Line 6 Guitarport ... Anyone use this?

I used to own one... sold it though. It was really fun to play with, but I found myself not focusing on learning to play the guitar, but rather learning specific riffs with the amp modeling. I will probably look at getting one of them again or another USB interface in the future. If you are just learning, I would say forget it for now. If you are past the initial learning stages and want something fun to fool around it, go for it - I just found it a huge distraction to the learning process for myself.

Considering you posted in the other thread asking for advice on what beginner books to buy, I would say that you are at the same stage I was when I owned mine. I would say hold off. You can do lots of stuff with your current guitar and amp, and its built in modeling effects. Also, you can just use Guitar Pro or any of the huge # of backing track MP3's out there (Google "guitar backing tracks") if you want something to play along with.

Honestly, for the first month of two, you shouldn't even be thinking of the effects, and tones and sounding like your favourite players. I got to a point early in my learning that almost made me give up... here is the thread about it.

http://forums.guitarnoise.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=41793

From the sounds of your post, you are a technology geek like me. I am in the computer field and love fiddling around with technology. I had to put that aside, and more often than not, I end up playing my acoustic or with my electric unplugged these days... I want to focus on technique, playing, finger position and accuracy.

Very informative. post thanks. You hit it right on the head. Im a network technician and somewhat of a technology geek. Hate cell phones and handheld devices but anything cool and on the edge of technology gets me intrested. Yep I need to learn finger placement. Starting to think that you need longer fingers then what I have. Its really hard to make my fingers hit exactly where they need. What amp setting do you think I should set up for practicing? I like mostly rock and metal but thats not the right setting for what I am learning I think. Should I play with the clean settings on my amp? I am not getting bored yet but the fingers get sore pretty quick. I go for about an hour then break and pick it up in the evening again.

I will wait for the computer interface.

Jay

I have this.

Great bit of kit but only really helpful if your fairly decent at playing riffs / songs and you want it to sound like the original record or just want a distorted sound.

I don't know the exact settings on your amp. I don't have a modeling amp, so I can't really suggest settings for you.

For me, I have a basic Marshall amp, and generally I play in 3 settings... clean, clean with reverb or add some gain for some distortion.

I also have a Vox Amplug headphone amp which I end up using most of the time so I don't wake the kids, or annoy the wife. Generally, it is either set to clean or dirty distorted.

As far as the fingers... yeah, they will get sore... but it will get better. Mine are still sore a lot of the time but it is much better than when I started.

I think I have little fat sausage fingers. I looked in awe at some of the YouTube videos and see these guys with skinny long fingers. I thought at the beginning that there is no way that I can reach some of the strings that these guys can, or do some of the more advanced chords... but, I now realize I can with practice.

One of the most simple practice routines I do is simple home positions on the first four frets. Start at the top E string, play open, then first fret, first finger, second fret, second finger, 3rd, 3rd finger, 4th, pinky. Then, do the next (A) string, and so on. Then go backwards. They, mix it up. That will get you stretching and moving around. It won't sound good, or sound like music... it is all about finger practice.

A song that I play almost every practice session to get my fingers going is "Is there anybody out there" by Pink Floyd. It is a fairly simple song that really gets your pinky stretching in parts. It can be played with a pick, or fingerpicked. And, it sounds just as good played slow as "real time".

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/tabs/p/pink_floyd/is_there_anybody_out_there_ver3_tab.htm

(in case you don't know the song, here is a video of it...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yvd7wGr-4oI

What amp setting do you think I should set up for practicing? I like mostly rock and metal but thats not the right setting for what I am learning I think. Should I play with the clean settings on my amp?

You want to practice with the amp on clean with no reverb. Adding distortion and reverb will hide your mistakes and while it may sound better it won't let you hear your mistakes the same so that you can correct them.