For my birthday (a while ago, I admit it :), Aga thought about getting me Guitar Pro – a piece of software that can help you with guitar playing. Somehow. The trial version on Aga’s laptop looked pretty cool, but I had two hesitations:
- Will it run under Ubuntu?
That’s kind of paramount for me… - Will I actually use it?
If people are going to spend money on my behalf and I get a say in it, I’d like to make sure they get value for money.
The first point is easily settled with a quick Google… except it isn’t. As in: the company says “yes”, plenty of users complain. Hmms. But, in the course of googling, I stumble upon TuxGuitar, a freeware project doing roughly similar things. (Note that development seems to have ceased 3 years ago…). Installed it, but: no sound. For a tablature editor (or any musical score editor, for that matter) lack of sound is of course the death knell. Tweaked around with the various settings, unplugged and replugged cables, but to no avail. Left it alone for a long while, and then realised I didn’t do the obvious: complain to google. I do, and indeed, the first hit solves my problems! Turns out Ubuntu doesn’t come with midi support by default. Makes sense, probably. Anyway, let’s add some!
In a nutshell: install TiMidity, a piece of software so finished it hasn’t been updated since before 2005 ;-). Then, run TuxGuitar, tweak the settings to use a TiMidity midi port as output, test, et voila! (In case of absence of Voila!, choose a different midi port and repeat).
Now to find out what this TuxGuitar thingy actually does…
Yesterday, we went to see Thin Lizzy. It was one of the few bands left on Mat’s todo list. Well, did we cross that one off! These guys rock! And don’t be fooled by 
Once in a while I reflect back to my early days in the AOR (the Eindhoven student bar. Those were the days… house/club/pop music/hakkuh in the main bar, and alternative music in the schuifbar. There’s one song I only recall having heard there, despite liking it a lot I never found it.
As some of you may know, I took one of my guitars (geez that sounds bad, let me restart…)
So when I came back, I figured that all this playing ought to have paid off a bit. Guitar Wednesday came, and I picked up the guitar confidently. Now, as I may or may not have mentioned, for various reasons, the guitar lessons were cancelled about 5 times in a row. And I had hardly played till the Christmas holidays. But with all the playing then, I figured I wouldn’t be in too bad a shape.