This isn’t a rant at all, but fulsome praise (and a shameless way to fill dead air my lazy-ass colleagues seem to be happy to leave of late… this means you).

I’ve played guitar off and on for many years, mostly acoustic guitar but some electric and classical from time to time. I’ve picked up a few tricks over those years, but by no stretch of the imagination am I God’s gift to the instrument. Looking for an arrangement of the classic Cole Porter tune “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” today, I stumbled across LickbyNeck.com is a really nice resource for learning guitar, mostly solo chord melody arrangements. Like many amateur guitarists who learned mostly by ear, I really suck at sight reading—I can do it, but VERY slowly—but LickbyNeck.com gives you a major leg up. They have:

  • A standalone Windows MIDI player with some nice learning features, e.g., looping, stepping and tempo alteration, that plays back the song with two bars’ worth of fingerings displayed as the notes play.
  • TABs as plain text for those songs.
  • WMA renderings of these songs.

(Fortunately for me, I have Parallels on my MacBook Pro.) Here is a video of their arrangement of Ev’ry Time, suggesting I have my work cut out for me:

So if you’re a guitarist (or want to learn), check it out.

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Special Feature: John Barrowman from Torchwood singing torch songs:

I think old John might want to keep his day job as Captain Jack Harkness ’cause Ella he ain’t….