Saturday 28 February 2009

The Knobson - the guitar with knobs on!


I will be taking a short break from Vinux development over the next four weeks, although I will still be experimenting and offering support and advice. This is because I have invented a Tactile Acoustic Guitar, which has a series of tactile markers on the rear of the neck to allow blind and partially sighted users to know which fret their fingers are on! It is aimed at beginners and is tuned to an open G chord or 'Spanish tuning' to allow for a very fast learning curve which allows people to learn and play chords and scales in a matter of hours, songs and melodies in a few days or weeks! I have already made four of the guitars and had a very positive response from people who have tried them. Over the next four weeks I will be writing and recording an instructional CD and an accompanying large print and braille manual which will be supplied with the guitar. This is a purely commercial venture which the college I work for wants me to pursue and I may have to do a bit of travelling to do workshops and demonstrations. If it is successful we may also release an electric version at sometime in the future! This temporary change of focus will also be very theraputic after spending many weeks preparing the 1.3 and 1.31 releases. In the meantime I hope you have fun with Vinux and keep me up to date with any problems or solutions you discover.