First Step: Eartraining, Backing Tracks, and Chord Tones

My first week has been mostly groundwork - lots of busy, not a high yield of increasing musical ability. I'm still happy with the progress tho.
First I tried a bunch of different eartraining programs. I have gotten a few levels in with the trials of Auralia and EarMaster, both of which I like. I'm focusing on diatonic chord progressions at the moment, which are proving harder than I would have thought. Still, I've cleared a lot of levels so far, so maybe it's a matter of getting used to the softwares' square voicings.
Here's what I'm doing with the guitar: I'm relearning the fingerboard in GMT (General Musical Tuning - all 4ths like a bass), practicing one tone of one type of chord at a time, including the accompanying scale. Here I'm on the 5 of a dominant seventh sound, playing a chord voicing, a lick, and a scale pattern. I do arpeggios, too, but I didn't happen to catch any in this vid.




Oh, yeah - this also demonstrates a significant part of my week: settling on Ableton Live as the foundation for backing tracks. I set up a simple template and a MIDI control map using a foot controller that lets me make backing tracks pretty much instantly with a Roland GK-equipped guitar and a GI-20 interface. I was having audio problems on my desktop machine so I reinstalled Windows and kept it streamlined this time around.