This app is an interactive visual reference for practicing guitar.
Imagine your gym coach gave you a list of warm-up exercises to perform back to back in a set amount of time.
Every 20 seconds you will switch and perform the next exercise. It might be hard to remember them all and in what order you are suppose to perform them. It would probably help to have something to reference while you exercise.
That's what this app is for, but instead of exercise, it's for practicing blues guitar solos. Often, new guitar players get stuck wandering scales when trying to improvise a solo over a 12 bar blues. Instead of sounding like a smooth, colorful solo, it sounds more like you are just practicing scales. The "Blues Matrix" is an exercise created by Ian Stich of "The Stich Method."
The 12 bar blues is a series of 12 music bars, in which the 1 chord is played for four bars, followed by the 4 chord for two bars, back to the 1 chord for two more bar, then the 4 chord for one bar, the 5 chord for one bar, the 1 chord for one bar, then the "turn-around", which is the 1 chord for the first quarter of the bar, and finally the five chord for the remaining 3 quarters of the last bar. If it sounds confusing, just look up 12 bar blues on youtube and you will realize you've heard the song structure a million times.
1-4-5 is the chord progression for the 12 bar blues. Every music key has seven chords. In the 12 bar blues, we only use the 1, the 4, and the 5. For instance, in the key of A Major, the 1 chord is A major. The 4 chord is D major, and the 5 chord is E major. In the above blues matrix, the 1 chord is represented by the boxes in red. The 4 chord is represented by the white boxes. And the 5 chord is represented by the boxes in green. If you are playing to a backing track or maybe your friend on rhythm guitar, you can keep track of what chord you are supposed to be playing over by following the box colors and counting.
Intead of wandering aimlessly in pentatonic pergatory, you can select a different guitar technique from the drop-down menues located at the top of each bar. When you get to each bar, you can see what technique you are suppose to employ. So before you start, plan your solo by selecting techniques for each bar. Now you can practice adding color and flavor to your solos. Mix up the techniques so you don't sound repetitious. Pretty soon you won't need the blues matrix, because switching techniques will feel natural.
The technique names come from the Stich Method series of instructional videos on youtube. Watch the following video for a deeper understanding, or websearch "Stich Method Blues Primer Playlist."