All of the chords detected are shown on the left so you can familiarize yourself with the shapes before attempting to play along. The Chord Viewer tool sits in a box underneath. Annoyingly, the scroll feature seems to disable itself after clicking anywhere on the timeline, so you'll need to remember to activate it again. There's an overall track timeline below the chord strip that allows you to keep an eye on exactly where you are in the big scheme of things, or to choose precisely where you want the song to start from. This is turned off by default, but it's quite disconcerting for the chord strip to remain static as the song moves on, so you'll likely want this to be active. There's a button marked 'Scroll' on the right which needs to be clicked if you want the chord prompt graphics to follow the song. You can zoom in for a more detailed look at the chord structure by hovering your mouse over either part of this section, then use the scroll wheel to move in or out as desired, or by clicking the plus or minus symbols above the word 'Zoom' on the left.

There'll be a brief message underneath stating that the chords are being calculated, and then a fairly cramped set of chord blocks will appear. When you load in an MP3 source track, a waveform graphic appears in the top section. It's like Guitar Hero for realįirst under the microscope is Chord Viewer, which is activated by clicking the appropriately-marked third tab in the middle section of the user interface. With Riff Builder, you can grab sections of a song and create your own custom backing tracks to play along to.

It can also isolate and remove guitar parts from a song, so you can take the lead, and gives you control over the pitch, to allow you to jam in a key that you're familiar and comfortable with. Jam Master allows you to slow down the music so you can practice your newly-learned solo at more manageable speeds. The Chord Viewer auto-detects a song's chords and displays them in real time under a scrolling audio waveform graphic, while simultaneously providing diagrams to show you where on your guitar neck your fingers need to be placed, and when. Gizmag takes a look at what this software has to offer. Irish company Sonic Ladder has now released some interesting software called Riffstation that gives you the opportunity to break out your much-neglected guitar and play along with your favorite bands to onscreen prompts. Interest in learning to play a real guitar also blossomed, but many found the transition from guitar-shaped controller to actual instrument a difficult one, and perfectly good axes have been gathering dust ever since. Not too long after its launch in 2005, you'd be hard-pushed to visit any friends without being challenged to a round or two of Guitar Hero.

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