Guitar software review
'Guitar Power' is a software package that claims to be 'the ultimate chord, scale and arpeggio reference for guitarists'. I thought I'd check out that claim and give the software a try.
I also want to address here an issue which the software developer's own website is not clear about - that of whether it will run on Windows 7, or Vista, and the issue of 32 bit / 64 bit operating systems.
First some background about me, so you know the person writing this review is a guitarist.
As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've been playing guitar for over thirty years, I've played in bands and studio projects, and I've attended the Musicians Institute, Los Angeles (in 1994). You can listen to a couple of examples of my playing on these pages:
In my decades of playing guitar I've encountered many guitar tuition aids, in various forms, e.g. guitar tutor books, videos, DVDs, software, and guitar lessons (both 'classroom' at MI and one-to-one tuition). On this page I'm going to tell you what I thought of the guitar software package 'Guitar Power'.
According to the software developer, the system requirements for Guitar Power are 'PC computer running Windows 95 or later'.
Windows 95 is so very old now that to even see it referred to made me think the PC requirements section on the developer's website was probably written a long time ago. I wondered whether Guitar Power could be installed on more modern PCs, in these days of Windows Vista and 7.
For this review I installed Guitar Power (version 1.5.0) on two different Windows XP PCs, and it ran just fine on both. These were both 32 bit versions of XP.
But I was still curious as to whether Guitar Power would run on more recent Windows operating systems, such as Windows Vista and Windows 7, so I contacted the software developer to ask about this. The official answer is that Guitar Power will run on the 32 bit versions of both Windows Vista and 7, but will not run on 64 bit versions.
So unfortunately if you are running a 64 bit version of a Windows OS, then Guitar Power is not available for you.
Microsoft offer a support page here that will tell you how you can find out if your version of Windows is 64 bit.
Guitar Power is offered as a free trial download, so you can confirm it will install on your Windows PC before paying anything for the software. The free trial is also a fully functional but time limited demo, that enables you to try out the software for 30 days. So you could just use it for 30 days, and learn a lot about the fretboard in that time.
Having successfully installed Guitar Power on two 32 bit XP PCs, I began using it. The first thing that struck me about the software was how intuitive the interface is.
If you're anything like me, then whenever you buy a new piece of technical kit of any kind, you'll do the following:
- Open packaging, remove device
- Throw away packaging and manual
- Play around with device, see if I can get it to work
- 4 hours later - admit defeat, go to bin, remove manual and start actually reading it
Sometimes though, a technical device or piece of software has been so well thought out by the developer that it's possible to interact with it intuitively. Maybe for advanced features the manual has to be consulted, but when something's well designed, then it will do what I expect it to do when I access a particular function in a particular way. I was really impressed with Guitar Power that my experience of using it was exactly like this. It's really easy to use.
On the 'Chord Finder' tab, you see the guitar fretboard, with no fretted notes shown, a heading 'Possible chord descriptions', below that 'Root 6th string', 'Root 5th string', 'Root 4th string', 'Root 3rd string', 'Root 2nd string', 'Root 1st string', and a 'Play' button. There's a screen shot here.
My instinct when I saw this was that if I click with the mouse on the fretboard where I am fretting the notes of a chord, the software should then attempt to analyse the chord for me. Ideally, I'd like Guitar Power to give me the name of the chord, offering different names for ambiguous chords depending upon which note is considered the root note. I'd also like it to play that chord back to me through the PC's MIDI/soundcard setup if I click the 'Play' button.
And that's exactly what Guitar Power did. Check out this this screen shot. Guitar Power correctly identified the chord as a B minor 7 (flat 5) over F (if B is the root), offering an alternative name of D minor 6 over F (if D is the root). Top marks.
I clicked on the 'Play' button, and Guitar Power played this chord voicing back to me, through the MIDI setup on my PC soundcard. Guitar Power played the chord as a harmonic arpeggio, playing the notes one by one and letting them run into each other - but it played the notes in quick succession.
I then thought how useful it would be if I could alter the speed at which it plays back the notes - either very fast, like the strum of a chord, or more slowly, as a slow arpeggio.
I saw that there is an 'Options' menu, and that the first item is called 'Playback Settings' .
Selecting 'Playback Settings' opens the dialog box you see below:
Dragging the tempo slider marked 'Chords' did exactly what I expected, enabling the user to hear the notes of a chord played together but as a much slower arpeggio.
You'll also see that the playback options menu offers other userful functions, for example allowing you to control which MIDI sounds you want to hear.
Something else from the playback options menu worth mentioning: you can select whether you want the guitar fretboard oriented as right-handed or left-handed. If you're a left-handed guitarist, I imagine this would be really useful - you can see guitar chords and scales displayed on a fretboard that's the right way round for you.
As you can see from the screen shot here, Guitar Power's other tabs are named Chords, Scales, Arpeggios, Notes, Triads, Chord/Scale (and Chord Finder, which I've already mentioned).
The 'Chords' tab offers a list of chord types, broken down into All Chords, Major Chords, Minor Chords, Dominant Chords, Altered Dominant Chords, and Other Chords.
Under 'Major Chords', for example, Guitar Power offers the options of major, major 7, major 9, major 13, major 9 (sharp 11), major 13 (sharp 11), 6, add 9, 6/9, major 7 (flat 5), and major 7 (sharp 5). You can select a key from the chromatic buttons that run from C to B, through all the sharps and flats. Guitar Power will then show you (or play through MIDI if you click the 'Play' button) all the possible voicings on the guitar fretboard. You can select which position you want to see displayed from all of the available options.
Guitar Power is similarly comprehensive and accurate in all of the other chord possibilities it presents, and all of the scale options too. It will also suggest which scales/modes can best be used when soloing over different chords.
I found Guitar Power to be easy to use, packed with a vast number of chords and scales, and a great asset for learning new scales/modes/chord voicings. The 'chord finder' function might be especially helpful if you've ever stumbled upon a chord on the guitar which sounded good, and thought to yourself, 'what is that chord?' This function makes Guitar Power so much more helpful than a book of chords, because it's interactive - you can tell it what notes you are playing, and it will tell you the name of that chord. For beginner to intermediate level, this is really useful.
If you want to improve your knowledge of chords and scales then I'd have no hesitation in recommending Guitar Power. I just hope the software developer will be able to make a version of Guitar Power available for 64 bit versions of Windows, as it would be a shame for such a useful utility to become redundant through OS incompatibility.
You can download a free trial version of Guitar Power and try it out yourself from the link at the top of this page.
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