I just started a new blog to talk specifically about music and being a musician. Check it out at

http://ds-al-coda.blogspot.com/

I called it DS al Coda, because in music the DS as Coda gives us direction where to go next. Not surprisingly, where to go next is something that faces a lot of us who aspire to be the best musician we can be. So stop on by and check it out. Subscribe with your rss reader or whatever. Just enjoy and feel free to comment. I want to hear your opinions on the topics I write as well.

Johnny

The Pedalboard planner blog is now up at

Pedalboard Planner now has an official sponsor. WE are proudly brought to you by Pedaltrain. Pedaltrain makes some great pedalboards, and now you can use pedalboard planner to see how your effects will fit on a Pedaltrain pedalboard.

My wife has a new blog that she just started to chronicle her journey to becoming a doctor. The only difference is that she is starting in her 30's rather than her teens. So if you want some light hearted commentary on her new journey of education as well as some great stories of what it's like going back to the same college you graduated from a decade earlier, check it out at thirtysomething pre-med.

In trying to figure out exactly how to set up my pedalboard and figure out what size board I could use (and still have room to grow) I wanted a program that would let me pull in the pedals I use, and move them around on the screen. So I've begun a little project called Pedalboard Planner. It uses HTML canvas (no Internet Explorer at the moment, but I'm working on that.) Check it out

I came across a great resource for all you guitarists out there. It's called Riff of the Week. It is a weekly vidcast by a guy named Dave Weiner. Dave is the 'other' guitarist for Steve Vai's band. Dave takes a few minutes each week to show a cool riff, technique or tonal idea. He also has put up a section on his website with a bunch of background tracks for practicing improvisation. They range in style from Jazz to Metal, in several different keys and modal tonalities. Like I said, a great resource. So, check it out at http://www.riffoftheweek.com

You would create a text file that looked something like this.

\version "2.13.3"
\score {

 \relative c' { c4 d e f  e d g a  c,8 d e f e d g a  c d e f e d g a }
}

Now before you freak out that this is impossible, lets break it down. The first line is simply the version of lilypond you are using. The next line is the begining of a new score. Then a line of notes. The \relative c' means that the notes are relative to middle C. Then as you write in notes it goes to the nearest pitched note. If you want to force it up or down an octave you use an apostrophe or a comma and you add a number behind notes to indicate their duration. the same duration is used on subsequent notes until a new duration is given.

\header {
title = "Practice Etude #1"
composer = "Johnny Matthews (1976-)"
}
\version "2.13.3"
melody =  { c4 d e f  e d g a  c,8 d e f e d g a  c d e f e d g a }
\score {
<<  \new Staff \relative c { 

   \clef "treble_8"  

  \melody  

 } 

 \new TabStaff \relative c {  

  \set TabStaff.minimumFret = #0

     \melody

   }

>>
}
\score {
<<

  \new Staff \relative c { 

   \clef "treble_8"

    \melody

   }

  \new TabStaff \relative c {

    \set TabStaff.minimumFret = #5 

    \melody 

  }

>>

}

and here is the result:

As you can see I've reused the melody 4 times, 2 times in music and 2 times in TAB. I altered the second line of TAB to have a minimum fret of 5. Lilypond does the fingering for me. You can override the fingering if you really want to. The possibilities are really quite extreme. There are tons of features and settings. From articulations, chords names, chord charts, lyrics, altered note heads (for percussion notation), we have barely scratched the surface here.

Stay tuned for some more in depth tutorials on using Lilypond.