What this site is for
Cuatro Warrior covers the two instruments that answer to the name cuatro: the ten-string Puerto Rican one in both of its tunings, and the four-string Venezuelan one. Two subjects, kept apart on purpose, because they are not variants of each other — and because a page that tried to describe both at once would end up true of neither.
That narrowness is what lets the strumming hand have its own engine here, with every braked stroke declared, and what lets each chord diagram be computed against its own instrument's open strings rather than borrowed. It is also why this is the wrong site for almost every question that is not about a cuatro. Pointing you at the site that owns the question beats writing a thin section here for completeness.
Where to go instead
String WarriorTwo instruments deeply is this site's whole method; there the same chord is drawn on twenty-odd necks at once, which is the fastest way to find out what a five-course grip becomes on everything else.
Theory WarriorThe brake tells you where the accent falls, not why a change wants to happen there. That argument runs on its own, with no strings and no fretboard in the way.
Keys WarriorBoth instruments under that name hand a whole harmony to one player with a small fixed set of strings. A keyboard hands it over with no limit at all — until the instrument itself imposes one, which is how that site sorts its seven.
Ukulele WarriorThe other small four-string with a string tuned deliberately out of order — theirs is folded UP, ours is folded DOWN, and reading both is the quickest way to understand what a re-entrant string is actually for.
Bass WarriorThe register these instruments deliberately gave away. Neither cuatro has a bass note worth the name, and in a joropo or a jíbaro band somebody else is carrying it; that site is where that job is explained.
Mandolin WarriorThe network's other doubled-course instrument, paired in fifths rather than in fourths. None of the ten-string's grips survive the trip, but everything you know about making two strings speak as one does.
Guitar WarriorSix strings, and where most players of either instrument arrived from. Go there for what the fretting hand already knows — and to see how much of a strumming vocabulary has no braked stroke in it at all.
Banjo WarriorThe other site about what the right hand does, from the opposite direction: a fixed finger cycle filling every eighth, where a bar here is defined by which strokes are stopped dead.
Fiddle WarriorBowed and fretless, and the melody voice in half the ensembles these instruments play in. Nothing about position or fingering transfers, which is exactly why it is worth reading.
Ear WarriorFour courses tuned out of pitch order mean the note on top is rarely the one the shape implies. Hearing what actually sounded rather than what you assumed is that site's whole subject.
Bluegrass WarriorA whole band covered seat by seat. Different repertoire entirely, but the closest thing the network has to how a joropo or jíbaro ensemble divides its labour between melody, harmony and pulse.
Music Warrior NetworkKeeping two instruments called cuatro apart is this site's whole job; that site does the same for the network — one card per sister, the subject each owns, and which door to try first for a question that is not about a cuatro.
Nashville WarriorNumbers travel between instruments but not between metres, and joropo's fast triple pulse is where a page's assumptions about the bar quietly stop applying. Reading that notation is the quickest way to see which of its rules are actually about harmony.
Mariachi WarriorAnother small-bodied instrument built to hold a pattern rather than a melody, in an ensemble with no percussion at all. That site declares its cells slot by slot, including the braked slap and the silences.
Jazz WarriorHolding a whole harmony on four courses teaches you which notes are expendable. The players there make the same omissions by choice, hand the root to somebody else, and call what is left a voicing.
Country WarriorAn ensemble with no drummer, where the beat is divided among players who are all already occupied. How those jobs get handed out is a useful comparison for any music whose pulse is carried by a hand that is also holding the harmony.
Tres WarriorBoth are small doubled-course instruments at the heart of a Caribbean tradition, and both get called "the little guitar" by people who have not listened: the cuatro carries the song along, the tres dismantles the chord into a loop.
Sitar WarriorEverything here assumes the strum — four courses struck together to keep a song moving. The sitar's right hand plays one string at a time with a wire worn on the finger, and seeing that is the fastest way to notice how much of your playing the strum is doing.
Oud WarriorThe cuatro's four courses are struck together to keep a song moving; the oud's six are picked one line at a time with a risha. Hearing them side by side shows how much of an instrument's identity belongs to the strumming hand.
Charango WarriorSmall, high, course-strung and driving a dance music — the nearest neighbour this instrument has in the network. What differs is the tuning: GCEAE does not ascend, so the shapes do not transfer even though the role does.
Cavaquinho WarriorFour courses driving a dance music, which is this instrument's description too. What differs is the writing-down: that site gives the direction of every eighth in the bar, where here the pattern arrives under a name.
Gear WarriorCuatro chords are ours; whether a given instrument sold under that name is a serious build or a souvenir is a question about makers, and that site keeps the maker list.
Blues WarriorA joropo cycles through its chords in a fast triple metre; a blues holds each dominant seventh for a bar or more. That site reads those bars one at a time and marks which notes of the blues scale fit.
Flamenco WarriorThis site reads a joropo's six-slot bar two ways. That site does the same arithmetic over twelve counts: four palos, the accents each reading explains, and which palos share one cycle.
Progression WarriorA joropo's chords cycle fast enough that nobody stops to ask what key they are in. That site is for slowing one down on paper: type the chord line and see a Roman numeral and a named move under every chord.
Pedal Steel WarriorA cuatro is retuned between songs, never during one. A pedal steel retunes strings mid-phrase with pedals and knee levers, and that site shows the result on the E9 and C6 necks for every combination allowed.
Scales WarriorA cuatro chord chart names a key and stops there. That site starts where it stops: the seven modes inside each scale family, and which of 49 modes sit one altered degree apart.
Music Warrior AIAsk an AI assistant for a cuatro chord and it has to guess which cuatro you mean. That site's endpoint does not: it holds the Puerto Rican and the Venezuelan cuatro as separate instruments with separate tunings, and cites this site's page for each chord.
How the sites divide the work
Each instrument family has exactly one home, and kinship follows strings and tuning rather than name or body shape. This site is the network's only two-family home, and the reason is the shared name: two instruments that nobody would file together on the evidence, and that everybody files together on the label. Keeping them here, on separate pages, is the honest arrangement — the alternative is a reader arriving for one and being handed the other.
String Warrior is the one site that does not work this way at all. It carries every instrument at once, which is what lets it lay a single chord across twenty necks side by side — something no family site here can do, and the reason this one does not try.
More sites are still being built, and each will join the list above the day it opens — not before, since a door onto a site that cannot be read yet helps nobody.