Back in the early 60s when I was first getting into pedals I would sit for hours each day practicing and trying to learn what the pros were doing note-for-note. I would do much of this by recording a song or lick on a tape recorder at 7-1/2 IPS then slowing it down to 3-3/4 ( or even 1-7/8 ) IPS. I would then go back and forth over it as long as necessary to make sure I was getting the exact notes on exactly the same strings and frets as the original. By doing this I not only wore out my rewind, stop, and forward buttons, but I also learned a lot that I still use to this day.
However, with today's technology it's unbelievable how much more can be accomplished in this regard. I still use this same general technique but I long ago abandoned the tape recorder in favor of a computer and an audio player application, which brings me to the purpose of this posting. All of the audio players I have tried have the same basic drawback, which is that the buttons and time slider are too small and awkwardly placed to be operated efficiently, especially when sitting at my guitar with picks on. I like to sit at my guitar with a wireless mouse and keyboard and control the player with them, typically simply moving the time slider back to the beginning of a lick, playing it, then doing the same again or pausing in between to practice a little. However, because of the size and placement of the controls on Windows Media Player, Winamp, standard VLC, and others I've tried, there is a lot of wasted time and frustration just trying to see them at a distance and line up the mouse pointer properly on them!
If any of you practice using this technique and have had the same experience, I may have a solution for you. As it turns out the free VLC media player provides a mechanism for customizing the appearance of the application (the skin) and all of its controls. I did this and made the player much larger, occupying almost the entire width of the screen. I also made the time slider occupy this width and made the slider button very large and easy to line the mouse pointer up on. Since the Play/Pause button is the one I use most I made it the same width as the entire slider path so no matter where the slider button is the Play/Pause button is directly below it. Below I've included a screen shot of what I currently have. The big square purple box with a black "X" is the slider button and traverses the entire player window as the song plays. The yellow/black rectangle below it is the Play/Pause button, which as you can see also traverses the entire window. Since I designed the look and feel of this application to meet my specific needs rather than as a general use product I didn't waste time modifying/enlarging the controls I didn't plan to use constantly, although they are all still functional.
If anyone would find such an application helpful for practicing simply install VLC and get it working, then let me know and I'll be glad to provide the custom skin I am using so you can try it and let me know what you think. One thing to bear in mind, however, is that ultimately the functionality of the application is at the mercy of the underlying capabilities of VLC itself and all I am doing is changing its appearance.
Ray
