If you are a guitarist, accomplished or just beginning, Christopher Sung and Sean Kelly may well be your new best friends. They have, with support from a host of others including the 'Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP)' at the New York University, created a place on the internet like none other: WholeNote, the On-Line Guitar Community



Christopher Sung: 'We took a look at OLGA (the On-Line Guitar Archives - a repository of over 20,000 tabs that has since been shut down due to copyright infringement) and realized there is a vast number of guitarists who want to share what they know, without a good forum for this type of information. So we built a site that allows anyone to give an on-line lesson, recommend a piece of equipment, ask a question, or anything else. You don't need to know someone at a guitar magazine or a music publisher to reach a wide audience with your ideas. You just need a web browser and an Internet connection.'

Sean Kelly : 'We wanted all the some-time, full-time, part-time, and not-enough-time guitarists to have a place to go to grok musical knowledge and contribute what they know to their fellow players. Even if you only know one lick or wrote one chord progression in your life, you can put it up on WholeNote and someone will be able to find it and learn from it. Over time, we want to grow a musical resource that could never have existed before the web, a book that keeps writing itself (and that can play all the music at your own speed)...'

WholeNote offers so much to the guitarist it's hard to know where to start. Perhaps the best way for the first time visitor to get a true feel of what WholeNote has to offer is by simply taking the tour.

When you first log on to the site you are presented with a screen containing 3 options:

Enter the site
Take the tour
Check my setup

WholeNote relies heavily on the playback of music examples. To ensure that your browser is properly configured for MIDI, they have included music on this first page. If you can in fact hear the music here then you are ready to go, if not this is the place to check your computer setup and rectify the problem.

Tour stop #1 Lessons:

WholeNote offers a variety of on-line guitar lessons. The musical examples in the lessons are visually displayed as tablatures and chord charts. All musical examples can be played back, according to your preferences. Users create all the lessons using the tools WholeNote makes available to them.

Tour stop #2 The Lesson Builder:

Create, edit, and preview your own lessons and pages. Your musical examples can appear as any combination of tablature and chord charts, with musical playback. You can include text descriptions to explain your music examples. All your lessons are managed for you in a maintained listing for easy access. You decide whether you want to publish your lessons in the lesson directory, or keep them private for your own studies.

Tour stop #3 Composer

The Composer is a Shockwave plug-in. You enter your music on a virtual fretboard. An On-line tutorial explains how to use the Composer.

Tour stop #4 The Groove Builder

You pick the chords, style, tempo, and mix, and the Groove Builder does the rest, auto-generating tracks that you can use for practice, composition, or teaching.

You may save, update, and use these grooves in future lessons. As always, it's your choice if your grooves are kept private or made available for others to use.

Tour stop #5 Homepage Builder

Fill in a title, a few paragraphs about yourself, a picture you've put up on the Web, your influences, etc. and WholeNote will do the rest for you. Your homepage is linked to your name whenever it appears on the site, providing exposure and the ability for anyone to check out all your other creations on the site.

Tour stop #6 Resources

Registered members can recommend and review their own favorite resources and publish them in the resource directory. All your recommendations are managed for you in a maintained listing for easy access and editing.

Tour stop #7 Forums

There are currently 10 forums with everything from gear to reviews to classifieds. Everyone can read FretBuzz messages, but only members can post and respond. All messages posted to a particular forum are fully threaded, allowing you to see how a specific discussion has evolved over time. You can for certain keywords, providing a quick way to help you find a particular topic of interest.

Tour stop #8

WholeNote offers a variety of reference material and exercises.

over 6000 chords.
over 2000 scales.
over 800 arpeggios.
Interactive exercises to help you figure out tunes quicker and easier.
Interactive exercises to help you remember how they sound and function.
How various chords, scales, and arpeggios are constructed.

The membership to this online guitar community is free. Despite the fact that there is a world of information and resources available to the unregistered, it's nothing compared to the benefits of doing so. Once registered you may take full advantage of everything this amazing site has to offer.

k.s.j.