So long story short, I’ve decided to attempt building a guitar by hand- mainly because I’m an idiot. It doesn’t have to be beautiful or well formed or even sound good, I just want to make my own. So… I went to Lowes, bought some wood, bought some tools, and got to work. Supplies: 1″x3″x4′ Poplar board. 1″x4″x2′ Poplar board. 1″x6″x2′ Poplar board. 1″x12″x2′ Poplar board. Tools: Coping saw 1/2″ chisel Hammer Miter box Surform shaver Note that the design I’m working on is lopsided-the bottom half is larger than the top half.

After trying to contact Ubisoft to provide them with feedback on Rocksmith (and receiving little more than an automated response,) I figured I might as well put my feedback here for all the good it’ll do. So here’s a list of things that I think they could improve. Why do I have to press 3 buttons to get into the game? Press A, Press Start, Press A… come on, I got 10 minutes to get my fix, and it takes 2 minutes to load up and get to a song.

So I’ve been pretty quiet since I hit 100k words- what’s been going on? Round of layoffs at work Friend diagnosed with cancer Another round of layoffs at work. Jackie became a pampered chef consultant Finances have been wiped out from christmas and getting her PC stuff off the ground. 10% paycut at work Guitar lessons are now done because no one can afford them. Have been reading Manuscript Makeover for ways to improve my book Decided to do an initial cleanup of the first draft of my script, then rewrite the outline before starting draft #2 started yet another opensource project- this time it’s a collection of Nagios Plugins.

So I’ve started teaching guitar again- This time the cash will go directly towards the G-400. As you can see on the sidebar, I’m now a hair closer. My new student is a coworker who is very excited to learn, so that makes things easy on several fronts (schedules, payment, attendance, etc). At this rate, I should have the guitar by next fall- sooner if I pick up another student (which is a possibility).

So some of you may know that I’ve been working on a second book- this one is music-based. Anyways, I have a few friends who are new to guitar and my book is more or less aimed at them, however some of them don’t know how to read tab- hence this post. So here’s the rundown: <br></br>e|-------------------------------------------<br></br>B|--------x----------------------------------<br></br>G|--------x-------5---5-7b9r7-5--------------<br></br>D|--------x--5h7---7--------------7~~~~------<br></br>A|---5/7--x----------------------------------<br></br>E|-------------------------------------------<br></br> The above is a sample of some tablature. Each of the 6 lines represents a string on the guitar, each number represents a fret on that string.

I’m the first to admit I’ve been slacking on my scales practice, mainly sticking to pentatonic (because I’m lazy). So while reading through my Scales and Modes book and I stumbled across something obvious, yet I’d never recognized. Each scale has a mode for each note in the scale- Major scale having 7, pentatonic scale having 5, etc. That I was remotely aware of, but didn’t think much of it.

So I’ve started on another book- this one however isn’t a novel, it’s a notebook for guitar students. The first two pages contain a layout of notes on the fretboard, commonly played chords (open, barred and power), pentatonic modes, and relationship of the guitar and tablature to standard musical notation. The rest of the book will follow a simple format, allowing notes, sketches and some notation on the left page and the right containing 6 tab staffs similar to this:

Doing another annual recap this year like I did last year. 2006 was a pretty rough year- move from DC Metro back to Grand Rapids, got a crappy job, found out jackie was pregnant, got laid off from crappy job, spent 3 months unemployed, and at the end of November was offered an awesome new job in Troy, MI (the other side of the state). Other than Ian, and the new job, the best good news is we finally have a decent couch- two of them, actually.

ok, having another guitarday- looks like thursday is the day of choice from now on. 6:30pm till whenever. Let me know if you’re interested and bring an instrument. Thursday, July 13th, 6:30PM There, now you know.

Hrm… I think I’ll try something new this year. As some of you know, 12/31 is my birthday, and I’m 26 now. That makes it twice as good to look back on my life and reflect. So what’s changed? Quite a bit. I always had a goal growing up, that when I was 25, it would be the one of the best years of my life. Looking back, I think that it very well could be.

One thing I’ve been putting off for years was learning electronics. Like everything else, I’m not immediately good at it, but I think with persistence I’ll learn the basics and hopefully become competent. I picked up an Electronics Demystified book about 3 months ago and read the first chapter; I decided to put off reading more until I had a chance to get my 130 in one electronics kit that I got when I was younger.

So jackie and I did our christmas stuff early (sorta- we’re still trying to pick out a monitor for her) and I got a Pod XT Live. My friend Ryan told me about his brother’s Pod way back when I started playing guitar, and it seemed pretty cool. I’ve wanted one ever since. What’s it do? it models certain amplifiers, stompboxes and setups, effectively emulating thousands of dollars of equipment I could never afford.