Thank you so much for your comments on the Stump Preacher guitar. I appreciate your putting Rod’s contact information there as well.

I hope I never have to get spare parts, but it’s nice to know that there’s a contact if I ever do.

I did try the model with all the tuners on one side and I didn’t really like the feel of it.

Now having the built in effects box and audio input mixer would be a very interesting idea! Saves having to lug around more pieces when you travel.

Best regards,
kengon

Allan Lindberg again

I happend to own one of these great little guitars. I found the company early 1999 when they had a website called http://www.stumppreacher.com which is completely gone since long ago. Someone else had that domain name last time I checked,(completely unrelated).

A gentleman named Rod Brower that made the guitars (never heard of anyone else involved except for a guy hired to market them). Rod runs a small company in Woodinville, Wa that outfits commercial boats and builds custom made interiors of fancy restaurants in the Seattle area.

I visited Rod`s shop several times between 2002 and 2009. He told me the first time I visited, that he had gotten in some kind of dispute with the guy he had hired to market the guitars, and I think they had both sued each other for reasons I cannot remember.

He had a container full of parts and was willing to assemble new guitars if someone was interested, and even though he ended up putting the whole project pretty much on ice due to lack of time and lack of spirit due to the above mentioned dispute, he had developed the guitars further with a through body neck as opposed to my bolt on neck for enhanced sustain and looks.

I bought some spare parts to mine since I thought that it would be a good idea if I lost contact with him. Also I had accidentaly dropped the guitar once while walking across the tile floor of Stockholm Airport because I had been stupid enough to put the zipper shoe at the bottom of the gig bag. I thought I had crashed the guitar, but it proved to be sturdy as a tank, I replaced a couple of the patented rolls at the back end which the strings are going around to get into the tuners bay inside the guitar, and one of the clips that holds the backplate of the body was also broken.

I am almost certain that you can get him to build you one of these rare ones. You can reach him at phone number 425-402-1935. His shop address is 12604 NE 178th St, Woodinville, Wa 98072.

They made three models with different arrangements of the tuners, a V 6 with three tuners at the top and three tuners at the bottom of the body. A straight 6 with all tuners at either the top or the bottom of the body with an optional built in effect box, and one other that I think they called the tear drop model or something like that.

Cheers,

Allan Lindberg, Sweden

I can contact John and pass along your request. He is still very much into historical and genealogical research so I expect he will be quite willing to share.

James Rollins

I don’t happen to have contact information for John, but I have a fried that may. I’ll pass your request on to him and see if we can help you out.

Best,
kengon

This might be a random request but I am trying to get in contact with John Devitry-Smith.

While he was at BYU he wrote a paper on a LDS Missionary named William Barratt. I too am doing some research on William Barratt and would like to contact John about his work.

Does he have a blog or could you forward me his email?

Many thanks,
Andrew Southerton

Feature requests #1, 2 and 3 have been addressed in this latest version and work fine. #2 has to be accomplished via the “Settings” application. Look for the Relative Pitch group in the lower half of the screen (where the rest of the custom apps are).

Chris told me that #4 and 5 are going to be addressed in other apps. They decided that they were going to keep their development efforts and product functionality focused. Given my background in software development, I wholeheartedly agree. I’m confident that they’ll do an excellent job with it.

#6 hasn’t been addressed yet. I’ll likely reach out to Chris in January to ask.

Still, the important thing to remember is that the app team continues to work on making this a great little application. I am using it all the time — never a need to go too long without ear training!

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season!

Best,
kengon

Anyhow, I’m curious whether or not this is still an issue. I’m using Firefox 3.0.15 to write this, so I’m hopeful that it’s resolved. Let me know, if it’s not.

kengon

Thank you for your comments. I’m going to try your iPhone app and I’ll post something about it.
For what it’s worth, the video wasn’t all that good… it’s nice you got some PR, but it did nothing to really help make your case. Then again, any press is good press.
There are couple of other tools that I’ll call out in future posts. I think ear training is so important that I intend to write a lot more about it.

Best,
kengon

Great post! The iPhone is such an ideal device for ear training, as you can carry all sorts of tools and instruments on it and do a bit of practice any time… I’ve been using the Grand Pro app for the same sorts of things as you’re using Pianist for, and I really love having an instant-access keyboard in my pocket!

I’m the lead developer on an app called RelativePitch, which is intended to help people train their interval recognition. It doesn’t test your sung reproduction of intervals, but from what you’ve said I think it might be a useful tool for part of your training.

There’s a demo version, ‘RelativePitchLite’ so you can try it out for free, and if you want to see it in action, there’s also a video review by the Daily App Show:
http://dailyappshow.com/relativepitch-lite

More info & user reviews at http://www.EasyEarTraining.com. I hope you’ll check it out!

We’re currently developing a few other ear training apps, so if you have any ideas or suggestions for things which you’d find handy, drop us an email at feedback@EasyEarTraining.com.

I look forward to more posts about ear training!

Chris