Learn

The lessons change your rig while they explain it

Most explanations of a signal chain are a diagram and a paragraph. This one reaches into your rig and moves things, then hands you the guitar back so you can hear what it did. There are two courses: one on how a rig works, one on playing.

Course one

Your Rig, Explained

Ten lessons on why a rig is built the way it is — taught entirely with RigShed’s own boxes, which turns out to be clearer as well as being the only way to teach it without naming other people’s gear.

The distinctive part is that each lesson changes your rig so you can hear the difference rather than read about it. Lesson five moves the drive to the far side of the amp — a rewiring measured at 74.5% different from the standard order — and lets you play through both, back to back, before putting it back.

No jargon is used before it has been explained in plain words. A beginner does not know what “gain staging” means and should not have to in order to start.

The first 5 lessons are free. The remaining 5 come with Pro.

  1. 1 What a rig is Free
  2. 2 The amp is the voice Free
  3. 3 The cab makes it listenable Free
  4. 4 Where dirt comes from Free
  5. 5 Why the drive goes first Free
  6. 6 The tidying-up boxes go first
  7. 7 EQ: before or after?
  8. 8 Modulation after the amp
  9. 9 Echoes go last
  10. 10 Breaking the rules on purpose

Course two

Eight grades, scored by ear

The app listens through the pitch detector and marks what you played

  1. 1 One shape, one position
  2. 2 The same shape, in threes
  3. 3 The relative major
  4. 4 The blues note
  5. 5 The second box
  6. 6 Joining the boxes
  7. 7 Seven notes
  8. 8 Command

Eight grades built from scales and patterns rather than typed-out note data, which is why the course covers the neck without becoming a data-entry project. You play; the app listens through the same pitch detector that drives the tuner and marks what actually came out.

Grade 6 — joining the boxes — is the hardest and the one that pays most. It is the point at which a player stops being someone who knows a shape and becomes someone who can move.

Two things it cannot do

The app hears pitch, not which string a note came from. Position is shown on the fretboard diagram so you can follow the shape, but only the notes are scored — play the right note in the wrong place and it will pass.

And the course stops at Grade 8. That is not a limit on you: past that point a pitch detector cannot honestly grade a player, and pretending otherwise would be marking work it cannot read.

You do not need to know any of this to plug in

The rig works out of the box, and fourteen factory presets cover most of what anyone starts with. The courses are there for the evening you want to know why the delay goes last.

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