Sunday, May 15, 2011

Chord Alchemy - a useful program

I thought I would highlight a chord generation program that you, particularly if you are a multi- instrumentalists, would like to have – Chord Alchemy.

This program has a small fee but many will find it very useful.  Here is the link to the web page

http://www.tonalalchemy.com/

This program has fingering positions for the full fretboard of about 40 different instruments, including of course, the ukulele with 6 different tunings, mandolins (about a dozen different tunings), 3 different varieties of banjos with a number of tuning options in each, and plenty of guitar tunings.

Not only is the full fretboard shown, but all the notes and in all possible chord variations are provided.

I’ll give one example of the usefulness.  For a uke with standard C6 tuning, if you want to play a Cm chord, the normal fingering tables show this as 5333.  This is a standard movable chord fingering that we need to know, but the program shows a lot of options to that might work better for you.  It shows that one can play it as 0333 or an easier 0036.  In the second position, normally shown as 8766, one can also use 0086 or 0786.  Apply this approach to all the chords we use and you can see the utility of the program to suggest alternatives to the standard tables.

It has other features including having a capo and doing reverse chord lookup, and when a chord is shown as a suggestion, you can listen to the individual notes as well as as a chord.

One can make up different tunings.  For example, some folks like to tune a tenor uke with a low G or a baritone with a high D, an open G, or even a Cautro (low G and low A).  These options exist.

Or if you are playing a mandolin, guitar, bass, banjo or whatever, you have the same features with those instruments.

That's enough of a teaser.  Go to the web page, to the product tab and do the tutorials or download the demo program (free) and play with it at your leisure.

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