Guitar Chords could save many guitar players time as it is a comprehensive database of the chords on your guitar and all their possible combinations.

Leaving aside the salmon-pink background, which is a little difficult to cope with, the way it works is that after pressing the Start button, you have to choose which type of chord you are looking for: Major & Minor, Augmented, Diminished Suspended, of 6th, of 7th and so on. At this point just click on the name of the note you want and view all the available combinations for creating that chord on the central window.

View the ‘How to read the chords’ sections if you have any problems understanding what ‘X 0 2 2 2 0’ means. This represents which cords you have to play, and where you have to put your fingers. That said, I’ve found it strange that the most common way to play chords is not the first solution available, but instead appears in the middle of a nearly endless list. I don’t really understand the logic behind this, although I hope there is one. If you want, you can also export the list of combinations as a text document by clicking on the Printable Format button.

Guitar Chords is a useful database of all the possible chords you can create with your guitar. It also features all the possible combination of notes you can use to create that chord, although, as the list is very long, it can be confusing to find the most common way to play a specific sound.

TuxGuitar is a full featured music composition tool that can be really helpful to musicians, whether they use their computer to compose music or not.

The program looks really complex at first sight – at least for a music newbie like me – so I have the feeling it may overwhelm more novice users. But the amount of available tools, along with an extensive help section and documentation really encourages you to give it a go.

TuxGuitar features a nicely designed interface with clear, simple lines that turns your music composition tasks into a lighter work. Besides composing right on the tablature, you can also have a virtual guitar fretboard or piano keyboard to make composition even easier. What's more, the program lets you play the songs you just composed, using one of the many instruments included in it.

In spite of a confusing first impression, TuxGuitar well deserves a chance from all music composers: it's nicely designed and features many interesting tools.

Harmony Assistant is a all-in-one software product with digital audio capabilities. Its harmonizing capabilities enable the composer to build quickly and efficiently tunes that include accompaniment, multiple instruments and drum patterns. Its full page edit and engraver modes will ease editing and page setup of your scores.

A wide range of music symbols will enable to edit scores of great quality: notation capabilities are immense. Using the page mode, you will edit the score just as it will be printed on paper. The Engraver mode will make look it nice. Score input can be performed through the mouse, computer keyboard or an external MIDI keyboard.

Harmony Assistant comes with its own embedded software synthesizer (SoftSynth), which provides high quality output on basic sound cards, even without any external MIDI device, and includes hundreds of different instruments. Harmony Assistant can load and save in many formats (MIDI, WAV, AIFF, MP3, OGG, TAB, ABC...).

With MyrScript, the embedded programming language, you can add your own features to the program

More features:

• Complete score editor, with unlimited number of staves
• Page mode editing
• Automatic harmonizer
• Accompaniments & drum patterns in a few clicks
• Tablature calculation for miscellaneous string instrument
• Tablature calculation for Harmonica, diatonic accordion, wind instruments...
• Completely scriptable application. Many open-source scripts are available.
• Embedded softsynth : does not need any hardware other than a sound card.
• Midi, Kar, MOD, S3M... import
• Digital tracks (possible to import WAV, AIFF, MP3, OGG...)
• Wav-to-note pitch tracker, noise reduction, formant-compliant pitch change, ...
• Gregorian notation
• Chord diagram library for various instruments
• Enables to build custom instruments from digital recordings
• Lute tablatures
• Street organ card printing
• Karaoke and multi-voices lyrics are actually sung.
• Enable visitors of your Web site to view, transpose, play or print your scores

FastChords is designed to help you improve your piano playing skills with ease. It includes a calculator to show how each chord is played on the keyboard. You can use the staff to enter the melody notes, so there is no need to read music.

Listen to the song and let FastChords find the optimal chord configuration to simplify playing one chord after another. Print the result, put it next to the piano or keyboard, and you are ready to learn a new song!

MagicScore lets you precisely tune up the notes' sounds and their timing features, process the effects and the dynamics. In this program, you may use both general and extended sets of musical symbols and as well create your own symbols, terms and chords for complex compositions with a peculiar or a non-standard grammatical solution.

Special tools such as: virtual piano, virtual fingerboard for six and seven-string guitars, notes performance editor, real-time notes play-back editor and the navigator let you easily and efficiently record and work with both single pieces and large musical compositions.

The basic features of the Maestro version are as follows:

• Automatic spell-checking of entered information
• Extensive editing capabilities (copy, paste, delete, transpose both single notes and selected blocks)
• Note entry using the virtual piano
• Score entry using the Chord Builder
• Capability to bind comments, links, and other appearance elements to all score elements
• Adjustment of volume, balance, and effects for each track (of an instrument's score)
• Reading from MIDI files and writing to MIDI files
• Play-back of the entered notes both by a single instrument and by the entire orchestra
• Printing scores, including previewing the scores
• Drag & Drop support
• Capability to cancel the running operation
• Score recording from a MIDI device

If you've always wanted your own orchestra in your bedroom but can't play a single instrument then this is the program for you.

This program is a hell of a lot of fun if you're a music lover. The samples feature full recordings, lasting from 1 to 8 bars, playing along in perfect sync with the other Band-in-a-Box tracks. They sound like a real drummer, because they are genuine recordings of a real drummer - not just MIDI tracks. And adding a real instrument to the mix makes all of the Band-in-a-Box parts sound more authentic. There's a huge library of RealDrums styles and a superb "Chords from MP3" feature (Audio Chord Wizard) which automatically figures out the chords from any MP3, WAV or WMA audio file, and displays them in Band-in-a-Box - great for learning songs on your instrument. There's also a new soundtrack feature allows you to generate new royalty-free music of a specified length of time for use in home or corporate videos, soundtracks, etc. The "Reharmonist" feature figures out a chord progression for any melody which allows you to create a new chord progression or enhance an existing one. Other great features include save your creations as an MP3 and batch MP3/WAV/WMA generation. The only problem I had was exploring all the features which seem to go on an on. Once you've tried this though, you'll be hooked. The latest version features even more realistic instrument sounds such as even better acoustic guitars and saxophones. It also features a new "multistyler" which bascially allows you to create compositions with far more depth. Note that this demo version is fully functional except that the Save features, Notation, Soloist/Melodist, and accessory plugins have been disabled.

This is a music program with incredible range and features although it does take some getting to grips with so prepare to immerse yourself.

LenMus Phonascus automatically composes music scores so that you can exercise your music reading skills without having to repeat the same music score.

The parameters that control the composer module are set up automatically by Phonascus to suit the needs of the exercise chosen and of your level. You can also set up manually this parameters to suit your personal needs.

For example, to practise a certain rhythmic pattern on which you have difficulties or to practise reading a clef.

Synthesia is the new title of a game previously known as Piano Hero… until Activision told its developer it was not a good idea.

Naming anecdotes aside, the game is described as a fun method to learn to play the piano but honestly, I have to disagree on that. Synthesia is by no means an easy method to learn the piano: I have some very basic piano notions myself and I found it extremely difficult. It could be because I was using a standard computer keyboard to test the game, and not a real music keyboard as recommended by the developer.

On the upside, I especially liked the default song selection the program includes to get you started (they're all popular theme songs from very well-known videogames). Also, note that you can use just about any MID file with Synthesia, which turns it into pretty much a never-ending musical entertainment.

With Synthesia you can practice your piano skills on the computer, but forget about learning how to play it: you'll need some prior basic knowledge.

Remember those old Casio keyboards that were so popular a few decades ago? Well, now they're back, at least in your PC.

Electronic Piano emulates one of those electronic musical keyboards on your computer, using each keystroke of your PC keyboard to produce a different sound. Just like the original instrument, this software app supports a wide range of different sound styles, enabling you to emulate almost anything from a piano to a guitar, including trumpet, bass, organ, harmonica, violin, cello and a lot more.

Of course, you'll also get the special effects section (typewriter, helicopter, applause, gun shot and so on) and finally the drums, with even a wider selection of sounds.

The program is really easy to use, as it displays the note chart on its interface so that you know what you're playing at all times. On the downside, the keyboard seems to have a slower response than expected, which makes the whole experience a bit disappointing. Also, I notice one note was out of tune, which is certainly not something I would expect from a music program, even if it's not a professional tool.

Electronic Piano is a simple, MIDI digital keyboard that lets you play some basic tunes on your PC. That said, don't expect professional output. This is just for fun.

GNU Solfege is a music program, but not in the traditional way of music editors and mixers: this app teaches you music theory.

Well, at least that's the impression you get from reading the developer's description. However, after testing the program, you can easily tell that you need to have already some basic – if not intermediate - music knowledge if you want to make the most of GNU Solfege.

The program includes a series of tests and quizzes to evaluate your music skills, mostly based on the recognition of notes, scales, chords and the like. There are also some dictation exercises, but these must be done on a piece of paper, which doesn't make much sense to me.

In general terms, I was a bit disappointed when testing GNU Solfege. It may be useful for music students to test their skills, but I expected a software tool to help me take my first steps in music – something that GNU Solfege is certainly not.

In spite of requiring some theoretical background, GNU Solfege may still be a good tool to put your musical skills to test.

If you no nothing about how to compose music then Encore can help you look like Mozart although it's a steep learning curve. Whether you play directly into Encore or transcribe your MIDI files, you get accurate notation and beautiful printouts every time. You can extract parts, transpose for different instruments, and play your music as you originally conceived it. Encore graphically displays and plays back dynamic marks, repeats, multiple endings, pedal marks, or any MIDI controller.

Encore scores can be fine-tuned with a simple move of the mouse. On-screen palettes let you enter appropriate notes or graphics and both lyrics and text are easily added. As a guitar enthusiast, I was interested by the option to instantly transcribe music into guitar tablature with correct fingering and guitar fret diagrams although in the end, I couldn't quite work it out.

For professional musicians writing compositions, this is a brilliant tool but you'll need some time to get used to it.

I play the guitar a little bit and so I was glad to discover this program. The problem with my manual electronic tuner is that it's always running out of battery power so half the time I'm playing completely out of tune. However, Free Guitar Tuner totally eliminates this problem by running directly through my PC.

The principle is very simple. You've got six strings and to pluck each one you just click the mouse on them. There are three main settings - acoustic, electric and synthesized guitar. Just keep clicking the string until the tone on the program sounds exactly like the tone on your guitar. The disadvantage however is that, if you're tone deaf like me, it's hard to ascertain when you've got it right. If only the program could "hear" the guitar through the microphone, and show you how close it was to being in tune like a normal tuner, it would score much more highly.

Nevertheless, for a simple and elegant looking tuner, you need look no further.

Radio technicians can now prepare for their radio exams with Elmer. The program has two test levels, technician and general. You can view your exam and question history anytime and even grade your exam before you've finished it to make sure you've got the right answer.

The questions are fairly technical but we were disappointed by a number of issues. There's not startup window to guide you and all the help is found only in PDF files. We couldn't check if the tests are really up to date and, although Elmer provides extra technical figures it lacks any explanation. Similarly, the program doesn't ever explain the right answer for questions.

Even though the interface is pretty sparse and the application lacks any real guidance, it will at least provide some sort of help to radio experts looking to prepare for their exams.

I wonder how the great composers like Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Scatman John would've reacted to computers. Had MusicEase been around at the time when they were alive I'm sure they would have been able to knock out a lot more requiems, symphonies, sonatas and scats than they did. The application allows you to easily compose music on your PC in the same way as you'd work with a word processor, but using notes, scales, pentagrams, etc.

You're completely free to compose, thanks to an innovative system whereby each of the keys on your keyboard represent a different musical note. The musical notation is then displayed instantly on screen, just as if you'd written it down. MusicEase contains some basic editing commands such as cutting, pasting, undoing, etc. Best of all, once your melody has been composed, you save it out in MIDI format and listen to it through the software.

There are a lot of options locked within the program, including the ability to add titles to your compositions, apply accompanying MIDI tracks, and vary speed. Although the user interface looks a little puny when compared to most new word processing apps, MusicEase is a great way of churning out your works of genius quickly.

If you fancy yourself as the next Elton John but don't want to shell out for a grand piano just yet then you might want to hone your skills with KB Piano. The program transforms your PC into a piano, with the keys on your keyboard replacing those you'd find on the instrument. The app makes getting started as simple as possible, and after following the clear instructions and comprehensive tutorial you will soon be playing, recording and replaying beautiful music.

You can configure the program to play chords by pressing a certain key, applied automatically when you create a new file, and there are a wide range of different tracks and effects you can apply to your compositions. With support for 15 channels and real-time mixing, this really is a pretty powerful program. You will need DirectX 8 to experience the full capabilities and be warned, we did experience a few bugs and crashes when we tested it.

If you often download score files in PDF format from the Internet then you'd probably love to hear them right?

If so, PDFtoMusic is designed for you. Open a PDF document, and after a few seconds, you just have to click a button to hear the score playing, and even the lyrics sung!

PDFtoMusic gives you full access at last to the giant PDF music score collection available on the Internet.

This song-based learning software complements guitar tablature by providing additional, detailed instructions that guitar tab alone is unable to provide. Guitar Guru teaches guitarists of all skill levels how to play songs from a variety of genres.

Tools and features:

• Virtual fret board displays proper fingerings in real-time
• Detailed instructions for all guitar parts in a song
• Adjustable playback/learning tempo
• MIDI or CD-Synched Audio
• Customizable display with additional guitar skins
• Step-Through Playback Function
• Delayed start option: Give yourself time to grab your guitar
• Bass guitar support
• Select MIDI playback instrument to match your preferred sound
• Choose colored dots, numbers or dots and numbers to represent fingerings
• Adjust tempo up to 300% without changing pitch (MIDI only)
• Mute Button: The volume reset has been changed to an on/off toggle

Notation Player allows you to download and display music (MIDI) files as sheet music that you can view on the screen while the notes play, and also in print.

The player allows you to Display MIDI, Karaoke, and .not (note) files in sheet music form as well as allow you to add key signatures and clef symbols.

Learn how to read and write music the easy way!

Guitar & Drum Trainer is all about helping you to be the best musician that you can be. (Soldiers included.) And if you are serious about your music, and you think there is room to improve your playing, then Guitar and Drum Trainer is for you. And if you're already blazing down the fretboard at lightspeed, then Guitar & Drum Trainer is your perfect transcription tool to help you get things down on paper.

Guitar & Drum Trainer is the ultimate musician's practice tool. We've all heard the gurus say, "gradually build speed" and we know that's true. Nobody starts off blazing like Yngwie or Vai. Speed and accuracy take practice. Guitar and Drum Trainer can help you improve the quality of your practice time and get far better results.

Wouldn't you like to look at a music score and be able to hear that music in your mind? Well trained musicians can do it. Sight-Singing is the key.

This is a unique program which may help you develop this ability. It has voice pitch recognition capability. It will generate random melodic drills on selected scales, or play custom melodic lines. Take a look at the notes and try to hear them in your mind. But since the computer cannot read your mind you will have to sing or hum each note. The computer will listen and help you correct the intonation.