Who needs a bunch of real musical instruments when you can have…

A BUNCH OF PAPER ONES!!!

My last post was about apps for musicians, the post before that was about origami & papercraft, & this post is a glorious combination of both of those themes. There is a site called Paper Guitar & it is so cool I had to make a whole blog post for it. They have printable models of many replica guitars that you can build. They look so intricate & realistic that I haven’t even attempted one. I did make the Marshall amp & Korg synth though & they’re pretty sweet. Someday I’ll get bored enough that I’ll try to make one of the guitars. Someday.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! Canon Creative Park has some ridiculously cool printable models of guitars & other musical instruments as well, but TBH they look so hard & take so much paper that I’m gonna have to be REALLY bored before I attempt any.

Happy musical papercrafting!

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My Favorite Apps For Learning Music & Songwriting

As you may or may not already know, I play guitar (electric, acoustic, & air), ukulele, & piano (I want to learn bass guitar next!). I also (try to) write music on occasion. I’ve found that my iPhone & iPad can be extremely useful tools in assisting with both learning to play music & songwriting. I’ve discovered some really great apps over the years & I thought I’d share some of them with you. Whether you’re just starting with an instrument or you’re already a seasoned player, you will probably find most of these apps useful.

  1. Yousician. This is the single best app I’ve found for learning guitar, ukulele, piano, or bass guitar. I actually learned to play piano entirely from this app. The best part? It’s free! Well, as long as you can deal with a time limit for every 12 hours. They offer premium plans that give you unlimited lesson time & access to an expanded song library. TBH I’ve been using it for over a year & I haven’t felt the need to upgrade, but if you are just starting with an instrument it could help you progress a lot faster. It is available for iOS & Android, & they also have a desktop version for Windows & Mac. Get it at get.yousician.com.
  2. Uberchord. This app is crazy accurate at listening to you play guitar chords & detecting which notes are off. They have lots of beginner lessons as well as advanced ones. There’s also a cool feature where you play chords & it will tell you the name & transcribe it. Bye bye reverse chord search, & screw writing down chord names manually!! It’s totally free & available for iOS. Get it at uberchord.com.
  3. Chord! The exclamation is actually in the title of the app, but TBH even if it wasn’t, I still would have put it because I am very enthusiastic about it. What does it do? The better question is, what doesn’t it do? You can use it to look up chords for a variety of stringed instruments, do a reverse chord search, upload chords for songs & transpose them, & even write down your own chords & lyrics for songs, & record clips to go with. It is available for iOS & Android, & it costs $4.99 but I can assure you that if it interests you, definitely take the plunge because you won’t regret it. It gets my Seal of Approval, & that’s a big deal TBH. I didn’t even come close to naming all its features, so for the full deets check out getchord.com.
  4. Reflow 2. This is the best app I’ve found for writing out sheet music or guitar tabs. Easy enough to use & fully fledged out with loads of features. It is available for iOS & Mac. The iOS version that I have costs $5.99 but it is money well spent if you want to be able to easily write out music & have it conveniently stored on your device (or transfer it somewhere else, or print it out, etc.) it is well worth the money. I would like to add a word of caution however – I have it on both my iPhone & iPad, & I haven’t used it much on my iPhone, but when I’ve tried it I found the smaller screen size made the app a bit cumbersome. It works in a pinch but it definitely works best on iPad. Get it at reflowapp.com.
  5. Jellynote. I used to like the app Chromatik for sheet music & guitar tabs but once they made it a paid service I went in search for a replacement, because I ain’t about that subscription life. Enter Jellynote. Loads of totally free sheet music & tabs of all your fave songs for a wide variety of instruments. What more could you want? It is available for iOS & Android. Get it at jellynote.com.
  6. Music Memos. I’m going to warn you ahead of time that this app is made by Apple & is only for iOS. Sorry ‘droids, because I saved the best for last. Well not really. But I do LOVE this app. I love the GarageBand app, & before Music Memos, I would use it to record quick sketches of music on the spot, but it was kind of overkill because I didn’t want to do anything too complicated with it. With Music Memos, you can conveniently record music on the spot & save it for easy importing into GarageBand later. You can even quickly add drums and/or bass, which it automatically composes by detecting chords. How cool is that? Correct answer: SUPER COOL. It is totally free & available on the App Store.

So there you have it! 6 fantastic apps that are must-haves, IMO, for anyone interesed in learning or composing music.

Happy music-making!

    Origami & Papercraft fun!


    Ok so, pretty poor lighting in this pic but that’s probably for the best. The papercraft on the left is from Dewmuffins — they have such cute free printable papercrafts! I didn’t have very good paper to print it on, nor a craft knife to cut those really tricky spots but I think I did a pretty good job under the circumstances. Right? RIGHT?!

    The cute wittle happy strawberry on the right is from Paper Kawaii which is cute origami tutorial heaven. I’ve been doing origami since I was little & have recently gotten back into it. It’s a great thing to do when you just want to chill out & focus on one thing. Even if the more difficult stuff frustrates you, there’s lots of easy origami out there too.

    Here are some more great sites for origami & papercraft:

    Origami-instructions.com
    Origami Club
    Sasatoku Paper Craft
    That last website is all in Japanese but you got that Google Translate. You don’t really need to be able to read it anyway tbh.

    Happy paper folding & assembling!

    FREE BOXES OF STUFF?!

    Aight guys I promise I’ve got some really good material coming tomorrow, but for now I wanted to tell you all about an awesome site called Influenster! All you gotta do is sign up here, connect your social networks & blogs, & they’ll give you opportunities to get free boxes of full size products such as makeup & beauty items, personal care items, & so much more! My first box is actually on my way to me right now, & I’m so excited to share it with you guys!!! Ahhh I love exclamation points & getting stuff in the mail!!!! Especially when it’s free! So if you want in on this action, be sure to sign up! Here’s the link again:

    http://www.influenster.com/r/1611880
    See ya on the flip side, guys!

    Shopkick!!

    GUESS WHAT! I LIED AGAIN!!!

    In case you prefer doing your shopping in real stores, you ought to know about Shopkick, an app that earns you points towards gift cards by opening the app & simply walking into aforementioned stores. That’s it. It’s good to keep things simple sometimes.

    So if that sounds cool to you, you can sign up here.
    See you on the other side.

    LET’S GO SHOPPINNNGG

    Aight guys I lied, I have a little more self-promotion to do.

    So once your wallet is nice & fat from all that money from Swagbucks, what shall you spend it on, aside from making it rain in the club? You could be sensible & put it towards your bills, or student loans, or whatever else you have that urgently needs to paid. OR, you could be like me, & spend it on CLOTHES instead!!!

    So I’m here to recommend some of my fav places to blow money on clothes online. Luckily they are, for the most part, very economically & ecologically friendly. You’ll see what I mean…

    So the first one is POSHMARK! It is a community of people selling clothes & accessories. It is a great place to buy as well as to sell. You can find some incredible deals on even high-end clothing. & better yet, if you sign up with my invite code HVFNE you get $5 credit to spend on whatever you want! But, more importantly, I also get $5. Sign up at poshmark.com!

    The second is thredUP. It is also a second-hand clothing site like Poshmark but the model is a little different; instead of people selling their clothes directly to others, it goes to thredUP first to be inspected & priced accordingly. Anyway you can find some really great gems on there. They always have so many cute Betsey Johnson (my fav <3) things for relatively cheap. AAANND, if you sign up using this link: http://www.thredup.com/r/KQBZ4U

    …you’ll get TEN DOLLARS to spend on whatever you want! Again, however, it is more important that I will also get ten dollars.

    So yeah, again I apologize for the self promotion, but all these recommendations are truly genuine. I’m always looking to save money since I’m broke asf & I figure that some of you might also be interested. Gotta contribute to your rain-making fund, ya know?

    ANYWAY I’ll be back hopefully sometime tomorrow with probably some more cool recommendations, but since they aren’t the kind that really benefit me by making them, it’s okay.

    Smell ya l8r, dudes!!

    Who wants some dough

    I ain’t talking about cookie dough though I could use some right about now. I’m talking about cold hard cash. Dollar bills y’all.

    Anyway I apologize in advance for my first real post in which I try to convince you to sign up for some site so I can reap the benefits.

    SO the site I’m talking about is SWAGBUCKS!!! You’ve probably heard of it already but if you haven’t signed up yet I encourage you to do so. You can simply watch videos (aka leave them open in a separate tab, or leave them playing on your phone when you’re not using it wink wink) & earn points which you can trade for gift cards or even Paypal money, the latter you can turn into real dollar bills so you can make it rain in the club, because you’ll be so rich you’ll be able to afford it. Who am I kidding, no you won’t. But, if that’s how you like to use your money, then be my guest. So yeah, click that banner below, sign yourself up, & start earning some money to put towards your rain-making fund.

    Join Swagbucks!
    You Can Get Free Gift Cards For Shopping, Searching and Discovering What’s Online at Swagbucks.com

    Also I plan to post real things that aren’t shameless self promotion so don’t worry. I know you’re about to piss yourself, waiting for the greatness that is to come. Don’t worry – greatness indeed lies ahead. *bows*

    YO!!!!!!

    I made this blog for no reason. Theoretically, I would share cool things on this blog, but that probably won’t happen. Don’t worry, I’m not going to write about my miserable existance like before. Wtf was I thinking smdh thank god my old WordPress blog got deleted. Anyway, we’ll see how this goes.