Roadie Coach

£189

I think most people have wished they could play an instrument at one time or another over their life, however, the high price of lessons or even finding the time to do a lesson can be difficult. Therefore, for many of us, the dream of learning an instrument fades quickly with our youth and today we can barely hold a tune, how about picking up an instrument and playing something? This is where the Roadie Coach comes in as your personal music tutor, smart recorder and MIDI controller all at once. With just one innovative device, you can learn how to play a whole range of guitar and ukulele based instruments - and all from the comfort of your own home.

The Roadie Coach simply attaches to your instrument and instantly begins giving you vital feedback to learn how to play and get better with each session. To achieve this the Roadie Coach utilises its built-in mics to listen to you as you play and provides areas to improve on next time. Then, through the accompanying app, you can practice these techniques to learn in a more focused way as you would with a traditional music lesson. This can be anything from getting down a particularly hard chord pattern to having better control of your rhythm. All aspects can be assessed using the Roadie Coach to help you get better every day through guided lesson on both guitars and ukuleles. Plus, to help learn your instrument even more, the Roadie Coach comes packed with a large library of hundreds of songs spanning a great variety of genres so you’re sure to find at least a song or two that you’d like to practice with.

One of the main perks of the Roadie Coach is that it can be used across a range of guitars from electric, to acoustic or even classical, as well as for ukuleles. For this, the Roadie Coach helps you to tune your instrument directly through its hardware, as well as with the app for an always great sound. However, if you’re also hoping to step up your singing game alongside your instrumental capabilities, the Roadie Coach can also analyse your singing and provide feedback on this alongside your instrument feedback. This dual approach means that you never have to split lessons and can develop both talents alongside each other with the innovative help of the Roadie Coach. Plus, to listen back to your performance, you can even save and download the recordings from each session to store on your device utilising its 8GB of flash memory storage, and 250+ hours of 48KHz OPUS recordings. You can also record in WAV format, and so recordings can be saved and shared directly in mp3 format too! This allows you to track your progress, and even save new musical ideas for future projects should you fancy yourself as an original writer too.

The Roadie Coach also operates as a MIDI Control which can be connected with other devices or your computer for use with DAW or other audio apps. This allows even greater control over your Roadie Coach where you can assign specific MIDI inputs to produce whatever sound you desire. This is perfect for more experienced musicians, who want to continue to develop their skills and create new music using the Roadie Coach. Plus, the microphone sound levels can be adjusted for each recording, as well as the compression and equalizer for even greater control over your sound.

The Roadie Coach makes an ideal gift for someone just starting on their music journey who doesn’t want to spend hundreds on music sessions but still wants to add a musical skill to their repertoire. At under £200, the Roadie Coach is a perfect one-off purchase that can provide hours of learning at your own pace to develop a skill when it suits you and from the comfort of your own home. The entire device is backed by engineers, experienced musicians and music teachers, so you know that with one purchase you are gaining a vast array of expertise to help you learn a new talent completely on your own timeline.

Pros:

• Easy-to-navigate device which fits seamlessly onto your instrument (comes with a range of clamping arms and a ball-head attachment)
• Backed by the Roadie Coach App for real-time feedback and metric monitoring for motivation
• Affordable price point and easy to fit into busy schedule unlike traditional in-person music lessons
• Designed for both beginner and more advanced players to develop skills and record their own tunes

Cons:

• I do wish there was even more selection of songs available on the app to choose from, but more do seem to be being added each week