Adrian Holovaty
===============
Hi there! I’m a web developer and musician from Chicago, living in Amsterdam.
Blog posts
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Feb. 11, 2025 — [New EP: Layer Cake](/writing/layer-cake/)
Sept. 12, 2023 — [Announcing my first proper album](/writing/announcing-melodic-guitar-music/)
Dec. 1, 2022 — [Adventures in generating music via ChatGPT text prompts](/writing/chatgpt-music-generation/)
[Archive](/writing/) | [Greatest hits](/writing/greatest-hits/) | [RSS](/rss/)
My day job: Soundslice
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I founded [Soundslice](https://www.soundslice.com/), quite possibly the best tool for learning a piece of music! [Check out my channel](https://www.soundslice.com/users/adrian/) to get a sense of it.
I’ve given a few presentations about it, including [an origin story at the XOXO Festival](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fmU1ZXNov8) and [this behind-the-scenes tech talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH5EtQge_Bg).
It has a lot of cool technical stuff I’m proud of, such as [music rendering that automatically fits your device](https://www.soundslice.com/help/en/player/basic/100/resizing-the-player/), a full-featured [web-based sheet music editor](https://www.soundslice.com/notation-editor/) and an [“optical music recognition” system](https://www.soundslice.com/sheet-music-scanner/) that can figure out the notes from a photograph or PDF. And there’s more to come — it’ll never be finished. :-)
Albums
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Give these a listen if you like melodies, or guitars, or music:
[](/layer-cake/)[**Layer Cake**](/layer-cake/) (2025): My take on modern gypsy jazz.
[](/melodic-guitar-music/)[**Melodic Guitar Music**](/melodic-guitar-music/) (2023). 10 original guitar tunes.
W3C Music Notation Community Group
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I’m one of three co-chairs of the [W3C Music Notation Community Group](https://www.w3.org/community/music-notation/), which develops and maintains specifications for notated music.
My focus is [MNX](https://w3c.github.io/mnx/docs/), which we hope will be the next generation format for encoding music notation digitally.
Music performance
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I’m a guitarist who plays fingerstyle and gypsy-jazz music. I’ve been [posting YouTube videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/adrianholovaty) since 2007.
The videos are categorized for you here: [multitracks](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA61401C331C7A1FB), [fingerstyle](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQiIMsmpIK3TNCHKH6ifPAJWabKrYEVzb), [Beatles](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5E9C349DF354A54B), [gypsy jazz](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL563285DE146F61F7).
[The YouTube homepage once featured](/writing/youtube-homepage/) my [acoustic cover of the MacGyver theme](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1CZ7yCgkOM). Never did figure out why. My [Mario 2 gypsy-jazz video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6ti5f-LHp4) has also made the rounds.
I’ve gotten to play with some fantastic musicians over the years, and some of the highlights are in [Adrian plays with other people](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQiIMsmpIK3Re3YPB_c7vBRgZkJPvLyhr).
Occasionally I play live throughout Amsterdam. [Here’s a nicely produced video of the band](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rHbqr706rw).
Music teaching
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Back when I lived in Chicago, I taught a few weekly gypsy-jazz classes at the [Old Town School Of Folk Music](https://oldtownschool.org/).
I’ve been on the faculty at the [Django in June](https://djangoinjune.com/) instructional camp seven times. (And last I checked, there’s a big photo of my back on the homepage.) I highly recommend this event if you’re interested in learning Django Reinhardt-style music.
Guitarists, I have [tabs for you](https://www.soundslice.com/store/adrian-holovaty-tabs/)! And I’ve put together a nice [course on gypsy-jazz guitar chords](https://www.soundslice.com/store/gypsy-jazz-chord-voicings/).
I also have [a Soundslice channel](https://www.soundslice.com/users/adrian/), where I post lots of little musical ideas and lick transcriptions.
Django web framework
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Many years ago I co-created the open-source [Django web framework](http://www.djangoproject.com/), which is used by tens of thousands of people around the world! I served as [co-Benevolent Dictator For Life](http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/internals/committers/#internals-committers) until [retiring from the project](/writing/bdfls-retiring/) in early 2014.
I co-wrote two editions of a now-outdated book about web development with Django, published by Apress and [available for free online](http://www.djangobook.com/).
Web development
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I think the web is one of mankind’s all-time greatest inventions, and I love advocating for it (and experimenting with new ideas).
I’ve been building websites since 1998, and the magic feeling of “wow, I can put this code on a server and anybody worldwide can instantly access it?!” has yet to subside.
Way back in 2005, I made the site chicagocrime.org (site no longer exists), which was one of the first websites to embed Google Maps — before that was even allowed. It [played a small part](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/06/world-is-your-javascript-enabled_29.html) in influencing Google to release a [mapping API](http://code.google.com/apis/maps/). The New York Times [named it one of the year’s best ideas](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine/11ideas1-13.html), and evidently a screenshot of the website [appeared at MoMA](https://chicagoreader.com/blogs/moma-like-archive-org-except-more-selective/).
Way back in 2004, I [made a browser extension](http://holovaty.com/writing/all-music-guide/) that made a single website work better — which inspired the creation of Greasemonkey and “user scripts,” the idea that people can have the ability to customize websites for personal use.
These days I devote all of my programming effort to Soundslice, but occasionally I pop up to rant about the silly state of modern web development, like here: [A Framework Author's Case Against Frameworks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7n2xnOiWI8).
EveryBlock
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I founded EveryBlock, a neighborhood news and discussion site, in 2007.
We sold it to msnbc.com in 2009. I worked there until mid-2012, and the site eventually got shut down by its new owners, brought back, then shut down again. :-/
[Here’s a retrospective I wrote](/writing/goodbye-everyblock/), with some context on what it did.
Journalism
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I have a degree in journalism and have worked at a number of Internet news companies. Before starting EveryBlock, I worked at [ajc.com](http://www.ajc.com/), [LJWorld.com](http://www.ljworld.com/) and [washingtonpost.com](http://www.washingtonpost.com/).
During that time, I made a name for myself as somebody who did “journalism via computer programming” — which was then a new concept. I wrote a lot about this and traveled the world giving talks about how news companies should employ programmers and use their data more effectively.
[An essay of mine](/writing/fundamental-change/) from 2006 [inspired](http://www.mattwaite.com/posts/2007/aug/22/announcing-politifact/) the awesome, Pulitzer-Prize-winning site [Politifact](http://www.politifact.com/) and apparently is now required reading at j-schools. Hi, students!
Alas, I’m no longer professionally involved in journalism. After many years, I was ready to do something new.
Around the web
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My [Mastodon account](https://social.holovaty.com/@adrian) is mostly stuff about web development.
My [LinkedIn profile](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adrianholovaty) has the professional history.
My [GitHub profile](https://github.com/adrianholovaty) has some stuff.
My [Soundslice channel](https://www.soundslice.com/users/adrian/) has music I’ve transcribed.
Contact me
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To get in touch, email adrian \[at\] holovaty.com.