Overview for Guitar SightReader Toolbox

 

The one stop app for guitarists and bass players (4,5 and 6 string) will get you out of any rut you have as a player.  All tools are for both Guitar and bass.

With a combination of 39 state-of-the-art tools gleaned from over 30 years of teaching and study both in private and in Jazz school, you can have the software to take your playing to all sorts of different directions and at all the top levels.

 

Apart from giving you the ability to fly through jazz school exams, learn your favourite songs and learn to read music, there’s a tool to fix any hole in your abilities.  It only costs as much as 2 guitar lessons!

Here’s what you’ll get:

 

• SightReader - This is the ultimate tool to learn to read music.  It’s specifically for guitar and bass players.  You can completely customise it and determine what sort of music it’ll give you.  Learn every possible skill using the Scrolling SightReader!

 

• Sight-reader primer.  Just starting reading music?  This will display a note and you go about finding it on your fretboard.  For more advanced players, you can use this tool for reading chords shown in music notation.

 

• Metronome - better than any other metronome you've ever used - not only is it rock solid, but it can…

  • Split your beat into any subdivision - learn to play in groups of 5’s, triplets or whatever you like

  • Play a bass note through all 12 notes.   Learn a new chord, practice your scales or licks in all places on the neck.  12 different modes will play all 12 notes in a variety of ways.

  • Play a drone chord of your choosing - great for creating licks that will work over that pesky Bm7b5 chord.

  • Record yourself playing over the beat to see how good your timing is.

  • Learn to play what you have just learned in different tempos using the randomizer tempo.  Pressing R will jump to a new tempo with a range that you have set.

 

• QuickChords - Any chord and scale at your fingertips.  You'll see 25 "drop 2" and "drop 3" voicings of any chord you like.  Click on any of the 25 to see where it is on the guitar fretboard as well as seeing an enlarged view with notes or spelling info.  It will also show chord pluralities (other chords that are similar) that you can use for substitutions.  One even more powerful feature is you get given a list of scales that will work over the chosen chord.  Clicking on them will show the scale and how it fits over each voicing.  You can then get details on that scale and ALL the chords that fit the scale as well as any related modes or other scales that fit inside it,  In addition to seeing the chords, chords, and scales or just the scale, you can all see the arpeggios of the chord.  Everything is playable through the computer as well as printable.

 

• Chord Libraries - come across any new ways to play a chord?  Add it to a chord library.  Create chord layouts for students or learn new songs.  every chord is playable and shown on the neck.  Chord libraries can be created to power SightReader and Sight-reader primer’s chord choice.  There are plenty of presets you can check out.  Just like in Quickchords, you can copy chords to the clipboard for use in other applications like Word.

 

• Transcriber - slow down any song while keeping everything at the same pitch.  Work on specific regions using a clickable wave display.  Create bookmarks and record yourself to see if you can nail the part you’re learning.  You can then listen back to your playing at different speeds!  You can make use of a metronome to match it with the recording BPM.  Additionally, you can choose a cool lick from a clip you selected and send it to the Lick Library.  

 

• LickLibrary.  Here you can make collections of audio clips (licks, almost anything) as libraries.  You can then go into each audio clip and play it at any speed as well as record yourself to see if you sound the same.  There’s a metronome which matches the tempo and you can loop the clip.  You can add a graphic to each lick meaning you could transcribe it in Guitar Pro and then import that graphic into the lick window.  Using Transcriber together with Licklibrary, you can go through all the albums of your favourite artist and create a library of all the best licks.

 

• Recorder.  Sometimes you just want to record yourself blazing, comping or playing your new licks and get a recorded representation of how good it sounds.  What about that lick you’re working on… what would it sound like faster?  How about that fast lick you’re shredding…  slow it down to see if you can hear every note clearly.  Great for all sorts of things.  Like all the recording tools, you can export the audio as a file to your computer.  Recorder also appears in the Metronome, Transcriber, LickLibrary and Progression Player.

 

• Ear training.  Music is a hearing art and Guitar SightReader Toolbox has you covered.  4 Relative pitch tools, 3 perfect pitch tools, and 2 Power Ear tools.  You can test yourself in the same way that you’ll receive in a music school with scales and chords etc… 11 different tools to Equip your best tool for music - your ears!

 

• Practice scheduler.  Musicians need organization and here you can set up a practice schedule to keep you on track.  After designing your schedule, you can choose any time frame you have and it will adjust the section times to match.  It will show a pop-up alarm for when it’s time to move to the next section.  You can have a whole bunch of different schedules.  You can also add notes about what you’re practicing and any breakthroughs you come across that help you better in each skill.

 

• The Invertor.  This completely new tool is unique to Guitar SightReader Toolbox.  Here you can create patterns on the neck and hear them back in 42 different sequences.  You can also choose a pattern and move it up through the chosen chord or pattern so it morphs appropriately.   You can loop the playback, play it back in any grouping, see how many notes a second it’s playing and save any shape into “button containers”.  You can also make a pattern in free form and move it up and down through inversions of those selected notes.  There also an option to export it to the clipboard for use in other apps or export it to Neck Builder for a high-quality representation.

 

• Progression creator and player.  Navigating chord progressions is essential to soloing or comping and here you can create progressions, name them, play them back and then access them with the Progression Player.  In the Progression Players, you can select as many of the progressions you want and get them to play back in a random variety of different key centers (which is where it is different than other tools like band in a box).  Practice soloing, comping or anything and record yourself playing along!

 

• Exams.  This is a highly customizable tool that I originally created to learn Polish (I lived Poland for many years).  It can be used to test yourself on anything - including scale notes, key signatures… anything.!  You can create questions and answers, test yourself or students in the testing area and print them out.  

 

• Online Lessons.  Here you’ll get lessons from me on all sorts of playing skills - timing, speed, sweeping and much more.  Occasionally, I’ll include a download in addition to the lesson that you can store onto your computer.

 

• Community Content - Here you can download new presets for the tools.  If you come up with something cool as a preset, send it to me and I'll include it with an optional email address and website.

 

• Setlist manager.  I created this for a cover band I worked in.  We were using playback.  This will allow you to create a set list, show some info about each song and has easy navigation.  You could use it if you play guitar shows with just you and backing tracks!  I use this tool more than anything as it makes learning new songs for the cover band easy.  I can also send the tune (with an audio track attached) directly to the transcriber!

 

• Video Collector.  With the proliferation of great videos on Youtube and Vimeo - many of them which are fantastic sources of instruction.  The Video Collector allows you to collect the links for these videos into libraries for quick recall.  It's not just limited to videos as you can add a link to any website you like!

 

• Neck Builder.  This is the one stop tool for creating quality fretboard diagrams. You can have 1 to 8 strings, 1 to 26 frets, It imports from QuickChords and the Invertor. It's great for Instructional videos, Student hand outs, and personal reference sheets!

 

• Guitar Change Runner.  This displays 4 necks and you can use them to display chords and/or scales on each of the for necks.  The notes you need to change to accurately move from scale to scale and chord to chord are coloured red!

 

 

Guitar SightReader Toolbox works on both Windows and Mac.  

 

Each tool has been created for guitar and bass (4,5 and 6 string).  

 

There is video help for everything (a picture tells a thousand words).  

 

All presets are exportable to the desktop.

 

For the Mac:  To run Guitar SightReader for the first time, install, open your application folder and Ctrl+click on GSRT and select open.  Then it'll open normally after that (thanks Apple for this).  

 

I’m easily contactable if there are any questions or problems.  There are always new features and improvements being added.

Additionally, you get licenses and then you can register any computers for a number of licenses you have.  Best of all, if you reformat your hard drive or update your OS, upon activation, your computer will be recognized - so no need to chase me up for a pesky activation code!  Yours for life!