Review of Guitar Power by Jana Software

Review by Darrin Koltow

System Requirements

Windows 95 or later, soundcard. Download size: less than 3.5 Megs.

Tested on a 166 MHz Pentium with 80 megs of RAM, running Windows 95, and some Ancient Sound Card.

Features of Guitar Power

You can use Guitar Power as a reference for the following;

• Chords: Patterns for all common types are given, covering all frets
• Scales: Again, patterns for all frets
• Puppy dog's tails. Just seeing if you're paying attention.
• Arpeggios: patterns for all frets, for many arpeggio types
• Triads: Patterns for all strings, all frets
• Notes: Select a note to see all its fretboard locations.
• Chord/Scales: Which scales sound good with a particular chord
• Chord Finder: Learn possible chord names for a set of three or more notes.

Background on Jana Software

Besides selling software for musicians, Jana has software called the Panic Button that lets you instantly clear your screen if you sense that a pair of unfriendly eyes is about to peep in. Knowing this may give you the sense that Jana is more consumer oriented than profit oriented.

Guitar Power. Click for larger image.

The design and copywriting that accompany the ad and the product are immaculate. I know we're guitarists, not copyeditors, but I am a copyeditor, and I can tell you that when a software company takes the time to write copy as good as this, you know they are invested in their product in many ways.

Have a look at the screenshot. It's a plain fretboard; there's nothing fancy here. But the graphics communicate effectively, and allow for easy input. If you have an old system with a slow graphics card, you'll appreciate this simplicity even more; the graphics in Guitar Power won't slow you down. But if you do want a snazzier look, you can get it through the Options->Fretboard Design menu option. More on that later.

The main form is totally intuitive — even if you're a guitar newbie. In other words, you can see the kind of info you can access with Guitar Power, and how to get it.

What exactly can you get from Guitar Power?

The Chords Tool

Learn what chords are important and where to play them on the fretboard. Guitar Power has wisely structured their list of chords so the first chords a guitarist learns are presented first, and the spicier ones are listed further down the list. So Major and Minor chords are tops, with the 7b5b9 further down.

Guitar Power's Chords tool and its other tools do not contain references to slash chords. More on that here. However, once you understand what a slash chord is, you won't need a special dictionary or other resource to create them. The only time you would expect a piece of chord software to understand slash chords is when you already know a chord's shape, but need some possible names for it.

The Chords tool displays chord patterns whose top (melody) notes occur on either the first or second strings. The more "bassey" chords with top notes falling on strings G and D aren't shown. However, the Triads tool will show you triads — three-note major, minor, augmented and diminished chords — on all possible strings.

(If you want to round-out your vocabulary of chord shapes for all strings, I recommend the classic Leavitt book, Modern Method for Guitar, volumes 1 through 3.)

Output of Chords Tool

After entering a chord name, here's the info you get back from the Chords tool: the names of the notes that appear in the chord; the "formula" for the chord, which means the degrees that appear in the chord (e.g. 1 for Root, 3 for a major third, b3 for a minor third, etc.); and how the quality of the chord name may appear in chord charts: (e.g.: "m," or "min" for minor chords).

Toward the right of the Guitar Power screen you'll see the Chord Voicings list, which shows you many of the places you can play the selected chord. You'll also learn which fingers to use for all chords, which is especially useful for beginning players. Bear in mind that many chords can be fingered in different ways; if a particular chord shape doesn't "fit" your fingers, rather than despair, look for another that does. (Dig the article "Finger friendly chords" for more on this type of chord substitution.)

Hearing the Chord

You can't fully understand a chord if you can't hear it. So Guitar Power provides a Play button, with options in the Options menu to configure the playback to your preferences. You can even make the guitar sound like a Glockenspiel, if your MIDI setup is what's available on most computers.

A button called Info provides some useful tidbits about the chord, including where and how it might be used, and its individual notes.

One excellent feature about the Info button is the set of 4-bar chord progressions it gives you for practicing chords. I can't stress enough how important it is to have a musical context for practicing new chords and chord forms. Guitar Power provides this with the chord progressions accessible through this Info button. You can play along with the progressions, which are complete musical arrangements: percussion, bass, lead and rhythm accompaniment by you. By the way, the major 7 progression is hip.

A caveat: while exploring this Info button, I made the program crash. Correction — I froze my system. A full power down and back up was needed. And then I had to spoon Triaminic into the floppy drive...

I repeated the steps I took to lock the system up, and the same lockup happened again. Here are those steps:

The following procedure may make your system lock up. Select a chord to display in the Chords tab. Select Options->Metronome. Turn it on and click OK. Then click the Info button on the main form. Result: Total system freeze.

Summary of Chords Tool

Guitar Power's Chords tool is highly useful for learning new chords, as a chord dictionary to refer to again and again, and as a playalong partner.

Other Functions and Uses of Guitar Power

Here are some notes on other features of Guitar Power. All have the same basic visual layout the Chords tool has, and provide you with the same kind of info: where to play it, how it sounds, and interesting notes about the sound and pattern.

Scales

The Scales tool is comprehensive: Guitar Power will show you shapes for the usual major, harmonic minor, melodic minor, and pentatonic scales. Plus, there's a massive variety of other scales, with titles like "Enigmatic," "Flamenco," "Byzantine," and simply "Oof." I think the last scale is played only under the influence of fermented cucumber juice while staring at an upside down poster of Eric Clapton.

Got Small Fingers?

Here's a scenario that points out a caveat about the Scales tool: Let's say you want a C major scale at the 2nd position that stays within 4 frets, so your short fingers don't have to do any stretching. Enter the data: C major, 2nd position. Then select the option "4 note positions." A pattern will appear on the fretboard that is definitely within the four frets you requested — which presents a dilemma, because an F note is lopped off; the scale pattern skips from E to G. The F will pop back in once you change the option from "4 note positions" to "5 note positions."

Dig this excellent feature of the Scales tool: the Info button gives you tips for soloing with the scale. After all, what good are scales for if not making real music, right? Plus, Guitar Power provides several mini progressions you can solo over using the scale. Very hip and useful.

Arpeggios

What the Scales tool has is pretty much what you'll find in the Arpeggios tool, also: a great variety of arpeggio types, useful tidbits of info, including uses for improvisation, and an option to select patterns that extend across 4 or 5 notes.

Notes and Triads

The Notes tool in Guitar Power shows you where a selected note appears everywhere on the fretboard. And Triads will display all triad shapes for the main types of triads: major, minor, diminished and augmented. As mentioned in the notes for the Chords tool, if you want patterns for chords whose top notes fall on strings G and D, use the Triads tool.

Chord/Scales Tool

The Chord/Scales tool is for answering that persistent, pressing, favorite question of so many guitarists: what scales can I play with chord X?

To use this tool, you enter the chord name and quality, then look in the Related Scales list to learn what scales to play. The recommended scales are shown first, and the other scales are further down.

The scale patterns that result have colors with them, to show you which notes are in the chord, which are in the scale, and which notes appear in both scale and chord. These colors visually give you an immediate sense of how consonant or dissonant a scale is going to sound with the selected chord: the more red you see in the pattern, the more consonance you'll hear. The more blue and green you see, the more cotton you'll need to stuff in your dog's ears to keep him or her from howling in pain.

The Chord Finder

The Chord Finder tool is for seeing what chord names a set of three or more notes might have. Knowing this is useful for analyzing a piece of tab or other notation: you might come across a chord shape that sounds good, but whose name doesn't make "theoretical" sense to you. For example, "Why is this goofy looking F major here instead of the E7? I thought we were playing in A minor?" A utility that names chords may show you that the "goofy" F major is a type of E7: E7susb9#5, for example.

You use this tool by simply clicking notes onto the virtual fretboard. Chord Finder may respond with some names appropriate to the pattern those notes comprise. For many patterns, no names are returned.

When Chord Finder produces chord names, it seems to show only one or two possibilities, though every chord pattern theoretically can have multiple names. (Some patterns lend themselves to multiple names better than others.) Chord Finder does not recognize this.

Entering some patterns produces no names at all, including patterns produced from the Chords tool. In other words, Guitar Power doesn't recognize some of the chords in its own database. For example, switch to the Chords tool. Enter the following: chord root: C; chord quality: 7#5; voicing: "8th position, root on first string." Jot down the pattern that the Chords tool displays.

Now switch to the Chord Finder tool. Enter the same pattern just displayed in the Chord tool. The Chord Finder produces no names. It seems reasonable to expect that the chord names Guitar Power uses in the Chords tool would be available in the Chord Finder tool.

This flaw limits the usefulness of the Chord Finder tool. Keep in mind, though, that the version of Guitar Power reviewed here is only 1.1.6. Guitar Power is still in its infancy; it's an early version of an application that deserves to see many updates. Maybe the Chord Finder in future versions of Guitar Power will provide names for the chords shown in the Chords tool.

Other Features

Here are some other features of Guitar Power, most of which help you configure the working environment to your liking:

The File menu has a Print option. The Options menu lets you change sound parameters like instrument ("patch") and other MIDI parameters, and also volume and tempo.

The Options menu also lets you switch the fretboard diagram to a layout readable by left-handed players. In other words, the nut will appear on the right, and the higher frets on the left. This is an excellent feature, and more software ought to consider lefties in this way. Choose different visual styles for the fretboard display in the Options->Fretboard Design option.

Support

Guitar Power has an excellent User's Guide: it's well written, thorough, and well illustrated. It gives clear instructions on all features and how to use them.

The Help menu has an option called Root Movement Patterns. It shows you a progression of notes you can use to practice chords or other material with. You'll see the familiar cycle of fifths, and half-tones. But there are also progressions that move by thirds and seconds.

Demo Limitations

The demo has nearly all the functions of the registered version, for 30 days, except you can't print anything, And a screen comes up periodically to remind you to register. Using software as helpful as Guitar Power for 30 days is definitely a bargain.

Other Perks

Guitar Power comes with email support for 60 days. Plus, they offer a 60-day money-back guarantee. You can download the software or get a CD via snail mail. As of this writing, the price is $29.95 for the email delivery or $38.95 for the CD. When you order, they give you these extras besides the software itself: a 61 page ebook and over 400 midi files. These are for practicing Guitar Power's many hip progressions.

Click here to download and use Guitar Power now for free, for 30 days.
Download size under 3.5 Meg, for Windows 95 or later.

Click here for more info on Guitar Power.

Purchase the downloadable Guitar Power here. ($29.95, 60-day money-back guarantee).

Purchase the CD-ROM of Guitar Power here. ($38.95, 60-day money-back guarantee).

Review by Darrin Koltow

Sidebar: slash chords

Definitions of slash chords may vary. But an easy way to look at them is as follows: they're a way to make chords with seemingly complicated names easy to understand. For example, look at this chord:

|-------|
|--5----|
|--5----|
|--5----|
|-------|
|--7----|

This chord could be given a name like "Bsus4#5b9." But in slash chord notation, it's just "C/B."

Learn more about slash chords in this article http://www.maximummusician.com/nl5.29.htm#slash

You can learn everything you need to know about slash chords from these excellent resources:

Chord Khancepts
The Jazz Theory Book