Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Main Objective of the DOS Amigos Homepage?

By means of this web site I want to provide free sheet music for classical guitar (solo, duo and ensemble) for the international classical guitar community. I have played almost every piece on this web site myself (I have been playing the guitar for well over thirty-five years now). ;-) Of course, this does not mean that I am able to play them perfectly without any preparation. During this time, I made my own sheet music versions without markings and fingerings (that’s policy) and I found it a good idea to share this collection.

Do you have more objectives with the site?

Yes, I do. Here are a few:

• Provide some information about my musical.
• Happy writing about my writing hobby: a pleasant mix of realistic fantasy in a fantastic reality!
• Publication of the reports of the Twente Guitar Festival. I was there on the 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 editions and I have quite a history there!
• Publication of the reports of the Guitar Festival Nordhorn. I was there on the 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 editions, and I am looking forward to the next sequel!
• Writing stories about the guitar CDs that I like.
• Placing recordings of pieces that I play on the net.
• Maintain links to guitar- and writing resources on the Internet.

How long does the DOS Amigos Homepage exist?

I started my first version of the DOS Amigos Homepage in 1998. Internet was new for me and a training course HTML for my job as technical author provided a perfect opportunity to play with new technology.

In those days, my Internet Service Provider granted me a full Five Megabytes web space from which the large email attachments were subtracted. It was a bit of squeezing to get the information in place.

Now I have 100 GB under an own domain name, which is quite sufficient for a large size website, enabling me to submit a lot of MP3s that make the sheet music heard. In the old days, I had to use MIDI files for that purpose, with worst case a thin can sound. Now it is better. Using the Sibelius sounds it at least remotely resembles a guitar sound.

Where does the name DOS Amigos come from?

The name comes from the guitar duo of the same name which consisted of the guitarist Hans Oosterwal and Mark de Gooijer, which is me, the undersigned. This duo existed for fifteen years until -very unfortunately- the end came in August 2007.

In the early days of the duo, Hans and I made our arrangements with the good old Musicator score writing software under Windows 3.11. Yes, the computer Stone Age: DOS and Windows! Consequently, we spent quite some time behind the screen, apart from our weekly rehearsals. The awareness of our fiddling with DOS plus the fact that we formed a musical duo based on mutual friendship were the reason for our name: DOS Amigos!

Despite the fact that the guitar duo is defunct, its name still is a household word because of this web site, which has attracted well over 200,000 visitors by now (each month an extra 4000 - 5000 visitors take a look at the site). That’s why I have continued the web site under the name DOS Amigos. Just the slogan has changed: DOS Amigos: dos Guitarras changed into DOS Amigos: La Guitarra y Yo! (Two Friends: The Guitar and I!). This is an apparent truth for me as a solo player and amateur guitarist.

How many times the DOS Amigos Homepage has been remade?

Well, it has been five times by now.

I started in 1998 with a frame layout. Those were the days that Netscape was the most popular browser, and its frame support was pretty good. In the end frames appeared a bit unpractical, it was almost impossible to obtain a consistent layout. So, I redesigned the site, using a fixed table layout. That worked much better.

After six years with the same good old layout, it started to itch a bit with me. I saw all those new technologies for web sites and became interested. I started to experiment with content management system driven websites under Joomla and Drupal, but found that I should make a less spectacular technological leap, using a table-less layout with Cascaded Style Sheet technology.

Of course, this was not without problems. Read the story about the browser quirks for some amusement!

Six years later (it looks like a 'six-year itch') I tried to rework the site again. Joomla failed me again, all this database stuff got out of reach for me, so I updated the site layout and graphics and included breadcrumb navigation. Quite a job with almost 2000 articles! Later on, I updated all MIDI files to MP3 files.

Now, in 2017, I decided to experiment with the WordPress platform with translation and management plugins. My provider supports it, so why not. I use a fixed theme that is clearly readable on computers, tablets and Smartphones. Yet I still have a personal approach in styling the pages. It was quite a job with about 3000 HTML pages and over 1300 media files.

Unfortunately, the Wordpress exercise appeared to be a dead end as a consequence of unreliable plugins that wrecked the site on updates. So, I am back to hard coding again. Well, anyway the layout is fresh now and the structure has changed for the better.