There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitar (Spanish guitar/nylon-string guitar), the steel-string acoustic guitar and the archtop guitar, which is sometimes called a “jazz guitar”.

Electric guitars, introduced in the 1930s, use an amplifier and a loudspeaker. Like acoustic guitars, there are various types of electric guitars including hollowbody guitars, archtop guitars (used in jazz guitar, blues and rockabilly) and solid-body guitars.

The firm foundation of the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture, offering an excellent application programming interface for device drivers for sound cards, and the JACK Audio Connection Kit, a professional sound server daemon, provide Linux with the infrastructure to be a serious contender in music production. Further, Linux is endowed with an impressive range of open source audio software which is both mature and feature-laden.

This feature focuses in selecting the finest Linux applications that are targeted at guitarists. All of the software featured here is released under open source licenses, to download at no charge, and are easy to install and intuitive to use.

To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 6 of the finest guitar applications. Whether you are a causal strummer, or can give a virtuso performance with beautiful chord embellishments in the style of Bobby Jo or Jimi Hendrix, there should be something of interest here for anyone interested in guitar music.

Here’s our recommendations.

Let’s explore the 6 guitar tools at hand. For each title we have compiled its own portal page, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, a screenshot of the software in action, together with links to relevant resources.

Guitar Tools Guitarix Rock guitar amplifier for Jack Nootka Learn classical score notation TuxGuitar Multitrack tablature editor and player writen in Java-SWT Lingot Musical instrument tuner Rakarrack Richly featured multi-effects processor emulating a guitar effects pedal board Songwrite 3 Music score and songbook editor

Return to our complete collection of recommended free and open source software including our latest additions.

Related articles