Townes Van ZandtHi Heartwood Beat Subscribers,

I hope you’re all enjoying February. I want to let you know about several updates I’ve made to the website.

Print or Save Function

One of the fun things about having a popular guitar instruction website is bumping into people (usually at guitar camp) who’ve printed music from my site to make songbooks. But I wince when I see what their web browsers did to my careful formatting—chords aren’t aligned with lyrics, margins are miniscule so that binder ring holes obliterate information, and there’s tacky-looking text at the top and bottom of every page.

I recently started doing some limited advertising on my site, and realize that this will make printed song pages even more cluttered. So I’ve added a “Print or Save” link to the top of every song page that links to the original MS Word document. Click the link, and either save the song on your hard drive or open it in Word and print it.

Now go make a songbook, if you don’t have one already. Print twenty of your favorite songs and keep them in a binder to bring to parties, camping trips, etc. Punch holes in both sides of each page, and orient them so that both pages (most songs are two pages long) face one other. No more frantic page flips to take the oomph out of your orgasmic pre-choruses!

Better yet, make two or three binders so that other musicians can get in on the fun, page numbers and a table of contents for easy navigation, and a stack of lyric sheets for singers (paste all songs into one document and delete all guitar information, just leaving lyrics). And when it’s time to play, don’t forget music stands and light sources (headlamps work well) if your eyes are like mine.

All the songs can be found on my Free Guitar Chords page.

And if you don’t have MS Word, or have an old version that won’t read your song file, you don’t have to go out and buy it. Bill Gates will still be able to pay his mortgage if you use this great free online service that converts Word docs to PDF docs (chances are good you have Adobe Acrobat, which reads PDF’s). Download song, convert, and print.

Guitar Pro

For the past few years, I’ve been using the tablature editor/player Guitar Pro to teach myself new songs and write out music for my students when chord charts don’t show enough detail. Being able to play back written music so that you can hear how it’s supposed to sound makes learning so much more efficient. If you’re interested in learning how to pick individual notes, add a cool riff to your repertoire, or learn your first guitar solo, Guitar Pro makes it a lot easier. Experts and teachers love this program, too.

I’ve started adding links to Guitar Pro song files on some of my more popular song pages. Think of the chord charts as Cliff’s Notes, and the GP songs as the unabridged versions. I’ll also be supplementing all future blog guitar lessons with GP files.

Click hear to learn more about Guitar Pro and watch my little video tour of the program.

Chord Chart Update

I just added seven new songs. Hope you enjoy them. They are…

All-American Rejects – It Ends Tonight
David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust
Islands – Creeper
Pedro the Lion – I Am Always The One Who Calls
The Presidents – Naked and Famous
Bonnie Raitt – Love Has No Pride
Townes Van Zandt – Pancho and Lefty

All the songs can be found on my Free Guitar Chords page.

That’s it! Please feel free to leave comments, especially concerning the advertising I’ve added to the site. I want Heartwood Guitar to be a pleasant place to visit, so let me know if I’m harshing your mellow.

Enjoy the music,

Rob