Riffstation

Practice is the best teacher, especially when it comes to learning how to play a song on the guitar or another instrument. Riffstation was created specifically for this purpose. It displays the chords of your favorite songs and it lets you make various adjustments, so you can listen and play at your own pace. The software places a wide range of useful tools at your disposal, which can help you catch and analyze each individual chord.

The software is free to try for 30 days, without any noticeable functionality restrictions. It comes in a small package and it can be installed in under a minute. The software is compatible with all modern Windows platforms and it is available for Mac OS X as well.

Once you load an audio file, its waveform will be displayed on the top portion of the user interface, along with individual chords. The larger area of the interface, beneath the waveform, is where the magic happens. The software provides you with a "Jam Master", a Riff Builder and a Chords Viewer, on separate tabs, which serve different purposes.

The Jam Master allows you to make various adjustments, to make it easier for yourself to follow a song's chords. For example, you can increase or decrease the pitch and tempo and adjust a metronome as well. Furthermore, the software places filed width controls at your disposal, as well as high and low filtering tools, so you can isolate frequencies.

If you want a detailed look on a song's chords, the Chords Viewer is what you need. The software automatically detects a song's chords and it places them right in front of you, besides displaying the currently playing chords. What's more, the Chords Viewer has its own selection of controls, which allow you to perform various operations, like key and tempo shifting, switching between different chord types and more.

If Riffstation can't help you master a song's chords, then nothing will.