The instrument: Baldwin Acrosonic, possibly 1950-s era. {compare} Acquired December 2004 in preparation for my parents vacating the childhood home. At the time, Hilary wanted it more than I did.
The backup: Roland EP-70 {compare} Purchased from E-bay for like $325 from Mr. John Hixson in September 2005 (in time for my birthday!). Meant to lug around for hootenannies and infrequently played.

• Chord House's Piano Room -- probably the best of the multitude of online interactive chord chart makers for piano. Not only do they cover every single esoteric chord you've never heard of, they've also got a MIDI interface so you can hear what the hell the thing is supposed to sound like.
• The Piano Technician's Guild -- pianos are a pain in the ass to tune which makes it a good and reasonable thing that they don't go out of tune all that often. The pros say you should go with a Guild tuner since to become a registered technician they've got to be moderately trained and tested which they claim is not something you can say about a guy who just shows up at your house with a set of wrenches. I dunno how true that is, but its maybe worth a little work for a little peace of mind. They've got a location-based search to help you find someone. I use Dale Fox out of North Highlands. A good guy and mighty reasonable to deal with.
• Chord Symbol Notation Basics -- I guess this will go here for now, but knowing what those weird chord notations are supposed to denote is sometimes not the easiest, especially stuff like A/C#
• Reverse chord finder for piano.

The instrument: An inspirationally black-and-pearl Stradavox brand accordion purchased off the E-Bay. I'm horrified to admit that I don't play this one much. It was purchased with the idea that it would replace the EP-7 as a "traveling piano", but the thing is nearly as heavy to lift and isn't quite as friendly an instrument to just noodle with -- I mean, you've got to put the damned thing on. A decent sounding instrument and one with lots of potential if I would ever stopped buying other instruments to also play.

• The Adventures Of Accordion Guy -- okay, so he lives in Canada -- don't let that make you hate him. Not only is he a blogger, he's a really long-standing blogger who got some fame back when the game was just a handful of knuckleheads. I know, man, I was there....

The instrument: A concert Lanikai uke in mahogany, purchased on my honeymoon in June of 2006. I'd been tinkling with the idea of getting one back when in March of that year and decided to get the accordion instead since there's a really wild range of different ukes out there and without playing them you won't know if you get a dud or not.

• 'Ukelele' World -- strangely they misspell "ukulele" but they were originally "ukeworld.com", so maybe they were a bit late in getting the correct spelling. By the by, it's pronounced u-ku-le-le. Get it right, peoples.
• Alligator Boogaloo's Ukulele Boogaloo -- a large amount of nice uke arrangements with handy chord diagrams to make learning the easy. Strangely, they don't have "Mele Kalikimaka..."
• Kolohe Songbook -- a strange, at times broken site hosted on a Huntington Beach business card printer's website, there are nonetheless a number of old classics there in PDF format (and yes, "Mele Kalikimaka").
• Strumming Patterns for The Ukulele -- with audio samples.
• The Shut-Ins, local (kind-of) band making good-time music with a ukulele. Also some bad-times music. Lots of cheating, drinking, broken hearts and other subjects near and dear to the hearts of those somewhere between the west coast and our pacific island neighbors.

The instrument: A "Little Martin" purchased at the Fifth String in November 2006. Lori had one of these and I really liked its size -- well within the reasonable definition of portable -- and its surprisingly good and loud sound. I'd been dorking around with Hilary's roundback Epiphone after deciding that while I really preferred my other instruments to the guitar, there's nothing like picking up a stray instrument that was just laying around as guitars seem to often do. After reaching a certain proficiency, however, it seemed reasonable to have one of these guys of my own to trot down the street to the train station.

• Chord House's Guitar Room -- All the chord-lookup-with-MIDI and charts in standard form.
• ChordFind -- about the same, though their chords are laid out over a fretboard, which might help those with a conceptual gap problem. I actually kind of like this layout better but their MIDI interface here kind of sucks -- it takes you off-page.
• Reverse Chord Finder, especially cool for guitars since it seems so damned easy to find something nice to play but otherwise know nothing about it.

The instrument: A semi-cheesy octave mandolin my wife bought me for Christmas 2006, rounding out a very instrument-intensive year. I'd been noodling with an octave mandolin over at my boss's house for some time as it was generally unloved and seemed like a fun toy. After digging into a chord book and extracting a song in the course of an evening, I was hooked and figured I'd borrow it for a "semester loan" or some such. A great little buzzsaw of an instrument and they are priced mighty-nice.

• Two-fingered Mandolin Chords, because laziness is beautiful and its a great instrument that way.

Odd little doohickies that are perhaps linkworthy but not really tied to any instrument.

• MuseOn, a visualizer for Windows Media Player that displays the chords for the music you are listening to (or at least guesses).
• Scala, a very unusual tool that one can use to construct, examine and otherwise experiment with scales. Kind of funky in that "university software written by insane geniuses" kind of way.

Maybe you only -think- you aren't playing music right now: there are a few subjects in life that some people decide somehow are out of their grasp and music is one of those. Unlike other areas of life you've decided you can't participate in, chance are that you do make some sort of music and are therefore a musician. Look below to see if you're showing latent skills and how you can perhaps improve your musicianship while you're at it.

• Singing along with the radio -- oh yeah, we all do it. You can figure out your "range" -- your ability to reach certain notes and where your voice naturally likes to sit. We can't all be heavy metal wailers or gravelly voiced crooners and acceptance of this is key. Also, be sure to listen to the notes you are making compared to the notes that you should be playing. The only thing worse than a singer who doesn't know when not to reach for a note is one who doesn't know where the note is.
• Drumming on any surface -- clap your hands and say yeah! Seriously, if you come across a bunch of musicians and wanted to join in, clapping in time is almost never inappropriate. Keeping regular time is a difficult thing and usually the first function of music. If you know where the beat is then you're playing hands, man. Just remember to keep...the...beat..right...on......time?
• Listening to Johnny Cash -- Johnny Cash, you say. Is he cool? Oh baby, yes he is cool. Benefits of Johnny Cash's music: nobody can bad mouth you for listening to it (because it's Johnny fucking Cash) and he goes through some really fundamental three chord songs, the three chords being fairly interchangeable with another three chords of your choosing if the first three chords aren't working.

Uh, yeah, its what I do for a living so of course I'm going to apply it when I can

• GD::Tab::Ukulele -- create graphical tabs for the uke in perl
• Music::Image::Chord -- create graphical tabs for the guitar in perl
• Music::Chord::Namer -- extrapolate chord names from notes (in perl)