A little over a year ago, I reviewed the Capo app, which is a music learning tool made by SuperMegaUltraGroovy. The developer, Chris Liscio, has released Capo 2.0 today. In addition to providing the ability to slow down and loop music, Capo now provides the ability to automatically detect chords within songs. Also included in the new version is a sophisticated Spectrogram that helps you visualize the music being played. This Spectrogram can also be used to help tab out songs as you play through them.

These updates make an already excellent music learning tool even better. If you have a Mac and play guitar, I highly recommend checking the Capo app out.

I was recently alerted to the fact that the Crown of the Continent Guitar Foundation is holding its first annual guitar workshop late this summer from August 29 – September 5, 2010 at the Flathead Lake Lodge in Bigfork, Montana. The workshop is supported by the National Guitar Workshop and features an impressive list of guest artists, including Pat Metheny, Larry Carlton, Alex De Grassi, Scott Tennant and several NGW teachers. Find out more about the workshop on the Crown of the Continent Guitar Foundation website.

Guitar Player magazine recently caught up with Jonny Lang, who is currently touring as part of the Experience Hendrix tour. Lang gave Guitar Player a lesson in some of the techniques he uses, including his vibrato technique and alternating between a pick and using his fingers. See the lesson below:

Anthony Stauffer of StevieSnacks.com recently wrote an article titled No Secrets, Just Practice providing his thoughts about what it takes to get better, responding in part to my article The Secret to Becoming a Better Guitarist. In that article, I posited that there actually are no secrets; Anthony agrees, but says that there are shortcuts:

My thoughts on this are similar with one exception. There are shortcuts. I spent hours, upon hours learning the things I teach here. I can tell you more in a one hour lesson than I learned in 6 months. But here’s the catch. During that 6 months, I was playing. A lot. So while I might not have had as much information as someone with my lessons will have, that forced me to play all the time just to make something sound good.

I agree with him. Finding a good teacher will help immensely. Whether it be online lessons like Anthony provides at Stevie Snacks, or in-person lessons with an instructor at a local music store, I highly recommend finding a teacher that you can relate to. However, regardless of whether you find a teacher or decide to learn by listening to albums, it’s going to take time to improve. While I’m extremely grateful that you’re visiting this site and reading what I write, I can only provide information. I can’t play for you (nor would you probably want me to!). If you want to get better at playing the guitar, you’re going to have to play the guitar. It’s that simple and that hard.

Christopher Davis, who runs the Classical Guitar Blog and who is a graduate student at Austin Peay State University (APSU), let me know that APSU is hosting a Summer Guitar Workshop this summer from June 28-July 2. The workshop will offer classes in both classical and fingerstyle guitar styles.

The faculty of the workshop will be:

• Stanley Yates, Director
• Stephen Aron, Classical Guitar Workshop Co-director / Collegiate Competition Chair
• Mir Ali, Classical Guitar Workshop Co-Director / Pre-Collegiate Competition Chair
• Richard Smith, Fingerstyle Workshop Co-Director / Fingerstyle Competition Chair
• Roger Hudson, Fingerstyle Workshop Co-Director

In addition to the classes, the workshop will have competitions for collegiate/post-collegiate classical guitarists, pre-collegiate classical guitarists, and pre-collegiate fingerstyle guitarists. Additionally, there will be concerts each night.

The workshop sounds like a lot of fun. APSU is located about 45 minutes north of Nashville. Housing is available at the college, so if you’re not from this area you can still participate in the workshop.

For most of my guitar-playing life, I’ve been trying to find the secret to becoming a better guitarist. I’ve spent countless hours reading magazines and books, scouring the Internet, and searching for teachers. What I’ve learned is this: There is no secret.

Becoming a better guitarist takes hard work, dedication, and perseverance. There are no shortcuts. This is a lesson that has taken me many years to learn. Actually, I’m still learning this lesson. The way all the guitarists I admire got better was by playing, listening, and learning. That’s what it’ll take for me and you to get better, too.

Last year, Tommy Emmanuel put on a clinic at Berklee. If you’ve never seen Emmanuel live, I highly recommend it. He puts on one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. Here’s some footage from his Berklee clinic:

Last year, Page Hamilton released a guitar instructional DVD titled Sonic Shapes. I’ve mentioned before that I was a big fan of Hamilton’s and his band Helmet when I first started playing guitar in the 90s. He was one of the first musicians I knew of who tuned to drop-D.

On Sonic Shapes, Hamilton illustrates some of the concepts and approaches he takes when writing music for Helmet. Hamilton is a long-time student of jazz and avant-garde guitar, and it’s interesting to hear him talk about how he builds the chords for Helmet music, which seem deceptively simple at first. However, the chords and scales he uses are fairly atypical for the type of music he plays. Throughout the instructional portion of the DVD, Page plays an ESP guitar without distortion so you can really get a feel for how the chords sound without the effects that he normally uses.

In addition to demonstrating how he goes about composing some of Helmet’s music, the DVD features a section of Hamilton’s tips on practicing. He mentions a routine called “Super Chops,” which was developed by Howard Roberts, that he has adapted for his own use. Hamilton suggests always having material on hand so that you can utilize your time wisely. For example, when he’s on the road, he always has a folder of material that he’s working on. He also suggests keeping a practice log so that you can keep track of your progress and of what you want to work on.

As a bonus, the DVD features some live footage of Helmet, where you can see some of the concepts Hamilton discusses earlier in the DVD in action.

The February 2010 issue of Guitar World magazine is a blues-oriented issue and features John Mayer on the cover. On the bonus disc that comes with the magazine, John Mayer gives a lesson on how he plays his cover of “Crossroads” on his latest album Battle Studies.

The intro to the lesson is hilarious, and the lesson itself covers how he plays the entire song, including what pedal he uses to get the dead-battery fuzz tone on the album:

Classical guitarist and composer Kevin Gallagher, from his recent article “Music First“:

We cannot excel at any style of music by simply putting our fingers in the correct place at the correct time. There are no excellent jazz guitarists that I know of who don’t have an understanding of jazz music. There are no great pop guitarists who don’t have an understanding of pop music. And consequently, there are no great classical guitarists who don’t understand how classical music is written on the guitar. Often, I think that students forget that they are studying classical music on the guitar – as if the classical guitar is more about the technique than the music. Let me be clear – if you are studying this style, you are studying classical music on the guitar.