[tephra]

Let's give it a shot.

So first I have marked "Pentatonic Minor" and "A" as our key since this is probably a scale that you know. What you are seeing are all the notes in the scale laid out on the fret board.

If you look at fret 5 (second dot) and starting from the E string you'll see a red dot with a R in it. This is the "Root" of the scale, namely A. The next note is on the 8th fret and has a "b3" in it. You read this as "flat third". If you don't know music theory this might be confusing so please let me know if I've explained it in a non-understandable way.

To understand why we say "flat third" is that it is the third note in the _Major_ scale lowered half a step (or one fret on the guitar). So the A Major scale is A B C# D E G# G#, the Pentatonic Minor scale takes 5 notes from this scale, namely A(R) C#(3) D(4) E(5) G#(7) (original indexes in parens). We then lower the C# third note, and the G# (seventh note) so we get the scale A C D E G and those notes are what you see over the fret board.

[narag]

I had understood what the diagram means, actually I have most of this information internalized... not a great guitar player, but I know the theory.

What I don't understand is what can I do with it. What's the typical way of using it?

[uglycoyote]

> What's the typical way of using it

I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I have been building a similar app so I can speak to my use case. In my case I'm building it because i have been trying to learn how to play in a more improvised way. I have been playing guitar for a long time, but have always been a chord-strummer, usually just kind of sing-and-play, more recently has gotten in to more advanced finger-picking "fingerstyle" patterns, but have mostly never strayed far from the bottom 4 or 5 frets because I'm just playing open chords or the odd barre when I need to. My goal now is learning more of the fretboard, learning to play "lead" a bit more, or just experiment with recording multiple tracks, jamming over a song or a looped track, or play with a friend.

Typically what my approach would be is to come up with a chord progression in a particular key, say A Minor. Then if I want to solo over top of it I need to stick mostly to the notes of the A minor scale. So the notes in the A Minor scale are just the natural notes, A B C D E F G, that's easy, but visualizing where they are all across the fretboard is not obvious, so hence the app to help with this. In taking lessons I have learned about the various fretboard "boxes" and having a visualization like this app can help you see how the different box patterns all fit together.

Another aspect that this has helped me with is visualizing chords at various places on the fretboard: if you have a song in A minor with a typical chord progression, say A-minor, D-minor, E, then your goal when you are soloing or improvising on top of it is to try to hit notes that are within the current chord, not necessarily all of the time, but to emphasize those notes and usually land on these "target notes" at the end of a phrase. These "target notes" are a subset of the A minor scale, and that subset changes depending on where you are in the song.

So being able to visualize the shapes of those chords and how they fit in to the different box patterns is important. Knowing all of the chords not only in their "open" positions but the myriad of other positions that they appear on the neck is a bit of a challenge, and I find that having a visualization tool like this can be a nice reference.

[narag]

Now I understand. I use other tricks to do the same thing, so I didn't see it before, thanks.

[fredsanford]

Listen to some Albert King or Stevie Ray Vaughan, both masters of this scale and the related blues scale.

The Sky is Crying is a standout example.

[mikesabat]

This is a good explanation. One thing to add though. With the interface of the site, you can select a colored circle and that will highlight the position where you can play the scale (or mode).

So if you highlight the red circle at the bottom, it will show you a version and position of the scale starting with the root note - A as noted above.

If you highlight the yellow circle at the bottom, it will highlight the scale/position starting with the second note and ending with the 9th. This is called a Mode.

A Mode is when you play a scale, but start or emphasize a note other than the root note. Different modes have a different sound/feel the same way that a major, minor or 7th chords has different feels.

So that is another layer to the page.

Unfortunately, I learned all of this theory, but quit playing.

[louhike]

I do not know if the explanation is on the website but I didn't find it. I had difficulties to understand the website even though I have basic understanding of music theory. Maybe an help icon (?) with an explanation would help?

[yig]

The A Major scale is A B C# D E Gb G#

[thanatropism]

This video[0] is very very long because it's a kind of reinforcement class for students who didn't get it at first. But I watched like the first half of it and now I finally understand how to build scales.

(Gb needs to be F# there. One reason is that theory can't assume instruments to be equally tempered to begin with; some brasses won't for example.)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jK-jr2AkMQ4&t=5407s

[narag]

That would be F#, not Gb. Enarmonic but not quite the same.