An Idea 10 Years in the Making
James and Barbara Reyes spent 10 years developing the De:CHORDER®, a guitar-shaped tool that transposes music chords from one key to another at the touch of a button.

Musicians often change the key of music to make it easier to sing or play to. Changing the key of a song not only changes the home chord, but every other chord in the song.

James often found that the songs he wanted to sing to his wife Barbara were written in keys that were too low or too high for his voice. His first attempt was a map tube he fashioned into something similar to a slide rule. Sliding the cap of the tube transposed the chords on one part of the tube to another. It is a very simple concept, as in THIS IS TO THIS AS THIS IS TO THIS, or this key is to this chord as this key is to this chord, or more specifically, A is to E as D is to A.

James started with that, and then immediately thought that it could be done electronically. After hearing that, his daughter, who was studying computer programming at the time, developed a program that would do just that.

Reyes took the program to an electronics engineer, who built the first prototype, and in 1997 Reyes secured a patent on his invention. Several other prototypes followed, and the Reyes family worked on the transposer in fits and starts over the years.

The couple named their company Jambarrey Music Products combining the first three letters of their respective first names — JAM and BAR — and their last name — REY — which is what they did for their first e-mail account.

UPDATE: On the same day an article about the De:CHORDER® was published in a local Tucson newspaper, a local music store sold out of the product for days!