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Is there any (preferably free) guitar chord diagram software?


Jeff Leites

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Not for looking up a chord, but from making a chord diagram, and a chart of diagrams.

The only way I can figure to do it now would be very tedious... Use my Power Tab software to make a single chord diagram, use a screen capture program to copy the diagram, use a graphics program to past the captured diagram onto a sheet, and repeat for each chord. Is there an app for that?

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I made a blank one (for adding the dots by hand) with Excel fairly easily. PM me your e-mail address and I'll send it to you.

 

 

Thanks HT, I hadn't thought of just making a blank printable form. If I decide to go that route, I can make my own, but I'd prefer being able to keep the final result on the computer.

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Not quite what you're asking for but I've found these tools to be enormously helpful -- and the online versions are free and were created by an HC regular, Eddie Boston: www.chorderator.com

Since I bought both a banjo and a mandolin in the last couple years and I've increasingly adopted the DADGAD tuning for acoustic, I've found myself on the Chorderator part of Eddie's tools site more lately -- but in the past I've found his Chord Designer tool really helpful -- since I never seem to know the name of the chord/fingering I'm playing (under any tuning); in fact, I'm 'proud' to say I suggested the Chord Designer tool to Eddie.

(OK, yes, I can analyze my fingering and figure out at least some of the potential spellings for what I'm playing and, actually, when I'm working in DADGAD, I actually do because I'm approaching my late-life adoption of DADGAD as a good excuse to actually pay attention to what the harmonic relationships are in what I'm playing instead of my former bozo-zen flail-in-the-dark approach. But there are standard tuning chords that I've been playing for decades and never spelled right for their actual harmonic context... having a list of reasonable spellings to pick from makes that a lot easier... but, yes, I should have been thinking about harmonic context all along.)

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That's nice and quick -- and would probably be a good, quick visual lesson for beginning guitarists just getting the feel of how things work on the guitar as it shows you the "E shape" barres and the "A shape" barres and moves them up and down the neck. An excellent lesson that should help folks instantly get capo math concepts.

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Wow, I really like that chorderator. Cool stuff.

Yeah... it's really helped me at more quickly picking up different instruments/tunings. If you're like me, you find yourself exploring and finding all kinds of exotic things but sometimes you go blank coming up with easily playable inversions of things that should be (and often are, once you've been hit over the head with them) easy.

 

Back on the Chord designer, one thing that's really cool is that you can actually sit there and cook up chords that are playable -- but not necessarily easy or obvious right off. Because it's got built in audio (it's Flash, though, so that part doesn't work on most phones) you can sit there and tinker with the fingering without having to spend 15 seconds bending your fingers into pretzels only to figure out the hard way that the resulting chord sounds like donkey. So to speak.

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If you have photoshop or something like it, try this.

I've been looking for the same thing and finally in frustration, I found this way. First I located a sheet of blank chord diagrams and downloaded it. That was easy. I opened photoshop and opened the blank chord diagrams. Then I used the pencil tool, made the tip really fat and just clicked in the chords I wanted. Then, I used the text tool to put the names and locations on the neck of each chord, titled the whole thing and even deleted the empty diagrams I didn't use (cut or delete after selecting the area).

It was awfully easy and maybe this can help folks that want to customize their sheets and not buy any more software.

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DIY is always good and we learn more by being actively engaged, but I just wanted to hasten to say that Eddie Boston's Chorderator family of tools are free to use online.

(There is, also, a modestly priced downloadable version for people who don't always have 'net access or who just want to support the author, himself a fine fingerpicker and songwriter.)

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