anything else let me know in the comments.
I appreciate it.

Regards,
Klaus Crow

Whether you want to be a better guitar player, be more efficient or want to promote yourself as a musician, Internet is the place to be and it just keeps getting better.

These days you don’t need to spend a lot of money anymore to promote your band or to create a fan base. What you do need is hard work, dedication and persistence.

But what does “hard work” really mean when it is your passion, right? When you pursue your passion you don’t feel like you are working. You’re just having fun. So have as much fun as you can.

The more you connect and interact with your fans/potential customers on social media (see below), the bigger your fan base will become.

Social media works. Period! If you are willing to spend time and energy you can sell your music online or create a business using social media if you like. It’s all there!

If you want to be more efficient in learning, teaching, playing and communicating with your band members, students or colleague musicians there are a lot of productivity tools for you to benefit from. It can make life a whole lot easier.

Personally I strive to eliminate everything that causes work for work’s sake. Endless returning tasks, things that have to be done over and over again I try to automate or eliminate. This way I waste less time and can do more fun things like playing guitar, improving the quality and creativity of my business and spend more time with my wife and daughter. It’s all about being creative with the tools you’ve got.

Web 2.0 is the perfect platform to become more efficient and do things faster. Be careful though not to lose yourself in just being busy with being efficient unless you are having fun with it.

It’s the same with all the cool sequencers out there. Musicians are likely to lose themselves and their precious time in the endless possibilities of Pro Tools, Cubase, Sonar, Logic, etc. They tend to forget that the goal is creating and finishing the song, not over-editing and figuring out the latest plugins.

Having said that, the possibilities of productivity tools can make your life a whole lot easier if you use them the right way. Here are some examples:

PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS:

– Google Docs
As a musician and guitar teacher Google Docs is a great tool to share your sheet music, song lyrics, repertoire list, etc. with your students or colleague musicians. You can create documents online and download or share them as a PDF, a Word document or other file format. Since January 12th 2010 Google Docs announced to store and share any file you like. So besides sharing sheet music you can also share MP3s and video files.

When you are working on a music project you can upload project files or WAV files of up to 250 MB and send them to your drummer or bass player. You’ll have 1 GB of free storage and you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year. That’s 100 GB for $25 per year. You can all work from the same playground. Just create a Google account for your band or business and you’re ready to rock.

– Gmail, Google Calender and Picasa
When you have Google Docs you automatically have Gmail (Google Mail), Google Calender and Picasa. For the work flow it’s really nice to have everything in one place. Google Calender is great for planning a rehearsal or gig with your band members or creating a to do list which will be mailed to your Gmail automatically. Picasa is a great social media tool. (see below)

– IDrive
IDrive is an online backup system that automatically stores all your files from your hard disk on an online backup server. You never have to worry about a hard drive crash or your daughter spilling coffee over your notebook anymore. Your music is safe now. You get 1 GB for free, 10 GB for free if you send an email to all your friends and 150 GB for $ 4,95 a month. The advantage of IDrive is that you can open all documents and play all files directly from the online server.

– Evernote.com
Evernote is a free tool to save and organize all of your ideas, notes, websites, things you see and like. You can use Evernote on your phone as well. If you snap a photo with your phone of a guitar, some sheet music or a repertoire list, etc. you can send it to Evernote where you can check it out anytime you want. Evernote is still evolving and continues to add features.

– Ultimate-guitar.com

Ultimate Guitar is one of the many places where you can find tabs. It’s a great tool to help you out, although it ain’t perfect. The tabs and chords available on those websites are created by both professionals and amateurs, but probably more amateurs than pros. There are quite a few mistakes in the tabs, but it can surely help you on the way. An other problem is that all these websites copy the tabs and chords from each other, so you end up with a lot of the same mistakes on different websites. And before you know it all these novice guitar players show themselves playing these tabs and chords on Youtube. But what the heck! It’s good for the creativity, the spirit and eventually you get better along the way. Life isn’t perfect as long as you have fun. And you can always find yourself a real guitar teacher when you get stuck or want to improve your playing even more.

PROMOTION / SOCIAL MEDIA:

– Blogging
A blog is where you build your brand as a musician. Here you tell people what is going on with your band, what you are up to at the moment or whatever you wanna get out there. One of the reasons blogs are so popular is that they are frequently updated. You can create a dynamic website with your music, videos and links to all your other social media sites. This is the place where it has to happen.

– Flickr and Picasa
Use Flickr and Picasa to store and share your gig photo’s with fans. You can also use Flickr to find free pictures for your blog. Look for the “Creative Commons” section in the “Explore” menu.

– Last.fm
Put your music on Last.fm for music lovers all across the globe to find and listen to. This is a brilliant way to promote your music. I can really recommend this one. There is music in all categories and everyone is talking about and promoting their favorite artists. It’s an awesome way to really spread your music like wild fire as long as you participate in the conversations, really talk to people and connect.

– Facebook
Facebook is the biggest social network with over 300 million users. Create a profile, tell your story, your interests, add friends, send messages, join networks, search people, connect and share info.

– Twitter
Twitter is a social networking service just like Facebook but here you can only write really short messages for anyone to read. You can have people follow you and you can follow other people. Guitar players like Joe Satriani, John Mayer and Steve Lukather have also found their way on Twitter. Again you can promote yourself, your band or just have a lot of fun with it. Twitter is the most popular social network next to Facebook and Myspace.

– Myspace
Like Facebook, Myspace is huge but more music oriented. Every big artist and band has a profile on Myspace. So obviously this is the place for you to promote your music, network and create a fan base. You can upload your own music and lyrics as well via the Artist signup. You can choose whether you want users to be able to download your MP3s or just stream them from the Myspace music player.

– YouTube
Share your music videos on Youtube. Videotape your gigs and upload them for everyone to see and share. Promote your band or business anyway you can using Youtube videos. You can also embed a Youtube video on your blog. This way you can play a music video on your own blog that you uploaded on Youtube.

– ReverbNation
ReverbNation is used by musicians, labels, managers, venues and fans. ReverbNation is a complete music marketing tool. You can create, distribute, and sell your CDs, T-shirts, caps, etc. from the Reverb store. You can update all your Facebook and Bebo profiles with new info from your ReverbNation account. For a membership fee you can also have your music sold on iTunes and Amazon and there is still more. Check it out yourself.

Be effective and efficient!