When you are learning guitar the use of software often makes the learning curve less steep. The good news is that much of the guitar software available on the net is free. There are many musicians developing their own guitar software and sharing it with others. Software for learning chords and scales, guitar effects, and free guitar tuners are all available for download. Because the internet is changing all the time, websites go up and websites go down, I will just give you the names of the software I have found and leave you to do a search for the latest version.

KD's Guitar Utilities developed by Kent Dalton, this package is a group of utilities that help you in guitar fretboard learning. They began life as a basic set of chord and scale diagram generators and is offered as copyrighted freeware at the moment. These utilities generate scale diagrams, generate chord diagrams, give you chord names based on fingering, generate arpeggio diagrams, determine chords that fit into a given key or scale, and determine scales that fit into a given chord progression. The programs support a range of custom tunings. If a scale or tuning is not known to the tools, you can input custom scale patterns and tunings.

GuitarScales v1.0 is a scale visualization program which can see scales visualized on a fretboard using plain dots, dots with special markings for the root notes, note names and degree numbers. The user can add guitars and scales using a simple interface.

Audio Tuner v0.9 will tune your guitar, ukulele, violin or other musical instrument. The program lets you tune your instruments to pitch perfect. Tunings are included for Guitar, Ukulele, Violin, Piano, Bass Guitar, Banjo, Mandolin, Autoharp and Cello.

Denzo Guitar Software III is a unique guitar related application that can manage concepts such as chord/scale relationship, inversions, subscales, similar chord, tonality, harmonization, fourth harmony, analysis of a chord from its notes, plus other harmony tools. Denzo Guitar Software III offers a wide range of functionalities to map notes on the fretboard with different rules, so you can think C, E, G as a chord and you can find all possible positions or inversions of this chord. Alternatively you can think C, E, G as an arpeggio and ask the program which are the best positions to play it in.

PitchWorks DX 1.2 is a plug-in which lets you adjust a music sample's pitch or tempo, or change both pitch AND tempo. According to the specs input parameters are: Pitch in semitones (cents) in range ± 4 octaves, Tempo in percents (in range 15..999 %), BPM or sample time in seconds, Speed in percents or semitones. For precise Tempo change and avoid artifacts an accuracy parameter is available. All parameters have two tweak modes: draft, where you able tweak parameters fast using GUI wheels and precise (calculator) mode, where you input precise values into edit boxes.

Advanced FretPro is a fretboard training program that also has a massive chord and scale library showing exactly how to play chords and scales on a real guitar neck instead of from a chord or scale diagram.

There are many more free guitar software programs out there, some have not had any updates for some years but others are recently developed programs for the latest technology.