OK, hereīs another cool way to use powertab as a practising tool.
First of all, the basic idea is similar to something I used to do a lot... I used to "program" a metronome on my sequencer. I would i.e. program it to give me a regualr metronome-style click-sound at 90 bpm for 2 minutes. ( or say... i.e. for 50 bars )
Then, after that, the sequencer would play back that click at 100 bpm ( or 95 or whatever... the increments Iīd use would differ ) for another 2 minutes etc.
So, I would basically program the sequencer to act like a metronome which automatically increases the tempo to a certain degree after a certain amount of time.
( This can be done way easier on many modern drum machines or software metronomes, i.e. YMetronome )
Anyway, sometimes, Iīd program the lick I was working on into the sequencer, and would play along to that... pretty helpful. Now, to combine those two approaches and turn Powertab into a neat little practising-tool, I made up a ptb-file as an example.
Check it out ( itīs attached to this post )
In the first two bars, you can see some basic 5 string sweep-exercise. The tempo is 100 beats, and I set it to 15 repeats ( meaning that the program plays this 16 times )
Then, it moves on to bars 3 and 4.. the same exercise, but at 110 bpm, 16 times... etc.
Of course those tempo increments might seem a bit harsh... Iīd recommend to go i.e. 100-104-108-112-116-120 etc.
Eventually, we get to 200 bpm.
The cool thing is that you can sit in front of your computer, open the program and a ptb like this one, and just play along, completely concentrating on playing along to it on your guitar.
When I did that with a sequencer, I would sometimes not even notice that the tempo had increased ( an increase of 4 bpm is rather smooth IMHO ).
One time, I had the sequencer going like that, and while playing a long to it, I was talking to a friend... and after we were done talking I noticed that in the meantime, my tempo had increased by like 20 bpm !
Try it out... you can make a ptb like that for yourself, using whatever exercise you wanna work on.
REMEMBER that the file attached to the post is only an example ! To increase the tempo of such a lick by 20 bpm at a time is pretty tough, so Iīd recommend to copy & paste the exercise a few more times and set the program to smaller steps in tempo.
By the way, if youīre i.e. working on a song you wanna learn, and you have a ptb-file of the song, you can even set up a "play-along-metronome" luike this very fast... if you i.e. wanna work on like 2 beats of the guitar solo of that song, put a repeat start bar before the first bar and a repeat end bar behind the second one, and go ahead...
Just thought Iīd share that idea
Eric
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