Songbird: A replacement for iTunes player

Hi all,

Am trying out an open source media player, Songbird. It is based on the Mozilla Firefox engine so I'm guessing there will be lesser security issues (iTunes have to be updated regularly for security bugs)... olus during installation I realised that Nullsoft is behind this player too... for those uninitiated, Nullsoft's the company behind the long forgotten Winamp that helped kickstart the mp3 revoution...

Songbird installer >> "Pigeon egg"

Songbird shortcut >> "Pretty Nightingale"

Songbird in full flight >> "Media Player cum Browser"

An interesting feature of the player's is its ability to find media files links (audio & video). The picture below illustrates me surfing GuitarTalk using the inbuilt browser and it automatically shows the downloadable file links on my blog! Cool! :)

Seeing is believing... for more information, watch this screencast. :)

Blessings,
GuitarTalk

Tags: songbird, itunes, media player

Johnny Hiland - Blind Guy Made Chicken Pickin' Good

Hi all,

I've read about Johnny Hiland in guitar magazines. He seemed to be much talked about as an awesome country guitarist.

Read about him again in a online article and realised some inspiring facts about him...

1. He's blind!
2. Musical prodigy
3. Studied to be a teacher but switched to music career later on.
4. Part time motivational speaker
5. Wrote & illustrated a children's book called "Tuff the Special Bear"
6. Released Chickin' Pickin' Volume 1 and Strictly Rhythm DVDs
7. Touring the globe with Johnny Hiland Trio

All these while being handicapped! An awesome testimony of never letting anything put you down... it is in the midst of bad circumstances that we have the opportunity to emerge victorious! :)

Here's a video of him playing his PRS signature guitar. Enjoy! :)



Blessings,
GuitarTalk

Tags: johnny hiland, guitarist, prs, video

Count on me JBBB...

Hi all,

It was quite an eventful day for me on the Hollabackcrew finals coz besides getting to see Click Five in person (unfortunately I didn't bring any camera so no pictures) but also had to rush off to Johore Bahru for a short Trio performance at Boys Bridgade thanksgiving dinner.

The first thing I noticed about the dinner was the MC who was very bold and confident in his delivery and not to mention the singer on stage who belted out fine classic tunes with style (love his pitching). It wasn't till after the whole event when our host brought us to a cafe to enjoy some snacks when I found out that the MC is actually King Kong in Phua Chu Kang! No wonder he looked ao familiar... I was even more amazed when I was told that the wonderful singer's Clement Chow who is the composer and singer of Count On Me Singapore! For those of you living in the days when MediaCorp was SBC will remember that song that we sang our hearts out during national days! What an honour and priviledge to meet the man himself too! Spoke to both of them and they were really friendly and have such a sanguine personality. Couldn't in my life imagined a mr. funnyman like Clement to wirte such a touching song...

Anyways here's a pic that I took with them both at the cafe.

Clement Chow, myself & Charlie aka "King Kong"

Blessings,
GuitarTalk

Tags: trio, boys bridgade, pck, clement chow, count on me singapore

PFF test part 3... this time playing with tags... ;)

Hi all,

I've created this using Performancing plugin for Firefox... looks good... allows me to post very easily minus all the hassles of logging into Blogger... it even supports del.icio.us tagging! That's way cool and I'm trying the tagging in this post! ;) Gee if this goes on think I'm gonna be a full fledge Firefox convert! :p

Blessings,
GuitarTalk

Tags: performancing, firefox

powered by performancing firefox

Testing Performancing for Firefox (PFF) part 2

Testing image drag & drop...

The images below are dragged and dropped into my Performancing browser from their website

Testing out Performancing for Firefox

Testing testing....

I'm blogging from a Firefox plugin. :)

Progressive rock videos

Hi all,

Yup it's been quite some time since I've posted here regularly! Well good news is I'm finishing most of my performance commitments for this half of the year so I'll be able to blog more! :)

In this post I shall open up world of "Progressive rock" to my readers. As the name of the genre suggest, it's rock with a twist >> progressive movements/cadences throughout the songs. My first contact with this genre was thru the long-defunct "Rock, Rip & Roll" hosted by then 98.7FM DJ Anne Neo. She was like the only rock chick that I knew of then. Here's a GuitarTalk salute to her for shaping my sonic tastes! :)

Anyway as I was saying, it was during that show that I got to know about THE KINGS OF PROGRESSIVE ROCK "DREAM THEATER". Just ask any prog rock fans and if they don't know them >> they are fakes! And so Anne Neo played "Pull Me Under" on radio and I had my little tape recorder on standby to record any great tracks on that show. Those were the days... the only cheap and viable way for me to know about great music... these days we're so blessed with audio downloads, videos, google, etc.

And thanks to Google video, I've managed to catch the MTV of "Pull Me Under"! Man, this song still gives me the chills after all these years! It's so early nineties! And the reason why I was looking for that video was because I did a search for "Sonata Arctica" (Dream Theater's predecessors) videos...

After watching these videos, I made some observations:

- Though both videos are made a musical generation apart, they're theme and videography didn't really changed much.
- What's with prog rock and ghostly themes???
- They always feature the vocalists whining away first and climaxed with the guitarists showing off their chops.
- Long hair and more long hairs!
- Double bass for drums is a must!

I think though these guys makes great music, they aren't backed up with a great budget for a great video for the masses... that's just my 5 cents... heh... Catch their videos below and judge for yourselves! :)

Dream Theater:


Sonata Arctica:


P.s. Many thanks to Alvin and my larling Angie for letting me listen to S.A.'s version of "Wing Beneath My Wings"! :)

Blessings,
GuitarTalk

Tags: progressive rock, dream theater, sonata arctica, video, pull me under,
wolf & raven

May Day Concert 2006 poster

Hi all,

I came back home one day and my dad asked me if the Kelly Poon's show that my group Trio's playing in is part of the May Day Concert. I replied, "Should be" and he took out a poster of the concert and showed me Kelly Poon's pic. I remembered that we as Trio had to go for a photoshoot for the show which will be used in posters so I wasted no time and scanned through the poster and saw my group in it! The funny thing is that my dad didn't even noticed it before as he probably was distracted by all the big names in the posters... hahaha....


This picture of us for this poster was probably taken from here...


Here are more fantabulous pix that could have been on it... Thanks Michael for the wonderful shots! You're the man!






Blessings,
GuitarTalk

Tags: may_day_concert, trio, poster

Hollaback Crew 98.7 interview

Hi all,

Wanted to share with all of you an interview that some of us from my Hollaback team Adestra did at 98.7FM after our auditions. We went there not knowing that it's gonna be on the airwaves 'live'...

Was an interesting experience as I had never seen how radio studios looked like... As it turns out, all the MediaCorp owned stations are nothing more than just bedroom sized studios that are located side by side. Thus while walking to the 98.7 studios I actually got to see local DJs like Flying Dutchman from Class 95 doing their mornging shows! They were pretty friendly too as they waved a big 'hihi' to us as we walked by...

The studio for 98.7 was very homely with its mini fridge, red sofa, curtains, shelves and even a guitar. I like the very relax atmosphere that the DJs had doing their work. No wonder they could sound so bright and cheery on air!


Justin aka 'Muttons', myself & Vernon A.

Anyways so there we were talking away with 98.7 Morning Show with Justin 'Mutton' & Vernon A. when they asked us during the interval to do some impromptu thingey. So we took out a water bottle, dustin bin and a guitar in the studio and whipped up a song that my group Trio had written some time ago... Thank God for that! Heh...

Here's the audio except of the interview. Enjoy! :)

Click on link to play in Windows Media Player or right click to download:

Blessings,
GuitarTalk

Tags: hollaback_crew, 98.7fm, interview, trio, audio

Hollaback Crew

Hi all,

As said in my update, I'll be doing more post on the Hollaback Crew competition. It's quite a big event as can be seen from the sponsors of this event!


Did a radio interview on 98.7 after the auditions. Interesting experience. Will do a post on it once I get my hands on the photos that I took there. In the meantime, check out the rountine that we churned out last min for the auditions below.

My team Adastra at Hollaback Crew auditions

The semi finals was at the Padang. The finals for the competitions will be at the Indoor Stadium. Apparently MTV will be filming the event! What's more ClickFive will be at the event too and the winner gets to play with them! Cool!!! :)


Click on image to watch Click Five's "Catch Your Wave"

God bless,
GuitarTalk

Tags: hollaback_crew, adastra, click_five, video

Updates: 3rd April 2006

Hi all,

Sorry for the lack of posts. Once again I'm having a busy bout so decided to tend to more important stuffs. So what have I been busy with? The list are as follows:

1. Web development
Am creating a website from scratch. Still learning all the hard coding though so alot of things to learn!

2. Hollaback Crew
This is an inaugural competition organised by 98.7FM. The basic idea is to have a group that consist of dancers, cheerleaders, rappers and musicians >>> rojak. My team got into the finals which is gonna be held at indoor stadium! First prize of $10000 up for grabs! So must understand why I'm concentrating on this yah? ;)

3. Kelly Poon
My group Trio was asked by MediaCorp to play with Project SuperStar 1st runnerup Kelly Poon. Gonna play the first two tracks of her just released album at the Padang on the 30th April. Exciting!

4. Istana
Trio's been asked to play at the Istana in the month of May too. Might be playing in front of our President! What's more I've never been to the Istana before! Double cool! :)

That's all for now. Will update ya more, especially on the HollabackCrew competition! :)

God bless,
GuitarTalk