It’s been a little while since our last NoteCard release, if you were keeping track, but today marks the end of the NoteCard 3.3 era. Will any of us ever know again the heady excitement and limitless optimism of that special time?
NoteCard 3.4 brings a new “input instrument” (an on-screen control for entering notes as though on an actual musical instrument) to both the Free and the Paid modes of operation. The instrument we’ve added is a 19-fret variant on our Fretboard instrument, which until now came with either 7 frets, for novices, or 12 frets, which is appropriate for intermediate players, giving them a full octave range on each string. From a fingering point of view, venturing even further up the neck to the 13th fret and beyond simply repeats the pattern of notes from 12 frets lower. This fact makes it much easier to learn how to play high up the neck by ear or by a memorized finger pattern.
It does not help as much with reading, however, so some NoteCard users have requested a further-extended Fretboard. The new 19-fret version covers the entire effective range of an ordinary acoustic guitar (electrics typically go to 24 frets or so). With more notes, of course, comes a longer learning curve. NoteCard can teach you the narrow range of the 7-fret guitar in a mere 14 stages (or “quiz levels”), while the 12-fret guitar takes 23 stages to master. The new 19-fret guitar takes fully 35 stages, so we think it may be of interest mainly to advanced, ambitious, audacious or addle-pated musicians. Those who do take it on, however, will soon find that their ability to read music on all parts of the guitar is improving greatly.
N.B. If you already own NoteCard and have automatic updates turned on, you will receive this update whle using the program, and don’t need to download it here.