Practice on the road? Here's how...

Okay, now I know you'll say, how can it get any easier? You just slide a harp into your pocket and go. Well, some of us still need the help of Bluesharmonica.com - and we'd like to have our amp sound, too. So here's what I do, and maybe you might want to try it, too.

I travel a lot for business. I'm on planes flying to New England, eastern Canada, and Europe every other week. I've tried bringing just a single harp with me, and I would play around with it when I'm driving, and maybe a little bit in the hotel room that night. Problem is, I miss my amps, and I can't always get a good internet connection to play along with Bluesharmonica.com. Now I bring a couple of tools along with me to help.

I've had the Line 6 Pod X3 amp modeler for a while now, and I really like it. It's a little big for traveling, though. My teenagers bought me a Line 6 Pocket Pod as an early Father's Day gift, and for travel, it's perfect. It allows you to model 32 different amps, along with 16 effects. The modeling is very good, and it's pretty close to the real thing. Instead of dragging your vintage amp on the plane with you, you can stick the Pocket Pod in your bag (it's not much bigger than a tuner), along with your mic and cable, and you're good to go. You plug your headphones into the Pocket Pod, and instead of blowing away the big creepy dude in the room next to you, you can sound like you are - even with your amp at home.

The other nice thing you can do with this thing is you can plug your Mp3 player into it and play along with David's jam tracks. I use my iPhone. The problem is, the iPod app doesn't have the ability to slow down the music. For that, you can get an app named "Music Trainer" for 0.99 cents. The Amazing Slow Downer has an iPhone app as well, but it's not very stable, and there's a lot of complaints about it (plus, it's $15.00). With both Music Trainer and the Amazing Slow Downer, you unfortunately cannot use the songs in iTunes because of Apple's monopolistic tactics (I should stay out of political rants here). So for either of these apps, you need to download your jam tracks separately into the iPhone/iTouch. The way you do it with Music Trainer is pretty simple. You simply click on "import" in the app and then open a browser on your computer. The app will tell you an IP address to enter into your browser, and then it allows you to browse your music files and wirelessly transfer them directly to the iPhone/iTouch. It's very quick. The app works very well, and allows you also to change the pitch just like on the Amazing Slow Downer. Another couple of benefits are that you can loop the song, as well as provide a "count in" beat (for those of David's songs that start right off the bat).

So with the Pocket Pod and my iPhone with Music Trainer, I can plug in my mic and jam along with any of my music, hearing my harp as though it's thundering through a vintage Fender tweed amp with full reverb and delay.

I don't have any connection with either of these folks, but I am definitely a very satisfied traveling customer.

I'd be happy to add any details that you think I might have missed if you have questions on these two tools. You can find them both at:

http://line6.com/pocketpod/

http://www.santacruzintegration.com/MusicTrainer.html