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With so many music editing programs and trainers, aspiring guitarists in this digital age are having an easier life reaching their musical goals as compared to the past few decades.

If you haven’t embrace the love of the internet in your musical life, it’s time to break out of your shell man! Here are some essential shareware/free programs that you can use to make your practice a whole lot easier!

Tablature editors - Guitar pro and power tab

Guitar tablatures have been around online for as long as the first day I picked up my guitar at 15, infact even longer. They have evolved from plain text format such as notepad and wordpad files to midi playback file format such as the popular guitar pro file format (.gp3, .gp4, .gp5) and power tablature format (.ptb)

While tablatures are still available in the primitive text format, I would recommend downloading the guitar pro or power tablature format:

• Notes and rhythm are better represented through the standard music notations of these programs and also through midi sounds to produce the melodies of the notes.

• You can even jam with a full band lineup as these files often contain tablatures to bass and drums of the song!

• It’s your guitar tuner and metronome combine! These tablature editors got it all covered to cover all your practising needs.

Powertab thumbnail

Guitar Pro Thumbnail

Click on the thumbnails above to view the tablature editors in action!

To view these files, you need a tablature editor program, guitar pro for guitar pro format tablatures and power tab for power tablature formats.

All in all, these editors are pretty powerful and it’s up to you play around to fully harness the features!

Song Tempo changers - Chronotron and Windows Media Player

These plugins allow you to change the tempo of song slow enough to hear every note clearly, perfect for use to transcribe songs with insanely fast solos. It’s even helped me in identifying chords too.

• Chronotron -

This plugin works on both your winamp and windows media player. It has the ability to slow down songs without changing its pitch. There’s also minimum noise and clarity is retained, allowing you to virtually hear every note possible. Give it a try!

The full version is available at 26 USD though.

• Windows media player -

Activate the play speed settings on your windows media player by going to “View” then select “Enchancements” then “Play speed settings”. It works the same as chronotron but sound quality is severely affected when it’s set at “0.5″. But still it

works well and notes are still generally audible, with a slight change in pitch. What’s more it’s free!

Yahoo widget - Guitar Tab search

This yahoo widget allows you to search for tabs via artist or

song name from popular guitar sites such as ultimate-guitar.com, guitartabs.com,911tabs.com, mx-tabs.net and olga.net and display the search results on your default web browser. Guitarists do not have to worry about their song sheets with this widget around.

To use it, simply download and install Yahoo widgets desktop and then install the Guitar tab search plugin.

Hope you budding guitarists benefit from this post! Rock on!

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Hi people! Sorry for the long hiatus. I just came back from my fishing trip in Tanjung Pinang organised by the good people at NTU (Nanyang Technological University) Angler’s Club. It was my first attempt at fishing and I thanked all the people at the Angler’s club for their advice and help during the trip.

It was a hell of a trip, well at least to a fishing newbie like me. I got seasick the first night, puking 3 times in a single night! In the end I spent the rest of the night lying at the deck of the ship as it’s more airy compared to the cabin. Well at least I managed to recover the next day, totally immune to sea sickness for the rest of the trip.

I would say I enjoyed the 2nd day better than my first. We caught bigger fishes on our 2nd day after changing boats (one of the engines of our first boat broke down). Joel and I also landed the biggest catch of our trip on the 2nd night!

Well to end this post, let me give some tips on managing sea sickness that I have learnt:

1. Drink ginger/ eat seasick pills before your trip.

Drinking ginger clears the ‘air’ or ‘wind’ in your stomach, making you less prone to grogginess when the boat rocks.  Eating seasick pills help too, but ensure you allow enough time for the pills to take effect after you eat them.

2. Eat a light meal and no oily food!

Avoid heavy meals and oily food if you do not want to puke all the way throughout your trip! I learnt this lesson the hard way as I think this was the main cause of my seasickness. Always eat just enough to curb your hunger before and during the trip.

3.Ration on snacks and dried food

Do stock up on dried food especially salty and sourish ones like sour cream chips. These were my life savers during my trip as it not only replenishes my body of the nutrient loss after vomitting but it also allow me to keep myself full.

4.Drink lots of water

This isn’t really a seasick tip but drinking enough water prevents you from succumbing to heat stroke and headaches.  I’m sure you won’t want a headache for your entire trip either right?

5. Avoid smoky, crampy areas!

It’s really important to get yourself enough air. Do yourself a favour and move away from the smog if you see your boat’s engine smoke clogging up the area.  If you stay there too long, your brain suffers from the lack of oxygen and your body might just well succumb to the rocky motion of the boat, leading to seasickness.

6. Move to open areas and look at the horizon

If you are seasick already, move to open, airy areas such as the deck and rest. Do not focus on the movement of the boat but look far and wide at the horizon. You can think about other things that you like to do etc, JUST NOT ON THE MOVEMENT OF YOUR BOAT!

Of course, puking it out may or may not improve your condition but generally your body will self adapt to the sea after a day or two. Enjoy!

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Progressive rock fans rejoice! Prog rock Gods Dream Theater are back with a 9th studio album, Systematic Chaos on June 5th!

Being a big fan of the band and especially John Petrucci, I felt very uneasy after the unusual long silence after their 20th anniversary world tour in 2006. Their contract with long time partner Elektra Records has also ended last year, and it seems like a start of a downturn for the band.

Finally the silence was broken with DT announcing the move to Road Runner records, who also manages Metal Gods Megadeth. And now with about 2 weeks away from the official release date, I just can’t wait to hear the whole album!

Impatient fans (like me) can just search for “systematic chaos” at youtube to watch a series of studio recordings and new tracks like “Constant motion” and “Dark eternal night”! Or you can head on to Dream Theater’s myspace page to check out a series of live footages and songs.

So far I have had a good impression of the album. Most might relate the dark and angry sound with their previous album, “Train of thought” but I also feel that they sound more aggressive, raw and big as compared to “Train of thought”.

Do preorder the special cd+dvd edition of Systematic chaos if you can!

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Here is another question

You, Con man and a honest man are in an island looking for treasure but you don’t know who is the honest man and con man and they are the one who know where the treasure is buried. You are given a question to ask anyone to determine their identity. That’s all, one question. What will be your question and how do you determine where is the treasure?

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Here is the question,

3 guys go to a restaurant to have their dinner which cost them $25, so each of them gives $10 to the waiter. They get back their change of $5 which is difficult to spilt among the 3 of them. They decided to give $2 to the waiter as tip, and $1 will be given back to each of them.

if $10 - 1 is $9, and $9 multiply by 3 will give you $27. $27 + $2 (tip for the waiter) = $29. Therefore, where did the $1 go? If you happen to know the answer, do comment on this. I would like to see different answers, btw there is only one answer.

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After practising for many hours, my eyes finally see the 3D Stereogram! It ain’t easy at all, and my eyes are hurting now while I’m typing this. What’s so interested about it? Stereographic vision allows us to perceive the world as 3D - objects look like they are in front of other objects. It’s really amazing to see 3D objects with your naked eyes, it seems like the objects are floating and it’s like you can feel and touch them.

To get started on 3D Stereogram, you may need a guide on how to do it. In order to see a clear 3D image, you need to focus and virtually see through it. As for me, the cross-eyed technique works the best for me, while others use different methods. It is always good to learn more about other techniques.

For a start, you should try a simple 3D Stereogram and focus on the dots, then you should be able to see the man. After you pass this, you can move on to try others.

Some 3D Stereograms you can try
1. Dolphins at play
2. 747
3. Hole in the my heart

Be patience and you should be able to do it.

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This French maestro with killer chops from Hell invaded the sunny shores of Singapore with his infectious and wacky tunes not long ago. I honestly admit that I do not much about his background, expect that he’s nicknamed the “French Bumblefoot” from friends.

Standing on the cosy stage at Timbre music bistro, he tried his best to make the guitar clinic as casual as possible and I have to apologise to him for the poor spontaenousity among the audience.

I was tickled to the bone with his wacky compositions, peppered with interesting sound effects (like using the wah-wah pedal to mimic human laughter) and his usage of unusual sounding intervals. I really like the track “Tapas Nocturne” and “the toy maker” alot as it really brings out the fun and joy of playing guitar to me.

Besides playing songs, he also showed us alot of other fun stuffs you can do on the guitar like the bass slapping technique. If you think this can only be done on the bass guitar, then you’re so wrong!

He also gave advice to budding guitar players among the crowd. One of the more interesting topic he talked about was on connecting your playing with your ideas by singing them out and learning how each intervals sound. Perhaps I should try this out too, but of course when it comes to fast killer shred licks, you can’t expect to sing them out…all those require intensive practice!

Anyway here is a photo that I took with the funny man himself! I will upload the videos I filmed on youtube and provide a link here asap to share with you guys out there. Meanwhile salivate on this photo til i upload the videos! Keep on rockin!

To know more about Christophe Godin and his works you can go visit his website

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Here is a good chance for you to earn up to $100/hr for testing their new features on Blogger, and what’s more, you don’t have to write any articles on your blog. It doesn’t matter where you are, as long as you have a computer and a good internet connection. Google researcher will call you while doing the testing of the prototype at the comfort of your preferred place.

To participate this, all you need to do is to sign up for blogger study.

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In Shoemoney’s blog, he mentioned that Kelly Felix (the Rich Jerk) is selling his business in order to avoid bankruptcy. It is quite saddening to hear that the Rich Jerk guru is no longer rich, he has been bragging about his way of making tons of money and of course, tons of attractive ladies.

Few years back, the first ebook I ever read was “The Rich Jerk” and I got it for free. :)  In his ebook, he doesn’t show u his methods on making money but he does show u what are the general ideas on how to make more money. I really opened up my mind on how a person could earn so much money! Kelly Felix may be a phony but it doesn’t matter. The ideas are there. Read it and find out more on yourself.

Based on the source from Shoemoney, The Rich Jerk is selling his website mainly because of

Kelly blew a ton of investors money buying advertising on Howard Stern and fake commercials/tv spots to make it look like he was rich.

In other words, he is in debts, tons of debts. In order to survive this ordeal, the Rich Jerk is selling his business for $8 millions which is listed for sales at Bizquest.com. My question is, can this be another aggressive marketing strategy? We shall wait and see.

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After a long wait, Starcraft 2 is announced… Finally! Watch the trailer and judge it yourself.

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