> If you choose the frequency 440hz, jump down one 7-semitone step and up 5, you have an A major scale
Also I have one more question about - when making chords using the 3rd and 5th step, for a note on the right boundary of this n <-> 2n interval, I would jump into 2n <-> 4n interval, right? But I'd I were not using chords then is "all" (simplified) music made in only only one x <-> 2x range and it's not crossed?
Another question- why do pianos have different black and white keys? Do you plan on doing a blog post that explains how "your " explanation of music theory fits various instruments? I've always wanted to understand music from a mathematical perspective and your post was eye opening!
I am going to try out your tool once I get hold of a computer.
A suggestion: show pitch constellations[1]. Piano/violin music theorists have written me that these were helpful in [2]. (I'd offer you code, but it's so ancient that it's probably not helpful :-( )
Just a heads up that your fingerboard app seems to be working incorrectly regarding displaying the names of sharps and flats on the fretboard diagram (in some cases).
For example, if I load the page and immediately click on an Eb on the piano, the fingerboard layout is correct, and the correct scale degrees are highlighted, but Eb are labeled as Db in the fretboard diagram. Similarly Bb are labelled as Abm etc. It seems like you just switched the sharp/flat symbol without also switching the note letter.
Otherwise awesome tool, this will be very useful for me!
It would be cool if you supported a kapo and turning it flat. That way I could tune it to e flat without having to do the mental math, and I could put the kapo on whatever fret so I could visually see quickly.
That's a very good question. I had plans to add major and minor pentatonic scales until it became clear that they way they are used, especially in rock and other blues based music is a subset of dorian modes. There's some real insight to be gained, especially with regards to harmony, or more practically, what chords you can play against a major or minor pentatonic. It's a lot more than one would think!
So, to answer your question, I'm not going to add pentatonic scales, but I do plan to record a video showing how GD can give you some really cool insight into how they work harmonically.
I agree with you. It's prevalent and is also one of the very first thing most guitar players learn. It definitely feels like it should be a prominent part of the UI and not just hidden away in some video.
My favourite book on music theory is 'Songwriting Secrets of The Beatles' by Dominic Pedler. The title doesn't do it justice. It's a magnificent treatise on music theory and song writing using the Beatles songs as examples. If you're a Beatles fan like me, it's a must read!
Richard Lloyd (formerly the guitarist for the proto-punk band Television) has a few great lessons on YouTube that teach theory and the circle of fifths very effectively:
While these tools are useful, I recommend oldschool hard copy books to get started properly, if you're relatively serious about it. There are some great books for guitar put out by Berklee, I don't recall the names right now, but I do remember a series that had 4 books from intro to advanced.
I spent a lot of years learning guitar technique while not progressing much on the music theory side until I started reading Mark Levine's Jazz theory book. It's probably the best material on music theory I've read, though it's slightly based on jazz, or at least references it a lot. But I think you could use it as a general theory guide.
Another favorite of mine is Yusef Lateef's Chord and Melodic Patterns book, though it's more advanced/exploratory.
The basic idea: fret a string on one of the indicated spots in the diagram, pluck a string. Then pick another one, and do the same thing; now you have a melody starting.
Moving on: divide that pattern into interlocking "boxes", and memorize the fingering pattern for each box, and how it dovetails with the adjacent boxes.
Some boxes have a transition where there are two notes per string; this is good for staying in a tight position, without much finger stretch. Three-note-per-string boxes are good for shredding.
If you have this overall pattern memorized and well rehearsed under your fingers, you can easily improvise to most music (at least that with Western roots around diatonic scales). Listen to the track and play a few notes by ear. Within a bar or two, it's obvious which pattern you are in and from there you know the rest of the picture instantly, and can "break out" all over the fretboard.
If you like playing electric guitar, then Rocksmith should be part of your learning tools. Much more fun imho than any of the other methods, well except for being part of an actual rock-band.
What most articles and books I've read on the subject recommend: Learn to strum with rhythm. Learn the scales. Learn the chords. Play things that let you have fun, even while nailing down the basics.
I see a lot of folks asking about resources to learn the ideas in this tool, so I’ll recommend the Guitar Grimoire series. Granted they are more reference-type books, but each one has a good introductory chapter that I found taught the theory in an accessible way to me. I picked up the Scales volume first and have gathered more over the years, like the practice exercise edition, but don’t use them much these days (it’s been like 15 years now :)
Great job!
One idea: Have some tracks ( from Spotify api?) to play along that matches the selected scales.
I've found that playing on top of songs works pretty well, improvising up and down is very easy if you are playing the safe notes of the scale, finding how the singing melody fits the scale, then how the solo fits the scale..etc is a funnier way to memorise the scale.
I've found a looper pedal a fantastic tool for learning theory. Play some chords from a particular scale, then try improvising over it. You get a real feel for how the different modes sound.
I keep being surprised at people having the same idea e.g., see also Grunfy's post from a few months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17272516
He has some very nice stuff there.
My work-in-progress is also derived from "first principles", although I haven't bothered to try adding alternate tunings yet.
Mostly my focus has been on using it to aid learning improvisation, so one feature i added to my little app was the ability to set up a particular chord pattern on the fretboard and "save" it, so that you can have several different diagrams on the screen at once, e.g., one for each of the three chords in a 3-chord song.
Like you, I also have been using Typescript and SVG, but not D3 (just drawing SVG elements directly using React seems to work well enough for my purposes)
Fantastic work. I've been learning music theory off and on to help with my guitar. I was hoping for a whole lot of interactive applications like yours, but found most lacking for me, though I did find a few on the iPhone: FretTrainer for muscle memory stuff. I figure out what to learn next based on Musicopoulus. Both are fair, each with quarks.
I've bookmarked you in my, just created, music "Toby" folder. Speaking of which, here's one last app recommendation that's totally unrelated: if you don't already have an extension for bookmark management on your computer, consider "Toby." It's a decent one for chrome, I use it as I have way too many normal bookmarks and finding stuff via scrolling becomes painful. I'd be interested if anyone else is using a different bookmark extension for Chrome as well.
This is absolutely fantastic. I've lost my guitar teacher's notes where he wrote out the modal scale patterns, and the ones online are not good for developing this kind of intuition. Perfect example of just the right amount of information while still remaining simple to digest. A+
and then the chords can all be mapped on a big torus (donut) to represent transposition, and each chord connects with 2 others that just so happen to correspond with 'complimentary' chords from traditional music theory. And there are also different ways to connect to other chord groups.
Beethoven's 9th Symphony famously traces 19 of the 24 possible chords of the torus, and remember that he was partially deaf so relied on vibrations.
More interesting that all this however is a new instrument called the 'Fluid Piano' which doesn't restrict itself to Western tuning (multiples of 440Hz etc.) Check it out
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7Cq3pbcMkI
Music from the country Georgia can't be represented using on traditional musical staves. I'd be fascinated to understand how so different musical cultures developed, particularly in relationship to how our brains might have evolved over the year to regard certain frequencies and melodies as delightful, eerie, etc.
Lefty here. The options to flip the fretboard and the nut are much appreciated.
How about introducing another shading for the 3rd and 5th notes, so that the relationship between the scales and the chord shapes becomes more apparent?
If I might add a suggestion, it takes a while to fine the number of the chord. For example, if I'm trying to figure out what 1-4-5-1 would be, I have to hunt until I find the 4 and 5. Would be cool if there was another view that was the Nashville number system in sequence to make it quicker to find.
Oh my g o s h, it works with all my crazy custom FF privacy config stuff, this is awesome! I've never heard of "N Minor" and searching doesn't bring up anything. Is that a mistake?
Looks very good - I'll get a chance to look properly on a laptop tomorrow. One thing I'd like is the ability to do 9 string tuning - I have a 9,and yet to get seriously into it, partly because it's so easy to get lost and I'm yet to get on top of the patterns that I already know well on a 6 string... I know it's the same intervals as the bottom 4 strings of a 6 string, but seeing the patterns would help, I think. But as its open source, I guess I should do it myself!
I've been playing guitar for a while now and am now beginning to understand the importance of theory, but I'm kind of at a loss on how to go about learning and applying it. Does anyone have a book/mooc that they'd recommend with lots of exercises and accompanying songs?
I've gone through a few sources but most of them relate everything to a piano. I understand the underlying theory is mostly the same but I feel like I would internalize it better seeing it on a fretboard.
Another thing, I really do recommend learning music theory on the piano/keys as well as your primary instrument. Doesn't have to be a fancy keyboard, any cheap midi thing just to visualise the way the way chords and scales are structured. I've found that learning other instruments become a lot easier once you know a little bit of theory and how they're laid out on a keyboard.
I had a collection of hundreds of guitar books at one point I think, though that was a while ago. I've made another comment here - the Berklee modern method books are great for guitar. Also, learn a ton of songs if you can. There's no better way to work on technique than learning songs. I can suggest specific books if you mention what style of guitar you're learning to play...
I don't agree - the modes are presented here in the order of change from the major scale, which I've found is often the best way to get people to understand how they work. One man's method, etc...
This is great! I'm not actually sure how prominent the CAGED sequence is in guitarist circles, but I was thinking it might be helpful to indicate the chord shapes.
Hope you can continue hosting it - I might use this to practice my scale visualization.
> it might be helpful to indicate the chord shapes
You can select notes on the innermost ring in the circles.
For example, select G as the base in the middle ring. Then select 1, M3 and 5 on the innermost ring. The fretboard will show you all the possible ways to finger the G major chord.
[+] [-] mikehadlow|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erAck|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blockchaincloud|7 years ago|reply
> If you choose the frequency 440hz, jump down one 7-semitone step and up 5, you have an A major scale
Also I have one more question about - when making chords using the 3rd and 5th step, for a note on the right boundary of this n <-> 2n interval, I would jump into 2n <-> 4n interval, right? But I'd I were not using chords then is "all" (simplified) music made in only only one x <-> 2x range and it's not crossed?
Another question- why do pianos have different black and white keys? Do you plan on doing a blog post that explains how "your " explanation of music theory fits various instruments? I've always wanted to understand music from a mathematical perspective and your post was eye opening!
I am going to try out your tool once I get hold of a computer.
[+] [-] osteele|7 years ago|reply
A suggestion: show pitch constellations[1]. Piano/violin music theorists have written me that these were helpful in [2]. (I'd offer you code, but it's so ancient that it's probably not helpful :-( )
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_circle#Pitch_constel...
[2] http://osteele.github.io/fingerboard/
[+] [-] GitRHero|7 years ago|reply
For example, if I load the page and immediately click on an Eb on the piano, the fingerboard layout is correct, and the correct scale degrees are highlighted, but Eb are labeled as Db in the fretboard diagram. Similarly Bb are labelled as Abm etc. It seems like you just switched the sharp/flat symbol without also switching the note letter.
Otherwise awesome tool, this will be very useful for me!
[+] [-] 3pt14159|7 years ago|reply
It would be cool if you supported a kapo and turning it flat. That way I could tune it to e flat without having to do the mental math, and I could put the kapo on whatever fret so I could visually see quickly.
Super awesome work!
[+] [-] jMyles|7 years ago|reply
I wonder: on the "scales" dropdown, why didn't you include pentatonic? It's so prevalent across so many styles of music; it seems like a must.
[+] [-] mikehadlow|7 years ago|reply
So, to answer your question, I'm not going to add pentatonic scales, but I do plan to record a video showing how GD can give you some really cool insight into how they work harmonically.
[+] [-] donorman|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wwarren|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] criddell|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] supernovae|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikehadlow|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyclif|7 years ago|reply
https://youtu.be/mNmEq-cP9Oo https://youtu.be/9lSifKZ80H4 https://youtu.be/fjWFqz1Sjps
Lloyd is a bit eccentric in person and in his methods—he's very opinionated, but IMO that's one of the things that makes him a great guitar teacher.
[+] [-] throwaway8879|7 years ago|reply
I spent a lot of years learning guitar technique while not progressing much on the music theory side until I started reading Mark Levine's Jazz theory book. It's probably the best material on music theory I've read, though it's slightly based on jazz, or at least references it a lot. But I think you could use it as a general theory guide.
Another favorite of mine is Yusef Lateef's Chord and Melodic Patterns book, though it's more advanced/exploratory.
[+] [-] kazinator|7 years ago|reply
Moving on: divide that pattern into interlocking "boxes", and memorize the fingering pattern for each box, and how it dovetails with the adjacent boxes.
Some boxes have a transition where there are two notes per string; this is good for staying in a tight position, without much finger stretch. Three-note-per-string boxes are good for shredding.
If you have this overall pattern memorized and well rehearsed under your fingers, you can easily improvise to most music (at least that with Western roots around diatonic scales). Listen to the track and play a few notes by ear. Within a bar or two, it's obvious which pattern you are in and from there you know the rest of the picture instantly, and can "break out" all over the fretboard.
[+] [-] bjelkeman-again|7 years ago|reply
https://rocksmith.ubisoft.com/
[+] [-] falcolas|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Roonerelli|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sixstringtheory|7 years ago|reply
I see a lot of folks asking about resources to learn the ideas in this tool, so I’ll recommend the Guitar Grimoire series. Granted they are more reference-type books, but each one has a good introductory chapter that I found taught the theory in an accessible way to me. I picked up the Scales volume first and have gathered more over the years, like the practice exercise edition, but don’t use them much these days (it’s been like 15 years now :)
[+] [-] alfonsodev|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikehadlow|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] byproxy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] uglycoyote|7 years ago|reply
I keep being surprised at people having the same idea e.g., see also Grunfy's post from a few months ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17272516 He has some very nice stuff there.
My work-in-progress is also derived from "first principles", although I haven't bothered to try adding alternate tunings yet.
Mostly my focus has been on using it to aid learning improvisation, so one feature i added to my little app was the ability to set up a particular chord pattern on the fretboard and "save" it, so that you can have several different diagrams on the screen at once, e.g., one for each of the three chords in a 3-chord song.
Like you, I also have been using Typescript and SVG, but not D3 (just drawing SVG elements directly using React seems to work well enough for my purposes)
[+] [-] tmpmov|7 years ago|reply
I've bookmarked you in my, just created, music "Toby" folder. Speaking of which, here's one last app recommendation that's totally unrelated: if you don't already have an extension for bookmark management on your computer, consider "Toby." It's a decent one for chrome, I use it as I have way too many normal bookmarks and finding stuff via scrolling becomes painful. I'd be interested if anyone else is using a different bookmark extension for Chrome as well.
Great job again!
[+] [-] hyyypr|7 years ago|reply
I still need to dig into their extension code to see how chatty it is, their FAQ doesn’t mention how data is synced to their servers.
[+] [-] jihadjihad|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Theo59|7 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Riemannian_theory is a bit lacking of a simple explanation, but the basic idea is that chord groups (e.g. Minor chords) are represented as a algebra (e.g. x, x+5, x+7)
and then the chords can all be mapped on a big torus (donut) to represent transposition, and each chord connects with 2 others that just so happen to correspond with 'complimentary' chords from traditional music theory. And there are also different ways to connect to other chord groups.
Beethoven's 9th Symphony famously traces 19 of the 24 possible chords of the torus, and remember that he was partially deaf so relied on vibrations.
More interesting that all this however is a new instrument called the 'Fluid Piano' which doesn't restrict itself to Western tuning (multiples of 440Hz etc.) Check it out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7Cq3pbcMkI
Music from the country Georgia can't be represented using on traditional musical staves. I'd be fascinated to understand how so different musical cultures developed, particularly in relationship to how our brains might have evolved over the year to regard certain frequencies and melodies as delightful, eerie, etc.
[+] [-] radiowave|7 years ago|reply
How about introducing another shading for the 3rd and 5th notes, so that the relationship between the scales and the chord shapes becomes more apparent?
[+] [-] bcheung|7 years ago|reply
If I might add a suggestion, it takes a while to fine the number of the chord. For example, if I'm trying to figure out what 1-4-5-1 would be, I have to hunt until I find the 4 and 5. Would be cool if there was another view that was the Nashville number system in sequence to make it quicker to find.
For example:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
C D E F G A B
[+] [-] kgwxd|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhrgunatha|7 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_scale
[+] [-] djaychela|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DuckTyping|7 years ago|reply
I've been playing guitar for a while now and am now beginning to understand the importance of theory, but I'm kind of at a loss on how to go about learning and applying it. Does anyone have a book/mooc that they'd recommend with lots of exercises and accompanying songs?
I've gone through a few sources but most of them relate everything to a piano. I understand the underlying theory is mostly the same but I feel like I would internalize it better seeing it on a fretboard.
[+] [-] throwaway8879|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway8879|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjkmk|7 years ago|reply
Ionian - I
Dorian - ii
Phrygian - iii
Lydian - IV
Mixolydian - V
Aeolian - vi
Locrian - vii
Otherwise its a really useful tool, great job.
[+] [-] djaychela|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petersellers|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mirkules|7 years ago|reply
I wish I had this tool back then!
[+] [-] mikeyvxt|7 years ago|reply
Hope you can continue hosting it - I might use this to practice my scale visualization.
[+] [-] sampo|7 years ago|reply
You can select notes on the innermost ring in the circles.
For example, select G as the base in the middle ring. Then select 1, M3 and 5 on the innermost ring. The fretboard will show you all the possible ways to finger the G major chord.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]