Guitar Chord Tutor is intended for the novice guitar player and generates chord shapes on a display of the top six frets of the guitar, giving finger positions, silent strings and barres. Standard musical abbreviations are used to call up any of the 144 chords available as well as 98 chord progressions of two to five chords. Calling up the chords is achieved by pressing the space bar but can be done using a footswitch attached to the analogue port of the computer allowing uninterrupted playing of the guitar.

Up to 48 chords may be stored in replay memory and then displayed in sequence for practice sessions. These may also be replayed through the speaker of the computer in arpeggio if desired.

A tuning facility also exists to enable the open string tuning of the six strings of the guitar to notes generated by computer.

Keyboard Chord Tutor is a similar program and generates the finger positions for 144 chords and displays them on a two and a half octave keyboard.

Again, 98 chord progressions are provided and these can be single stepped for display or replayed in arpeggio by the computer.

I play guitar and some keyboard, so both these programs I found of interest although they are aimed more at the novice. They were easy to use and the displays are clear and pleasant to look at for long periods. Both programs come with a function key strip and a well written and informative instruction book.

As for their educational value, I am sure a beginner on either instrument would find them useful. I would have to say however, that the price being asked for both of these strikes me as rather excessive for what they do. Purchase for school use by a group of students may justify the outlays but then again, everything these programs provide can be found in a music tutor book or chord dictionary at a fraction of the price.