For learning new songs and practice between band rehearsals I use my Tascam MP-GT1 MP3 Guitar Trainer. This walkman-sized unit is built to last having an aluminum back and sides and contains a 1Gb memory for storing up to around 240 songs in MP3 format. Its easy to load it up with all the songs that might be needed and putting together a playlist to practice before a gig.

The songs can be speeded up & slowed down and the key & tuning tuning can also be changed. A guitar tuner and a good selection of digital multi fx are built-in. I only use the fx on mine if I am playing guitar as I play bass through it most often and it sounds good without needing any fx. A bass specific version is also available, the MP-BT1, however that was not available when I bought my MP-GT1.

More information including full specification and a pdf of the owners manual is available on the tascam website.

Tascam MP-GT1 Portable Memory Guitar Trainer

Tascam, £144.95

I have for sale a very nice Squier Vista series Musicmaster bass in a beautiful subtle vintage shell pink colour.

This is a very well made bass and is very similar in to my white Fender mustang, It has a solid alder body and maple neck with rosewood fingerboard. It is a shortscale (30″) bass and the truss rod adjusts at the headstock end rather than the body end of the neck.

Whereas a mustang bass has a split humbucking pickup like a mini precision bass one, the original 1970s Fender musicmaster basses used standard six pole (strat or mustang guitar) pickups with a solid cover. For the vista series musicmaster, Squier used a specially designed four pole pickup, similar in appearance to the ones used in original 50s precision & 60s telecaster basses. This pickup gives the bass a great punchy tone that works well in rock music.

Another difference between the vista series and an original 70s musicmaster is that the vista series has a string-through bridge with separate saddles for each string whereas the original design had only two saddles and was top-loading only.

This bass is twelve years old and has been used so has a few bits of mojo but nothing serious. The only noticable blemish is an area where the finish has chipped off on the back of the lower horn.

Roundwound strings are currently fitted, but this bass also works well with LaBella short scale flatwounds. I use thomastic JF324 short scale flatwounds on my mustang, so I imagine they would be good for on this musicmaster as well.

The bass comes with a wide and comfy faux snakeskin strap with ‘grolsch’ straplocks and is currently offered for sale for pickup from Sutton.

The price of this great instrument is just £220. Contact me via the Contact form on this site if you’d like to have a look at it

We were very pleased to hear that the Grove Tavern opposite South Wimbledon tube station is up and running again as a music venue. The pub is now managed by Broken Guitars Ltd and also houses the Abbey Music School & Surrey Strings.

Obviously 5 Believers will be playing at the Grove on Friday 5th June 2009. We hope to see you there.

I’ve had my MacBook a few months and this week I had a look at GarageBand. On first glance it looks like a very basic program, but once you discover the more sophisticated features such as the virtual guitar amp modelling, click & drag EQ with frequency analysis, and piano roll editing are an absolute joy to use.

I think GarageBand could probably replace my current music softwase, Cubase Studio 4 for what I need it to do. What GarageBand seems to lack in some more advanced features of Cubase it more than makes up for in ease of use. Arranging tracks is great fun, its a bit like playing with lego.

Here’s my first (untitled) GarageBand track:

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GarageBand 09 is availble with iLife09 which comes with new all new Macs and can also be purchased as an to upgrade to older OS X macs.

Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6 Retail

Apple 2007, DVD-ROM, £67.99

iLife ‘09 Retail

Apple 2009, DVD-ROM, £52.94

Mac Box Set Retail

Apple 2009, DVD-ROM, £94.88

Apple Training Series

Mary Plummer. Peachpit Press 2009, Paperback, 312 pages, £16.87

iLife ‘09 Portable Genius

Guy HartDavis. John Wiley & Sons 2009, Paperback, 432 pages, £11.94