8 Useful Online Resources for Guitar Teachers
Students look to teachers as a fountain of knowledge but what if you don’t have the answer? We’ve asked our panel of expert teachers to pick some of their favourite online resources they use in lessons. The only rules we set were that the resources had to be online and that they could be accessed for free in and out of lessons.
1. Reverse Chord Designer
If you’ve ever been trying to figure out a chord name from a tab sheet, or you were wondering what a chord would become if you moved one finger to another note, this is the tool for you. This online chord generator provides chord names based on the frets you input to it’s fretboard. Great for figuring out alternate arrangements for fingers or just for finding the name of a particular chord.
2. Metronome
While the website may be related to flute playing, this online metronome is one of the most customisable free tools online. Nothing is more important than keeping yourself in time, use this metronome as a practise aid in lessons to show students how to play in time. The students can also access this at home and practise along. You can customise the breaks in a measure, the tempo and the volume of the beats. It even has a switchable option to accent the first beat of each bar.
3. Scale Finder
You might be searching for a scale that will work over a specific group of chords for a lesson, but this scale might not be one you’re already familiar with. This great online tool allows you to input notes you need to use and a few chords you want to use those notes over and it will generate a list of scales that you can use. Perfect for looking up new scales with very little effort.
4. Reverse Scale Generator
Like the reverse chord generator, this great tool allows you to input a pattern on the fretboard and then the tool will suggest what scales you could be aiming for and the intervals that make up those scales. You might have a question on a note grouping in a lesson such as “What scale does this come from?”, but if you are not familiar with that grouping, this tool will provide those answers.
5. Chord Progression Generator
When teaching composition and forming chord progressions, this is a great tool that can be used to generate progressions in all keys with a variety of different styles. You can see a list of every chord that makes up the selected key and some examples of how those can be used to form progressions.
6. Guitar Tuner
It should come as no surprise that being in tune is a huge part of learning. This is a great, free online tuner which provides very clear pitch references for you to tune against. It also has a large bank of custom tunings you can load. This is a great tool to teach students to tune from a reference pitch. You can even change the sound from clean to distorted, classical nylon, steel string or bass guitars.
7. Chord Book
Most teachers own a book which contains hundreds of chord shapes across the fretboard in every key you can possibly imagine. This tool puts all that into one place. It allows you to select a root note and a type of chord and it will show you the finger positions for that chord. You can change the fret number to find different voicings of that chord across the neck of the guitar. No more flicking through endless pages of chords anymore.
8. How to Read TAB
This is not so much a tool, it’s just a great website that our teachers voted for. This contains a great, in depth guide to understanding tablature. Perfect for showing students how to read their first TAB and it also works as a reference for them to look back on between lessons.
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We’ve asked our panel of expert teachers to pick some of their favourite online resources they use in lessons.