Agile Partners, best known for creating an exceptionally useful $9.99 iPhone application called Guitar Toolkit that packs in a guitar tuner, a metronome, and fantastically detailed chord and scale charts, on Monday released its first follow-up app.
Tab Toolkit, also available via Apple's App Store for $9.99, enables users to read and listen to real-time synthesized versions of guitar tablature charts on their iPhone or iPod Touch.
Here's Kirk Hammett's guitar solo from "Master of Puppets," displayed in tablature and regular notation on an iPhone with Tab Toolkit. Hit "play," and it'll scroll by in (very fast) real time, with a synthesized version playing through the headphones.
Tab Toolkit won't have as large an audience as Guitar Toolkit, which is immediately useful to players of all levels, as it assumes that you have (or can get) tab charts--and that you know how to read them. But if you're a serious guitarist, $9.99 is a fair deal for a very sophisticated app that performs well--no freezes or stutters, as I've experienced with some other music-oriented apps. (If you're just learning about tablature, the $2.99 iPractice is probably a better first download.)
So where do you get tab files? If you're a songwriter, you can use Power Tab Editor (freeware, Windows-only) or Guitar Pro ($59, for Macs and Windows PCs) to create your own. There are also online libraries of tab files for popular songs and artists--GProTab has a particularly extensive collection of Guitar Pro files--though copyright holders periodically crack down on these sites, which generally operate outside their approval.
Once you have some tab files on your computer, Tab Toolkit lets you transfer them to your iPhone directly over your home wireless network. It also includes an embedded version of Safari so you can download tabs directly from the Web. Tab Toolkit does support PDF and rich-text tabs, but you get the most results if you use PowerTab or Guitar Pro files.
At last, once you have some PowerTab or Guitar Pro files on your iPhone, the fun begins. Tab Toolkit scrolls through the song at the correct tempo, displaying both traditional and tab notation, with a metronome and synthesized version of the instrument to keep you on target. It fully supports multitrack tabs for the same song--for example, I was able to download all three guitar parts, bass, and drums for Metallica's "Master of Puppets," and follow through each individually--and you can stop the automated playback and scroll through the chart manually to learn particularly tricky parts like Kirk Hammett's guitar solo. You can display either a guitar fretboard or piano keyboard on the screen to help you with fingering, and can even flip the guitar upside-down if you're a lefty.
Update, 3/24: An SXSW organizer contacted me to let me know that the show included 14 panelists from major labels, as well as 20 panelists from independent labels. The truth remains that I didn't see, hear, or meet any--but of course I couldn't attend every panel. I've corrected the post accordingly.
Almost a year ago, I posted about how two executives from major Web companies had taken new positions related to digital music: Douglas Merrill left Google to become EMI's president of digital operations, and Ian Rogers left Yahoo Music to become the CEO of Topspin, a then-new company specializing in direct-to-fan marketing.
A year later, Merrill's gone, following Guy Hands out the door. (Hands was the CEO of private-equity firm Terra Firma, which bought EMI in 2007.) I'm not sure what he did there, but imagine he was behind the portal site that EMI launched last year...to no effect whatsoever.
Contrast that with Topspin, which oversaw successful launches of several albums and was just at SXSW to announce a major update to its automated marketing platform.
Sure, EMI's taking in far more revenue than Topspin--it's still got The Beatles' catalog, after all, and Topspin's just a start-up--but look at the momentum, the level of excitement, the bottom line. There's no comparison.
At SXSW, the conventional wisdom from every panel I attended, every business meeting I had, and every artist and fan I spoke with, was that the major labels are technological dinosaurs with no chance of survival. I didn't meet a single major label employee in the entire four days I was there, though at the Guitar Hero-Metallica event, the PR coordinator spent a long time explaining to a TV crew that all interview requests had to be approved by the band's label. Ah, the good old major labels we know and love--barriers, not enablers.
(Aside: as much as Metallica may represent the old record industry, its SXSW set absolutely slayed, consisting almost exclusively of pre-Black Album material, and so fast and tight and loud and awesome in the original sense of the word that it seemed like it--and we--were all 17 again. Pitchfork's take is absolutely right; it's not fair to compare them with any of the other bands at SXSW. Long may they rock, with or without the recording industry as we know it.)
I'm rambling, but keep looking. U2's second-week sales dropped 75 percent--nobody cares. Sony hired Rick Rubin to come up with a digital strategy, but nothing's happening (although Rubin remains a successful producer).
The RIAA seems to serve no purpose except to sue customers and try to get damages that are many thousands of times the value of the product infringed. Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. took home a $3 million bonus after his company lost $35 million and earned his spot on the CEO wall of shame.
Established artists are going independent as soon as their contracts expire--the latest is Counting Crows--and reporting, again and again, how much better they can do without a label.
A year ago, there were still some arguments for the necessity of major labels to handle marketing, promotion, and other tasks. Not anymore. The conventional wisdom now: if you're interested in the music business, and you want to change the world and make lots of money, go anywhere else.
If you're a musician, and you want your music to be heard, go anywhere else. If you're an investor looking for a business with a lot of upside, go anywhere else.
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Guitar Hero: Metallica, which lets gamers play along with the band and its influences, comes out in the U.S. on March 29. Metallica lead guitarist Kirk Hammett spoke to me this afternoon at the South by Southwest music festival about the game and other issues related to music and technology.
Q: With the Guitar Hero game, do you think you'll be reaching longtime fans, or is this mainly a way to reach younger fans who might know a song or two but don't really know Metallica?
Hammett: We'll be reaching fans across the board, longtime fans, fans who've just gotten into us, Guitar Hero fans who might have reached Metallica through Guitar Hero. It works in a lot of different directions. Our demographic gets wider and wider through the years; at our shows we see a lot of kids who are 10, 12 years old, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that their parents have been fans for a long time. And a certain percentage of it is because they're Guitar Hero fans and they got turned on to Metallica through Guitar Hero, and they want to actually see Metallica as a live performing band.
Were you a Guitar Hero player before this?
Hammett: I have to say, I've only really played Guitar Hero once. I'm the kind of person who, if I start playing video games, I don't stop. So a few years back, I said to myself that I have to stop playing because I don't play guitar, I don't eat, I don't sleep. I had found out about Guitar Hero from seeing it in the media, seeing the poster on the wall in the studio where we were recording our album, hearing about it from friends. So I did actually play it once, I played against Lars and I beat him. He plays it all the time. But I had to tell him I had a fair advantage being a guitar player myself.
Do you find there's a split between musicians and non-musicians? I think a lot of musicians look at Guitar Hero and say "I'd rather be playing."
Hammett: I never feel like I'm playing my instrument enough. It leads back to what I was saying earlier about being totally obsessive. I've talked to other guitar players who've played this game, it's apples and oranges, it's a different thought process between this and actually playing an instrument.
Do you think kids growing up today are going to be drawn to games like Guitar Hero instead of learning how to play the guitar? Or do you think musicians will always be musicians?
Hammett: I think it's going to be responsible for creating a lot of musicians, for kids making the leap to playing a real instrument. I have a friend who works at a music instrument store, and he told me that because of Guitar Hero, guitar sales are up. For me, that's a great thing because these kids are being brought up on the music that's in Guitar Hero, it's great music, great classic rock, great classic metal that they wouldn't hear otherwise. It's all just about pop drivel on the radio. They're getting an education through Guitar Hero, and if some of these kids are truly inspired, they'll make the leap and grab a guitar and learn how to play the songs for real.
What about the songs from other bands that are in the game? Did you guys pick all of those bands, and were there any specifics that you picked?
Hammett: Well, I wanted UFO to be in there, but for legal reasons we couldn't do it so we had to settle for Michael Schenker Group. Same thing with The Misfits. We would have loved for The Misfits to be on here, but for legal reasons, we have Samhain instead.
Do you have a recording rig that you use to get ideas down outside the studio?
Hammett: Traditionally, I'll use a small recording processor, which I'll eventually load into ProTools. A lot of the stuff written in the last four or five years, I used (Apple's) GarageBand. Then from GarageBand I put it on a CD and then dumped that into ProTools. GarageBand is really handy in that I can just have my laptop, have my guitar, have a guitar cord, and plug my guitar into the laptop. Once I've tweaked it and modified things, and built upon the ideas, I'll put the music into ProTools, which has become the industry standard. So for me, it's really about GarageBand and ProTools.
So you just go direct, you don't even need a microphone?
Hammett: Sometimes I'll use an Mbox, yeah.
I know they captured a lot of moves for the game, how did that work?
Hammett: They filmed us with sensors on us. It was pretty cool. We lip-synced to the songs, and they got full-motion captures of us playing the music. They did full body scans of us as well.We tried to aim it to be as accurate as possible.
What should bands pay for? Can art and marketing coexist? Has the digital world made do-it-yourself recording, marketing, and distribution easier, or do musicians still need the old-fashioned triumvirate of booking agent, record label, and radio airplay to thrive?
If you're interested in such questions, and you're heading to the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, this year, check out a panel discussion in which I'll be participating called The Artist as Entrepreneur at 1:30 p.m Wednesday. Most of the people on the panel are in the business of helping musicians use the Web and other digital tools to turn their music from hobby into career--or at least sell a few CDs and get some decent gigs.
Not me! I'm a mere blogger, trying to report as objectively as possible on all these different businesses. I've got a well-developed sense of skepticism, honed by my somewhat-schizoid existence over the last 15 years as a writer and analyst covering the world of high tech (all day, every day), and playing bass in half a dozen gigging and recording bands (from which I've been on hiatus for the last year or so). I hope to provide some balance, or at least the occasional arched eyebrow, if anybody gets too self-promotional.
You can read about the other panelists on the SXSW site, but I've met Panos Panay, the moderator, and talked to him at length about the music business and his company, Sonicbids.
From the artist's perspective, Sonicbids charges subscription fees for creating and maintaining an electronic press kit, then provides an automated system for submitting that presskit to get gigs--including some pretty big ones, including SXSW, Seattle's Bumbershoot, and the Vans Warped Tour. (Full disclosure: Panos invited me to be on the panel, for which I get a free badge to the show. I'm covering travel and all other expenses out of pocket.)
Also on the panel are Derek Sivers, who founded online music marketplace CD Baby (which I write about all the time) and left last year to form a new business, MuckWork. I've also blogged about TuneCore, an online marketplace for digital downloads from independent artists, whose CEO, Jeff Price, is on the panel. I'm looking forward to meeting the other folks on the panel and hearing their stories.
Apart from that, I'll be meeting with a bunch of other companies that straddle the edge of music and technology, catching as much music as I possibly can, and if all goes according to current plan, I'll be talking to Metallica for about five minutes on Friday about its upcoming Guitar Hero game.
I'll blog as much as I can, and you can always follow me on Twitter.
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