How to use:

Unlocking the mysteries of fretboard instruments will take time, regular practice, and a lot of patience. The reward is freedom of expression.

This is just a quick overview on how to use FreTool to gain a deeper understanding of your instrument. I plan to make this page more interactive and entertaining in the future.

Fretboard Patterns:

Instruments like the guitar, ukulele or mandolin lend themselves to "thinking in patterns". While this can be a great start and a good compass for navigation, I always recommend paying close attention to the sound and context of each note. In the end, music is about expressing yourself with your instrument, not an acrobatic championship.

Use a metronome and focus on rhythmic practice and feeling little melodies when you play single notes or chords. That way you can avoid the common pitfall of always playing scale runs instead of making music.

Scales:

Scales are the foundation of most modern music. Learning how to use them to navigate your instrument will let you go beyond playing songs with chord sheets or tabs.

Select a root note and scale. The black dots highlight the starting points (root notes), and the others are all notes that belong to the scale. Select "Show Scale Notes" and try finding comfortable ways to play from one black dot to another, going up or down the letters of the alphabet. Vertically this is done by letting each finger focus on one fret with small stretches.

Sometimes it helps to just focus on 3 or 4 notes and try to make it sound like something you would remember. Then try finding the same melody in different positions on the fretboard. Then you can start adding more notes.

Chords:

Chords are formed by playing 2 or more notes at the same time. Typical chords are:

• Triads are a stack of three notes, usually root (R), a major or minor third (m3 or M3), and a perfect fifth (P5).
• Power chords are a stack of two notes, usually root (R) and perfect fifth (P5). Most common in rock music or used by rhythm players for their ambiguity.
• Seventh chords are a stack of four notes that add the major (M7), minor (m7), or dominant 7th (7) note and can add a lot of extra character.
• Shell voicings are mostly used in Jazz and are reduced seventh chords that mostly focus on the defining notes like, root, third and seven.
• Diminished chords are triads with a lowered (diminished) fifth (p5).
• Chord tesions are additional notes added to a seventh chord. Usually they are used from the next higher octave. That's why a "2" becomes a "9", for example.

Every scale contains all notes of all chords that belong to that scale. These are called chord tones and are marked with colors. The scale degrees are also known as "modes" and refer to the progression within the scale. So degree 2 of a scale will highlight the chord tones for the 2nd chord of the scale.

You can also choose to show only the notes that make a chord: triads or seventh arpeggios.

The "Show Note Intervals" refer to short names for the interval names. Intervals are the relative distance between two notes.

Chord inversions refer to the order of how the notes of a chord are stacked.

The Circle of Fifths:

Use the Circle of Fifths (the screen with the big circle) to get an overview of common scale chords and the notes of each chord.

It can help you find chords that sound good together or what chords are played in typical blues progressions (I, IV, V) or jazz (ii, V, I) and a lot more.

Thanks for reading! This is not a full list of what is possible. It is just a quick starter. I'll be working to improve this section with the next updates.

About FreTool

Making the ultimate fretboard helper tool.

This application is currently being developed by a single person and with a lot of passion for music. It takes a substantial amount of time and technical understanding of music and software development to create and maintain this project. If you want to support the journey and help me to provide free and open content, please consider sharing this app with your friends.

Troubleshooting

If the app reloads (and the layout is a bit off) after starting, that is because I updated it. Just restart it and it should be back to normal. I'm working on a smoother update process.

In most cases it also helps to clear the browser cache for fretool.dev-zoo.net and/or reinstall the app from the website to fix most issues.

Disclaimer:

I am a music enthusiast that loves learning guitar, ukulele, and other instruments. I've built this app to the best of my knowledge and research capabilities. Since music theory is by no means perfect and is full of assumptions, I cannot take responsibility for correctness in every context. I will do my best to inform users about my findings and the choices I had to make when developing FreTool on this page.

If you have any suggestions or feedback, please join the FreTool WhatsApp group. I am always happy to chat about theory and the tools I make.

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