The NSA Song Player, a shareware product created by Derek Stottlemyer, will help you become a better guitar player. It features excellent modules for learning chords and scales, importing tablature for practicing, and will accommodate either right-handed or left-handed musicians.

NSA Song Player has two major program modules: Song and Tablature. The use and features of both modules are explained through the excellent “Guided Tour” tutorial.

The Song module is extremely powerful and useful for learning chords, various chord positions, and scales. The top of the screen depicts a guitar neck with frets numbered (0 through 19) and strings clearly identified. The left side of the screen is where you tell the program which chord to display. All chords are provided, including both common and rarely-used combinations, with the possible exception of some rogue chords that occasionally come from my guitar (e.g., Q-diminished, V-7th, etc…grin!). As you select each chord the notes are automatically displayed on the guitar neck as they should be played, and you can click on the “ear” icon to actually hear how the chord should sound. There is a chord slider bar on the top of the guitar neck that can be repositioned up and down the neck, allowing you to visualize how chords can be played at different positions on the guitar neck...this chord slider feature is fantastic!

The Scales feature allows you to visualize (and hear) a large variety of scale progressions. Along with major, minor (four forms), and pentatonic scales, you may also select exotic (16 forms, including Oriental, Arabian, Spanish, and many others) and six different modes (dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian, and locrian). You also have the ability to display only the root notes for each scale.

The Song module allows you to create songs by combining chords in a pattern and selecting the number of beats. After you have constructed your song, you can play it and practice along with the chord changes…this is a great way to learn new chord progressions. A metronome is provided for changing tempo of songs you have created.
Although guitar is the default instrument, I was delighted to see that the NSA Song Player supports practically all of the string instruments, including common ones such as bass, violin, mandolin, viola, banjo, etc. and those less commonly seen and heard (bouzouki, guitarron, mandola, etc.). You can choose from multiple standard and non-standard tunings for your instrument, even a custom tuning of your own design.

The Tablature module will import tablature downloaded from the Internet as either *.txt or *.tab file format. For the most part, this feature worked well and imported the tablature into the program seamlessly. I did experience problems importing some tablature which I attribute to a formatting problem in the source file; although I received an error message concerning the tablature file(s), the tab was displayed in the program window, and there is no obvious way to remove the corrupted entry (hopefully this will be corrected in the next version). NSA Song Player correctly imports most tablature, and will play the tablature as written while displaying the note location on the guitar neck. As with all tablature, knowledge of the actual song is critical since dynamics, timing, and note duration are not displayed. Overall, this is a valuable learning tool which is practically limitless because of the vast library of tablature readily available on the Internet.

Although my initial interest in NSA Song Player’s ability to handle guitar tablature, I quickly discovered that it’s most useful feature is the way in which it handles multiple versions of chords played in various positions up the neck by simply sliding the position bar up and down the guitar neck on your PC screen.  This is an invaluable tool in learning different chord positions for familiar (and less familiar) chords, and it works great!

Bottom Line: NSA Song Player is a really useful product for guitar players of all skill levels, from beginner to intermediate and advanced. The chord finder alone is worth the price of the product. Hats off to Mr. Stottlemyer, who is doing great things to advance guitar knowledge…if you’re a guitar player, you should check out his NSA Song Player.

System Tested On: IBM-compatible PC with an AMD-Athlon 600 Mhz CPU; Windows 98; Nvidia Geforce 256 graphics accelerator; 128 Mb of RAM; 40x CD-ROM drive; Sound Blaster Live! Value sound card; mouse

Minimum System: Pentium 150 Mhz; MS-Windows 95/98/NT3.5 or better; about 5 MB hard drive space; ActiveX installed (automatic on most PCs); DirectX 3.0 or better (installed on most PCs); 800 x 600 screen resolution with 16 bit color.

Technical support is available by e-mail at support@guitar-learning.com.

You can get a registered copy of the program by having the registration code e-mailed (sales@guitar-learning.com) to you for a price of $19.95 and downloading the program over the Internet; if you want the program mailed to you on CD, the cost is $31.95 (includes shipping). You can order toll-free by calling 1-877-REGSOFT (1-877-734-7638).
Derek Stottlemyer, 1818 Jackson Ave., Ann Arbor, MI  48103
Website: http://www.guitar-learning.com/