1. Will it run under Ubuntu?
   That’s kind of paramount for me…
2. 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…

Lazy Day
[iframe http://www.youtube.com/embed/a9W1xZGYh4w 425 349]
(I love the whistling part :)

Just the way you are
[iframe http://www.youtube.com/embed/39gs4hEGQt8 425 349]
Cool playing with cassette tape!

Grenade
[iframe http://www.youtube.com/embed/0ZVXCM6R1-U 560 349]
I like the dragging of the piano all the way. I expected something to happen at the bridge though. I don’t really like the song. In my defense: it was shown often on MTV a few months ago during my evening exercises in the gym (video, no sound) :)

edit: fixed the embedding (doh: don’t embed the youtube url directly, change the “/watch?v=” part to “/embed/” ).

PS: This version may be more appropriate — only guitar and Melissa. Failing a Melissa here, I will work on getting the guitar part sounding more reminiscent of this.

Anyway, Thin Lizzy. It was seriously cool. And the folk attending Thin Lizzy concerts in the Rockhal @ Esch are seriously non-animate. But we had a great time. And Mat had this seriously content smile upon his face. Well, after Shane + Pogues and Thin Lizzy, he could hardly ask for more. Come to think of it, neither can I. Ozzy would be nice though. Oh, wait.

ps: feel free to remind me that sometimes, you should let old memories rest ;-)

As some of you may know, I took my cheap-ass guitar with me during the Christmas holidays. Dragged it with me wherever I went, to annoyance of some and enjoyment of some others. Apologies to the former and blush and bow to the latter, by the way.

I played a lot. A lotlot, at that. Especially when I visited Ward and Sanne, and Sanne had a book with songs+chords. Turns out I’m still bad at playing guitar, but I do get triggered. That was the first time anyone ever tried singing to my playing — it was incredibly cool (although also really scary in a way because I was afraid to mess up playing :).

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.

That was, until I picked up the steel-string guitar. Uh-oh. I tried to play my favourite quick-picking tune (the first few notes of GnR’s “Civil War”, basically fingerpicking Em and G), and while I had seriously improved my skill at doing so profoundly over the holidays on the cheap-ass guitar, now I found to my horror: I sucked.

We played for about an hour. I almost dropped the pick twice, I/my fingertips needed a break (talk about played it till my fingers blared…), and afterwards I still didn’t have the control I knew I should have. It was my due, dammit!

So I’ve been playing a bit more since. I’m trying to play a bit mornings and evenings, play through a couple of chords and some fingerpicking. Nothing fancy, just to get my fingers used once again to the feel of the steel strings. It’s getting better, but still nowhere near as good as the nylon strings.

Of course there is a plus side to this: this means that the converse also holds. Playing a nylon string is EEEEE-ZZZZZZ compared to playing a steel string. So next time I happen to come over carrying a guitar, rest assured: it’ll sound okay.

My guitar teacher came up with that version of the song. I vaguely recall the original. This is probably a better version. Enjoy!