A place for former and current students of Fiddlin Al to post videos of their progress, share comments and ask questions.

51 Members, Created 2/18/2013 -

Administrators: MiG-19 (owner)

Practicing On The Go (Tips)

From loukiii on 4/30/2013 7:34:30 AM

For Me. it always seems to be a pain to find an adequate time, or place to get in some quality practice. I cant really get good practice in at home during the week except one or two days usually due to the distractions of a wife, 2 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cats etc. Everyone wants to put demands on my time. I'm sure we all have similar scenarios. Getting the banjo out and playing a couple tunes is not quite the same as dedicated practice without distractions etc. So I have been practicing in my vehicle at lunch time at work.  

I usually  print off my tab at home and keep it in a folder and use that but I was not getting the full benefit of all the resources available (mp3 and Al's video) because they were on my laptop, which although portable is a pain in the butt to set up in my truck (Yeah I'm spoiled.) I have been trying for months to figure out how to put all these things on my IPad but could only get the mp3's, not the tab and videos. Well I have finally figured it out. Google Drive!

When Al sends me downloads on my laptop during my lesson,  i put them in folders on Google Drive. Now when I go to work I can get out my IPad, and I can pull up the tab to any song Al has sent me since I started taking lessons with him, I can listen to Earl, JD or Sonny play it on ITunes, and I can watch and hear Al pick it on his video. Anytime, any place, anywhere. Provided I have either WIFI or ATT service, but, even if I don't, I can mark a file as available offline, and it will be saved onto my IPad and I can still access it. Probably dont want to do that to all of them as I would fill up my meager storage on the IPad, but if I am working on something in particular like one of the Al's 2,857 breaks to FMB, I can mark it as available offline and access it wherever.

For now, Google Drive is free up to a certain amount of storage, I am not sure how much that limit is, but I probably have 30 or 40 tabs and an equal number of videos as well so far. There are a few other similar 'Cloud' storage options out there that I am always investigating, and if I fill up Google Drive, I will look at one of the others, or consider purchasing extra storage. I have Dropbox but have not had good luck getting the videos to play. Microsoft has one called SkyDrive I need to check out too. And of course Apple has ICloud​ but I have not been able to figure out how to put files there and access them like a storage drive, I just use it to backup my IPad.

As I make more discoveries, I will update y'all.

5 Comments
	daytripper says: 4/30/2013 7:47:21 AM I used to practice a lot in hotel rooms from my (work) laptop and found Dropbox to be effective - but I think Google Drive will put Dropbox under pressure as it does the same thing & integrates w. Google services...
	G says: 4/30/2013 7:55:01 AM Great minds ! :) I do exactly the same thing on my android tablet. Tab and video on Drive, marked for offline. I just use it at home, though. even there, I just find the tablet more convenient than my netbook.
	loukiii says: 4/30/2013 1:08:05 PM Just checked out Sky Drive. It looks pretty good. You get 7GB free, Google Drive is 5GB. ICloud still looks relatively useless. Other than pictures and backing up the IPad. At least with Google Drive and Sky Drive you can access from pretty much any device with internet connectivity.
	mcaple says: 4/30/2013 5:30:35 PM On a side note recently downloaded VLC on my Android phone. It is available for the Apple world although a little more clunky. That thing plays just about any format video not just Apple's quicktime.
	MiG-19 says: 5/3/2013 4:45:55 PM Great advice!
Post a Comment
You must be logged in and a member of this group to post a comment.

Page: 1  2  3  Last