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| Thoth Music Learning Software Version 2.3 THoTH Music Learning Software is a program that helps guitar teachers and students with scales, arpeggios, chord voicings, and other musical elements by applying them to the chord progressions of standard and jazz songs. Version 2.3, with new features and new lessons, is now available for download. The program comes with thirty lessons written by the program's author, Steve Carter, who taught guitar at Berklee College of Music for twenty-five years. Each lesson is related to a particular song, and includes the notated exercise, and, in some cases, an audio file (mp3). The program's database contains a list of more than 300 songs with information about the types of chords used in the song, and the modes that can be used to improvise over the song's chord progression. THoTH has the unique ability to analyze chord progressions and produce chord-scale analysis. The results, which are shown on the screen and can be printed, include chord name, Roman numeral analysis, mode name, and the name of the scale the mode is derived from. THoTH does this by reading MusicXML files, which can be exported from such applications as Finale and Sibelius. THoTH includes more than twenty MusicXML files, and the user can add more. Registered THoTH users can download additional MusicXML files from the Frogstory Music web site as they become available. As each MusicXML file is analyzed, the chord type and mode information is stored in the database and is searchable. The user can edit the information in the database and can add an unlimited number of song records to the database. A new feature has been added in version 2.3: theory lessons. Steve Carter (who also taught Harmony at Berklee), has written lessons on scale theory, diatonic chords, modes of major and minor scales, chord substitutions, modal interchange, and more. The theory lessons include examples from jazz and standard songs, and relate to the lessons that are included with THoTH. If a guitar student asks, “How can I use this scale (mode, arpeggio, chord voicing)?" THoTH can provide the answer. write your comments about the article :: © 2008 Jazz News :: home page |