Cyberfolk Summer 1999

Cyberfolk Summer 1999

The phrases "Hey, can you email me that arrangement?" or "I’ll just print out the arrangement of "Cripple Creek" I did with my tablature editing software" used to be about as rare as "That’s the banjo player’s BMW". But not anymore. There is a wealth of freeware and inexpensive shareware available on the Internet. Software is available for writing tablature, looking up and diagraming chords and scales, playing back arrangements, and even for figuring out the chords to songs on audio CD’s.

This edition of Cyberfolk explores Internet sources of software to help make the fretted instrument player’s life a bit easier - and more fun.

At The Guitarists Network you will find an on-line chord finder and scalegenerator, as well links to lots of software for making playing and arranging music for the guitar easier. Find it at http://www.guitarists.net/software/index.html

Harmony Central provides an extensive collection of music software, with descriptions, reviews and links to download sites. Point your browser to http://www.harmony-central.com/Software/

An excellent site for tablature writing software can be found at http://www.execpc.com/~pgkuchar/tabsftwr.htm. Here the author discusses the pros and cons of each package, and why you should download them all!

Here are the programs that I found most interesting:

TablEdit tablature editor at http://www.tabledit.com. This program gets high marks from users, and includes an extensive library of guitar tablature
MusEdit tablature editor at http://www.musedit.com/. This tab editor has advanced features, a real manual, a tip of the day, and a music library
Musician’s Ear Chord Transcriber at http://www.musicians-ear.com/ This software will figure out the chords to your favorite songs from an ordinary tape or CD. This almost sounds too good to be true, but you can download a 30 day demo to find out.
CampFire Guitar helps you learn basic ‘Chord’ versions of songs from "words and chords" arrangements of songs. It will show diagrams of all the chords in the song, play them for you and print up a chord summary. Find it at http://www.iserv.net/~northwds/

Check out Cyberfolk Online at its new home! http://www.wwa.com/~chrismac/cyberfolk.

If you have any favorite sites or topics you’d like to see mentioned in Cyberfolk, please let us know. Write to me care of Common Times, or email me at chrismac@wwa.com. See you in Cyberspace.