Using computers for classical guitar music enthusiasts

If you ever work away at transcribing or composing your own classical, blues, folk or jazz guitar music you may have used something like powertab, guitarpro or tabledit. There are excellent sites to start you off in this direction such as 911tabs or mypowertabs. My latest finding is score recognition software. If you are like me you already have scanned in all your music sheets and are using a laptop to display them while you play. If turning the pages is a chore then something like the above music tab editors can play them quietly while you read the musioc line by line. Admittedly it takes extra skill, but when did that requirement ever hold back a dedicated aficionado? So if you search carefully there are quite a few demo versions of programs to get you started, then if they are useful you can procure them. Some tips are to change the read score to be an octave lower than written before exporting the music, sometimes as midi files. If they are midi you can easily import them into powertab. Voila you're there! Of course those experience ed know how much work they are taking on making a difficult score polished, however some pieces just lend themselves to this process with little extra editing required. Don't forget to visit all of us guitar enthusiasts in north wales if you are there on holiday - see the www.northwalesguitarcircle.co.uk for details of meetings. There are also some excellent folk and jazz clubs too. Watch out for random gigs at the Vaynol Park Estate, bands such as Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin look-alikes and serious classical musicians/singers have been there. Also visit the Beaumaris festival this year!