14 DAY TRIAL // Now, I guess everybody wanted at least once and at least during childhood to play an instrument and to become a star. Many of these people still dream of this from time to time and I think it's really nice to see that people dream at an adult age as they used to when they were little. Well, a part of those childhood dreamers have put their minds and efforts and started to play... at some of them we look today with admiration in our eyes as they have grown to be the "stars" they were dreaming about. Others are laying their hands on the instruments for the very first time as I am writing this very article. And some of them will be looked at in admiration years from now...as the story never ends...
Since I have been a guitar player for so many years, I guess it's obvious I will tell you about guitars and their world in the following lines. Not a very long time ago, learning how to properly play the guitar or at least getting a good start was a rather difficult issue, as it used to involve a teacher and paying for his/her educational services (not that nowadays teachers aren't to be paid anymore)... or at least having a close and willing guitarist friend, or even a relative to teach you the first steps in what guitar meant. Once with the tremendous expansion of the Internet and its numerous (if not innumerable) resources, guitar info has become available at a larger scale and sites like chordbook.com have become available for free.
Chordbook.com is actually a Flash interactive interface, which runs a rather extensive chord book/dictionary. Not only has it a list of the most used chords, but it contains a lot of chord variations from the most common versions up to those barely met such as the augmented ones. Even more, for each chord the chordbook.com will also provide a large number of inversions! You can change the strum, strum speed, set up your own tunings and even set the starting fret (by using a capodaster) or switching between the acoustic and electric guitar sounds.
All in one, chordbook.com makes a very comprehensive resource for both the beginning guitarist and for the more advanced one seeking new chords or chord variations to enrich his/her style or generic play. The best thing is the combination of both visual and audio streams of information as it is common knowledge that this is by far the best way to have things well fixed in your memory. Chordbook.com also offers an online guitar tuner and - much to my pleasant surprise - an extensive set of audio-visual guitar scales. For those who are not that familiar with playing the guitar, scales are one of the most important ways to get to "know" where the notes are placed on the fingerboard of the instrument, so the mind will work faster and with significantly more freedom with each set of scales the player knows by heart.
An excellent source for learning to play the guitar. "What's so special about it?", some of you might ask... the fact that it is freeware and anyone with internet connection can access it; and secondly (and in my opinion, even more important), the fact that chordbook.com offers more than a list of pictures with the note positioning on the frets. It's quite useful and I definitely liked it!
Site screenshots by Softpedia.com Click to see larger images.
