GuitarChords 1.0, a Dashboard widget for Mac OS X has been released. Download away.
Just pick a note and type of chord. Then watch as the widget displays how to fret that chord on the guitar. Scroll up the neck and see alternate ways of playing that same chord. When you get tired of that, flip the widget around and change the tuning on your guitar. Ever wondered how to play a E-flat augmented chord in Open G tuning? Now you can find out.
In the future, I’ll be adding who knows what to the widget. Maybe nothing. Maybe other cool things depending on what kind of feedback I get. Anyway, hope you like it.
OFFICIAL APPLE DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required. If you’re using Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it. If you’re using a browser other than Safari, click the download link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar and click the widget’s icon in the Widget Bar to open it.
Downloaded your widget. I like the way that you could change the tuning to adjust for alternate tunings. Thought it was cool at first, but I found that I couldn’t clear the chords. Sometimes chords went further down on the neck than the widget would allow it to show, thus making the chord diagram useless. Need to be able to expand the neck diagram to compensate for moving down the neck…
Keep up the good work though. The next revision should be great!
Thanks for the feedback. Currently, you should be able to click and drag on the actual neck of the guitar to see the chord shapes that are formed higher up the neck. For instance, if you select D major, it will show the standard xx0232 fingering, however, if you click and drag the neck to view the higher frets , it should re-draw the D chord to show a variation at those higher frets, like x57775.
Another example of this was the screenshot I submitted to Apple. You can see it here:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/music/guitarchords.html
In this image, I’ve picked a C#m and scrolled down to show the entire chord.
Let me know if that’s not working for you, and I’ll try to see what’s wrong. And I’ll add the chord ‘clearing’ option to the feature wishlist.
I think the widget is a great idea! What about the left-handed guitar players?!
Great widget! Although, I think I would prefer it if it was horisontal. I really found it a bit akward upside down…
Keep it up!
Thanks for the widget. I have a slight visual problem and i find the white location dots on the neck too distracting. Could they be left out or made black?
yo…tight widget…I know more piano chords that guitarchords so this alows me to jump back and forth between a simple widget and logic pro so I can lay some guitar over my tracks…. this is the most useful widget since the bpm widget….add a tuner to it…then the world is your…
peace…
urbanstar..
“Creative minds think different so it’s cool to call me wierd”
I tried out this widget… I think it’s a good idea, and will be very useful, however I agree with the person above, what about left-handed players? Being left-handed myself, this is a problem I tend to find with resources of this nature, so my suggestion is that there should be some kind of option to mirror the neck or such, so that left-handed players see the chords in a manner more correct for them. Other than that, excellent work.
Is their a way to see 7th chords? Such as G7, C7, Dm7, etc?
Dude, this thing is great. This is the nice and simple guitar chord app I’ve been looking forever for. It’ll be great for my friends that I’m teaching guitar. It is just about as close to perfect as it’s gonna get. And I’m glad you didn’t make it any bigger… my Dashboard is clogged up as it is.
Again, great job.
One thing that would be nice is some preprogramed open tunings (i.e. a pull down with things like “Open E” in it) that would auto select the correct notes for each string. Another thing that would be nice, although a bit harder, would be a mp3 recreation of each cord – even just the playing of each string in the cord sequentially would do. Just some thoughts.
Thank you for designing this; it’s very helpful especially because I do not have to go online to find chords now. I do second Bob above who’d like to see the field of chords expanded, eg “add 9″ in addition to 7 chords.
–Chris
Thanks for the comments. I’m hoping to add support in the future for 7th, add 9 chords, etc. but right now it’s pretty much restrained to the family of three-note chords. When you get into chords that involve four and five notes, the rules get a bit more complicated so I need to brush up on my music theory some more before I add those rules to the calculation engine. The last thing I’d want to do is display incorrect chords…
Where can I get the plugin so I can hear the chords in quicktime?
Thanks Carl.
I know you have plenty already to work on already but –
Self-taught, I play several chords with the thumb on the low E string, and other weird shxt like that. I even use my thumb for barre F- and F-minor-shaped chords.
Even ignoring that, there are many popular alternatives, like 332010, 032010, x32010 and xx2010 for C major, etc. It should be possible for us to edit the data file, and insert multiple alternative versions of each key and chord type. Of course that would mean providing a way to *view* multiple alternate chords of each key and type.
As if that’s not enough, I’d like to be able to put a capo on the guitar – without retuning all 6 strings.
I agree with other readers that it should be horizontal, with the first fret at the left and the low string along the bottom. Lefties would want something different depending on how they string the guitar.
- Robert