How to use the Fretboard

This page is a guitar. It already has four chords on it. You look at a chord, hear it, change it if you want, and watch it become the next one.

Open the app → First look demo →

1. What this is

Open the app. You do not make an account. You do not pick a key first. You do not need any other tool.

Four chords are already loaded: C, G, Am, F. The neck is showing C. That is enough to start.

You use this when you want to:

In the app, click Take the tour for a first look, or Demos (or press ?) to pick a walkthrough. Each one runs on the real board, then puts your session back. → next, ← back, Esc leave.

2. The three parts of the screen

Ignore the left column and the top bar for now. Only three things matter.

The neck in the middle A guitar from the player’s view. Thick string at the bottom. Open strings on the left. Red notes are the chord you are on. Blue notes are the next chord.
The cards under the neck That is the song: C → G → Am → F. Click a card to study that chord. The red card is “this one.” The blue card is “the next one.”
Play, on the right Press Play to hear the four chords in order. Pattern changes how they are plucked. Volume and tempo sit under that.

The left column is tuning and how busy the neck looks. The top bar is save, dark mode, and other tools. Come back to them later.

3. Your first session

Do these five things. That is using the software.

  1. Look at the neck. Red dots are C. Blue dots are G. A split dot is a note both chords share.
  2. Click a red or blue dot. You should hear that note. If you hear nothing, click once more — the browser often waits for a click before it will play.
  3. Click the G card under the neck. The board redraws: G is now red, Am is now blue. Click C to come back.
  4. Press Play on the right (or Space). It walks C → G → Am → F.
  5. Change one chord. Click the F card. Change the type from major to minor, or the letter to D. Press Play again. That is the whole loop: see, hear, change, hear.

When that feels obvious, run a walkthrough on the real board, or keep reading.

4. Walkthrough demos

These open the app and drive it. You watch the move happen. Your own chords come back when you leave.

First look See the neck, click through the cards, hear Play, change F to Dm, watch the morph. Hear the song Play walks C → G → Am → F. Then it switches to an arpeggio so you hear the difference. Change a chord The last card is F. It becomes Dm. Then you hear C – G – Am – Dm. Watch C become G Shared notes stay lit. Notes that leave pulse red. Notes that arrive pulse blue. See the key Amber diamonds paint C major, then C minor. The four chords do not move. That is a map, not a transpose. Name a grip White rings appear on a first-position C. DETECT offers the name. That is Shift+click.

In the app, Demos or ? opens the same list. All on a tour card jumps back to it.

5. Red, blue, and the other marks

You only need the first three rows to start.

MarkMeaning
RedThis chord — the card with the red border
BlueThe next card
Half red, half blueA note that stays when you change chord
Gold ringThe root of the chord
Amber diamondA note in the scale, if Scale map is Full
White ringA fret you pinned as part of a grip (later)

Move around the neck: scroll to slide, Ctrl+scroll (⌘ on a Mac) to zoom, double-click a note to centre there. Reset view on the left brings you back to frets 0–12.

6. Change a chord and hear the row

Click a card, then edit that card:

The neck updates as soon as you change the card.

On the right, under AUDIO:

Add puts another card on the end. Solo hides the others so you only see this grip. All brings them back. The trash on a card deletes it.

7. See the key (it does not move your chords)

On the right, SCALE / KEY is a map painted on the neck. It is not a transpose.

If you change C major to A minor here, C–G–Am–F stay C–G–Am–F. Only the amber diamonds change.

On the left, Scale map:

If the neck feels busy, switch to Chord notes only. That is the usual practice view.

8. Watch one chord become the next

This is the main practice trick. You are not just seeing two grips. You are seeing what stays and what moves.

  1. Click a card that has another card after it (C, then G).
  2. On the next card (the blue one), click the small eye.
  3. Notes both chords share stay lit. Notes that leave pulse red. Notes that arrive pulse blue.
  4. Click the eye again to stop.

M starts or stops that same animation. Speed is ½× / 1× / 2× under the neck. Play and Solo stop it so you can hear the sequence.

The eye on the current (red) card does a greyscale version of the same idea. Only one morph runs at a time.

9. Pin a shape you already play

You know a grip on the guitar. You want the app to name it and lock it on the board.

  1. Hold the shape on your guitar.
  2. On the screen, Shift+click each fretted note. White rings appear. One ring per string. Skip open strings if you like.
  3. On the right, DETECT should offer a name (for example B Major).
  4. Apply as chord writes that name into the card you have selected.

Same fret again = remove that pin. Another fret on the same string = move the pin.

10. When you want more

You can stop at section 8 and use this every day. These are optional.

Save, load, and a picture of the neck

Top of the page: type a name, then the save icon. The list next to it loads a saved name. Export / Import is a JSON file you can keep on disk.

The last thing you were doing comes back when you reopen the page. A * on the title means you have not saved since the last change. Nothing is uploaded.

Export PNG is a picture of the neck plus a caption — useful as a practice sheet.

Practice a run in one area of the neck

A path is a corridor: “stay in this area.”

  1. Click Set path under the neck.
  2. Click a start fret, then an end fret. The rest of the board dims.
  3. Choose width and whether it plays a scale run, a chord arp, or both.
  4. Play path walks the notes in that corridor.

Drag the ends or the beam to move it. P sets or clears the path.

Bass, Drop D, other tunings

Left column. Default is a six-string guitar in standard tuning. Change Instrument to bass, or pick Drop D / Baritone / Open G from the presets. The highlighted preset is the one that matches the real open strings.

If you already pinned a shape and then change tuning, the pins move on the same strings so they still sound the same notes.

Focus board, and the keyboard

Focus board (top right) hides the side columns so the neck fills the screen. Esc leaves that view.

KeyWhat it does
← →Previous / next chord
SpacePlay or stop the progression
MStart or stop the red/blue morph
PSet or clear a path
?Start or stop the spotlight tour
EscLeave the tour, then leave Focus board
Shift+clickPin a fret in a grip
If you also use Harmonic Landscape

You can use the Fretboard forever on its own. Skip this unless you also open Landscape.

Landscape is where a longer progression lives. This page shows the chords around the step you had selected. When you send back, those chords go into the same place. The rest of the cell stays.

Scale / Key on this page still only paints the neck. Header buttons: Landscape opens the cell, Arrangement opens the song form, Pull session reloads what Landscape last focused.

11. If something looks wrong

No sound

Click the neck once, then raise Volume. Check Octave is not all the way down.

The neck is too busy

Click Solo on the cards, or set Scale map to Chord notes only.

The amber dots vanished

Scale map is Off or Chord notes only, or a morph is running. Stop the morph and set Scale map to Full.

I clicked Play and the morph stopped

That is on purpose so you can hear the sequence. Start the morph again from the eye or M.

Shift+click removed a pin

Same fret again removes it. Use another fret on that string to move it.

I changed the scale and my chords moved / did not move

They should not move. Scale / Key is a map. To rewrite the row into another key you change each card, or you write in Landscape.

Open the Fretboard → Studio Tools