It turns out Adrian Holovaty, the co-creator of the open-source Django Web framework, also plays the guitar. My wife found a few videos of him on YouTube and sent them to me. The videos aren’t recorded professionally — it’s him in front of a webcam, with a small mike placed on the table close to his guitar, but his music is great. From the looks of the background in some of his videos, it looks like some are recorded in his office at work — when you think about it, it’s pretty cool when you can play guitar at work, right?

Adrian creates his own arrangements for various songs, video games and TV shows, like Duck Tales (which I love, btw).

Adrian Holovaty – Duck Tales theme song

There’s also an acoustic version of the Super Mario Bros. theme.

Adrian Holovaty – Super Mario Bros. theme song

He’s got plenty of serious stuff if you’re not into cartoons and video games. For example, there’s his rendition of Beatles’ “Yesterday”.

Adrian Holovaty – Yesterday

Or how about “Hit the Road Jack”?

Adrian Holovaty – Hit the Road Jack

He also did the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer”.

Adrian Holovaty – Daydream Believer

Sometimes he does multitrack videos, like his rendition of Nola, a 1915 ragtime piano piece by Felix Arndt. Here he used the original Les Paul arrangement from the 1950s, where he recorded the lead guitar at half time, then sped it up 200%, to give it the classic high pitched sound.

Adrian Holovaty – Nola

While I’m on the topic of multitrack videos, he also did a gypsy jazz rendition of the Super Mario Bros. 2 theme song.

Adrian Holovaty – Super Mario Bros. 2 theme song

I love gypsy jazz, which Django Reinhardt popularized. Adrian did a multitrack gypsy jazz version of “All of Me”, which I think is great.

Adrian Holovaty – All of Me

I’m going to close with Adrian’s rendition of Django’s “Tears”. He plays it with four fingers, unlike Django, who played it with two. Did you notice the Django Web framework shares someone’s name? Methinks Adrian is a big fan of the legendary guitarist.

Adrian Holovaty – Tears