Welcome to our Emuser Newsletter, for all our current and new users of emuso/Studio! We hope you are finding your way around the platform and this newsletter is to help provide ideas, insights, training and tips to aid you in your musical journey with emuso/Studio!
A Couple Reminders
Practice Tips
We have pulled 3 relevant practice tips and ideas to help you with your technique and understanding of emuso/Studio. Each tip will have a short description and a video demonstrating what you need to do. Please enjoy all three!
2. Finding the Same Note…Fast! Using visualization based on the 3-semitone shape (3 frets apart on same string) that most guitarists know from the minor pentatonic scale, the same note can be found on an adjacent string by adding a small shift horizontally, and then crossing strings. Very simple to apply, and very useful.
3. Diminished Responsibility. Here is a taster on using arpeggios from diminished triads blended with minor pentatonic notes, for a modern sound that can work great in many genres, including blues, rock, metal, jazz. I expect you to know the A minor pentatonic, and diminished triads. This video creates an A Dorian flavor, and shows where to locate these triads (which aren’t found in A Dorian).
Logging into emuso… tips!
When emuso starts up, you’ll see the “login to emuso” page, which includes a “Register” link. Logging in requires your email and password … you first set your password by using that “Register” link. However, if you only intend to use the toolkit (chord and scale libraries, interactive instruments, investigating the guitar neck chord and pattern inversions, rhythm-X, ear-trainers, and tools for exploring chord-scale relationships) then you do not need to log-in.
Logging-in gets access to a selection of interactive lessons, interactive technique practice, and interactive emusobooks, as well as the ability to take advantage of any interactions built into the emuso blogs. This content will be growing over time, and we’re looking for other contributors of this content. A lot of this content will be free (obviously everything in the blogs), though there will be some paid-for content coming up.
Once you’re in the toolkit, here are a few things you may want to immediately try out:
1/ Use your mouse to drag the white circle that appears on the “guitar” to wherever you want. The note name, for where it is currently, appears underneath the instrument, just underneath the interval strip. If you click on that note name, the pitch strip opens up, and you can click on any of the pitches to locate that white circle (the “anchor”) at that note on the same string the anchor is on.
2/ Use the scale menu, and choose some scale. See how the scale lays out around the anchor. Now if you drag the anchor (along or across the strings), the scale follows and re-organises itself. (There are several ways to control what you see on-instrument).
3/ Use the right and left arrows on the keyboard to move the scale to the next upper or lower region. You can flip the scale too, to lay out in the opposite direction. If you are left-handed, that’s supported too (“instruments menu > Left handed”)
4/ Experiment with pressing the letter “i” repeatedly, and watch what happens to the labelling on-instrument, and on the interval strip. It can show intervals as semitones, or using theory-names, or note names.
5/ The letter “x” on the keyboard, can be used to toggle between showing scales with sharps or flats. You’ll see the double sharp and double flats appear if needed.
6/ When a scale is on-instrument, you can hold down the “ALT” key and move the mouse over a scale note. By default, you’ll see and hear the notes of the triad rooted at that note, and the chord name appears above the instrument. You can get emuso to create more complex chords (7ths up to 13ths) in response, using the menu “Essentials > Generated chord complexity”.
7/ If a scale is on the neck, you can then use the Chord library menu, and choose “Automatic” at the bottom of the menu. Now, use CTL-left click on a (non) scale note, and emuso will generate the appropriate chord type for that note. The chord complexity determine what you get as well. These can be inverted using the “.” (full stop) and “,” (comma) keys.
Later on, you’ll discover you can transfer scales, chords, or patterns, from the instrument, into Rhythm-X, in one-click, to build progressions or licks you want to work on (or even make a musical sketch). You can also invent your own chords, which emuso will analyse for you, but you can turn off analysis.
Support Us!
According to UK music charity Music-for-All.org not enough people in the UK are fortunate enough to have access to musical instruments or ways to help them to learn and discover. So, we donated 1,000 emuso/Studio licenses to the charity, to support their efforts in making music education and instruments and events freely available.
And now, as we are gaining a voice and momentum in today’s noisy and overwhelmed digital market, we need your help and support to further make a difference. Please help us make people aware they can rapidly and simply notch up their musical skills with emuso without paying a fortune, or dedicating large chunks of time in doing so. So please spread the word to your social media.
Plus we would love to hear from you! Tell us what you like or love or dislike about emuso. Tell us how you are using emuso for learning, practicing or exploring music and even creating with it. Just log in and add a comment to our blog. Or how about a short YouTube video about this? Include a link in your blog comment.