Really awesome, thank you so much!
Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
31–40 of 117 posts
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#32I will spend some time on this later next week. At first glance my preferred D standard tuning (DGCFAD) does not seem to be available.
Ditto for "Open D minor (DADFAD)" tuning that I use. Being able to set up an arbitrary tuning would serve this purpose as well, although I suspect generalizing that function might be more work than it is worth.
It would also be nice to see other scales, such as major and minor pentatonic and blues scales.
I've used jguitar.com in the past for this sort of thing, but I really like visual aspect and unity of guitardashboard. Nice work!
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#33I will spend some time on this later next week. At first glance my preferred D standard tuning (DGCFAD) does not seem to be available.
I haven't used D standard, but it looks like regular EADGBD tuned a whole step down. So you could basically use that tuning on the site and just select the key a whole step below what you want, and it will align on your fretboard properly, as a workaround.
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#34I always wanted something like this. Previously I'd set up custom spreadsheets to do the fretboard highlighting like you have. Fantastic work and great effort - thank you!
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#35I really really like this and will for sure use it! Thank you for this!
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#36For those of us scrubs just learning guitar, do you have a guide on how to use this? or a link to a good guide?
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.
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#37This is amazing, thank you! 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 most…
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.
When I was learning theory, my teacher taught all his students, regardless of their instrument, on piano. It's the most neutral, in terms of scales and chords.
Guitar, on the other hand, usually has multiple valid fingerings (on different strings) for the same chord inversion. Part of the process of learning new chord voicings on the guitar is learning the same chord everywhere it can be played.
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#38Very interesting and pretty tool! 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.
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.
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#39For those of us scrubs just learning guitar, do you have a guide on how to use this? or a link to a good guide?
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 M…
I'd recommend the Hook Theory "books" (there are two volumes). I put the word book in quotes because they are available as both interactive ebooks, i.e., Kindle & iBook, and mobile applications, i.e., iOS & Android.
The authors do a nice job of introducing basic (and then advanced) music theory concepts with text and audio/video examples using recognizable pop songs. They also have some tools for exploring themes further on their website.
I've read the books a couple times and it has given me the ability to reason about existing songs as well as better compose and improvise with songs myself.
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#40Very cool project, thanks for making this!