Anyone else use the program "Band In a Box"? I think it could be a great teaching tool for learning and reading chord changes. I know it even has options to show the fret positions for bass and guitar which is cool, but not being a guitar player, I'm not sure how accurate it is or if it's even showing the best positions for the given chord. I know it has many options for the chord voicing.

If anyone is using the program, I have a folder full of jazz standards (along with some pop songs) that are for band in the box. I have uploaded the jazz file folder and it's located at http://www.stlmusicnetwork.com/stlmusic/albums/8/353

As far as I know, these files were created by individuals and are free.

I'm not familiar with band in a box How would that work to teach beg. guitar I have been shopping for software to print my own worksheets, I've looked at finale tabledit and guitar pro. is this something similar that I may want to look at.

The program is really designed to create music instantly. The way it works... you enter in the chord changes for a song into the blank measures and select a style for the song. You can fine tune a lot of parameters to make the music sound like the actual song. The parts created for the song are usually drums, bass, piano, guitar, and sometime another background instrument. It will even create solo leads that will play over the chords in a certain style. For example, I could have the program create a solo in the form of Charlie Parker.

Here is where the guitar feature has helped. I was having the pep band play Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and one of my sax students wanted to play guitar on the song. He hasn't been playing guitar very long but it's still longer than me. I know how to play all the standard concert band instruments but guitar is not part of the concert band. I could show him the chords on piano but really didn't know the best way for him to play the chords on guitar. All I had to do was enter the chords into Band In the Box, transpose the chords to the version of the song we were playing, and then look at the guitar part that was created. There is an option to watch the fret board as the song is being played. The guitar part is usually pretty busy but it gives you the option to see it strummed so the chords are much more user friendly. The student was then able to just look at the screen to see the finger positions.

I use band in the box for improv practice. All I have to do is enter the chord changes I want to solo over and have fun. I also used it for a project where the student had to write a solo based on a given chord progression. After figuring out the chords and writing their solo, they would pick a music style which they would select in Band in box and then perform to the song.