Make a ukulele sound like a guitar (almost)

Those of us who have attempted (rather unsuccessfully) to learn guitar and ended up learning the ukulele sometimes miss the “fuller” sound of the guitar, which makes it appropriate for sadder songs, just to mention one possibility. The re-entrant high-G tuning of most ukuleles doesn’t help much in this regard, but if you are, say, in a gig situation where you are going to amp the instrument anyway, there’s an inexpensive solution that will supply the “missing strings” without having to change your uke or your playing style at all. It’s called an “octaver pedal.” Read More

At last! The pretty good MIDI guitar

I have this thing for making a guitar sound like something different, like a piano, or a marimba. Those instruments produce short, “plucky” sounds like a guitar, so why not? One way to achieve this is to output MIDI instructions from a guitar, which has been attempted with rather limited success ever since MIDI was invented. Well, I’m happy to report that the wait might be over for the majority of us guitar (or ukulele) hacks. It’s a gizmo called “TriplePlay Connect,” and you can get it for under two hundred bucks. In this article, I make a pretty thorough review of it, including how to connect it for the quickest best results. Read More

Fiction section started

You may not know this, but prgomez.com began as a promotion website for my fiction, under pen name PR Gomez. This aspect got rather buried over time, but it’s back. You’ll find a FICTION button on the header, which will take you to a sort of blog where you can download my fiction in epub, pdf, and kindle formats, so you can read it comfortably on your computer, tablet, or smart phone. I’m starting with some short fiction entirely for free. I hope you enjoy it and pass the word to others.

Here’s the link to the first item: a short-short story about what might happen to you when you click “I accept” on a software installation without reading the fine print.

 

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