I’ve “played” guitar for the past 15 years or so and I’m still mediocre at best. This is probably because of my lack of natural talent and/or lack of consistent practice time. I enjoy playing, but, as with most things, it’s easier to just not do them. While the talent gap may be hard to overcome, I found an app to make the practicing much easier – it’s called Yousician.
I initially downloaded their Guitar Tuna app to tune my guitar (as i was prepared to embark on my latest push to start playing again) and then found Yousician. Here’s a 30-second video overview:
This is all great, but what I really love about Yousician are the Feedback and Practice Mode features. Yousician instantly tells when you’ve missed a note or if you were too early or too late — and you don’t progress to the next level until you’ve mastered the current lesson. The discipline this creates is crucial to learning. I was worried about what would happen if I just couldn’t pass a lesson, but this is where Practice Mode shines. In Practice Mode, you can slow down the speed of the lesson and practice it until you master it. Slowing down the lesson allows you to work on your muscle memory and I’ve noticed myself improving with every round of practice. And while it may have taken me many sessions to improve, practice did make perfect.
*UPDATE: Yousician does use Push Notifications for their daily lesson feature. As expected, that feature is awesome.