White Christmas

It’s been 10 years since I did a guitar arrangement of this song, and it’s been a while since I last recorded anything. So finally here’s the “official” recording done by yours truly, 32Kbps low bitrate version since I want to save bandwidth. This is played on my electric, which I still can’t get the [...]

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chordcalc.py – initial release

I finally wrote that program to generate chord fingerings for any fretted instrument. It’s written in Python and meant to be run at the command-line. It’s quite a pleasure writing this in Python – I was surprised to finish writing the core algorithm in just one morning. Why another chord generation program when there are [...]

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Aching thumbs…and a new guitar!

Spent the entire afternoon sanding down a new saddle to install in my new classical guitar, a nice German spruce top with rosewood back and sides. It’s my first time making my own saddle, I suspect the sandpaper I got is still not rough enough. It took such a long time… My thumbs are now [...]

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Solo mandolin transcriptions

Uploaded my transcriptions of various classical mandolin pieces today, and here they are: Vivaldi’s Concerto in D major RV93 Vivaldi’s Mandolin Concerto in C major RV425 Vivaldi’s Concerto for two Mandolins in G major RV532 Beethoven’s Sonatina in C major Op44a I hope I got all the notes right. Now all I have to do [...]

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Scores from Japan

Just received the music scores I ordered from Amazon Japan. First time I tried ordering stuff from Japan. Amazon Japan has an English interface, but knowing Japanese helps a lot. The delivery was fast, very fast actually. I was used to waiting for almost a month for stuff from Amazon US to get to this [...]

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Scratched my guitar…

Arggh! Scratched the top of my flamenco guitar today while changing strings…stupid string slipped at the bridge under tension and whipped the top near the bridge along the way. Luckily it’s not my classical, but I still feel heart pain…oh well, what’s done is done. *sigh* Lesson learnt. Next time I’ll make sure I protect [...]

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DADGAD tuning is cool!

Enuf said. ^_^

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New toy for my electric guitar

I got my first guitar effects box – the Zoom G2 – not too long ago. I was actually eyeing the Behringer X-VAMP, but the shop told me they were not bringing in for the time being due to apparent QC issues with the model. Then I found out about this little baby which was [...]

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New addition to the ‘family’

Hoohoo, I bought my first electric guitar (and amp) today, a Washburn HB-30 and a Laney MXD 30, which were on sale this weekend. This guitar has an ES-335 style body, and tobacco sunburst finish. Made in China. Basically a beginner, no frills, semi-acoustic electric. I’ve been wanting to learn to play jazz for quite [...]

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Long way to go

It’s funny how you think you sound pretty decent when playing in your bedroom, study, whatever, and when you actually play (the guitar, that is) in front of people, everything just goes wrong. I need to go back to basics and lay down a solid foundation to build upon. I’m not a consistent player. And [...]

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