Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists

Can you add a settings to display notes in their true poetic name (do re mi fa sol la so do) instead of the boring Anglo Saxon variant (abcdecg)?

> 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.

I actually didn't realize that the notes of the major scale and it's modes were contiguous on the circle of fifths until seeing guitardashboard.com last night. That's what the down one, up five is saying.

A fifth is seven semi-tones above the root. It has a 3:2 frequency ratio to the initial note. It so happens that if you jump up by seven semi-tones five times, you've got most of the major scale, albeit strewn over 3 doublings of the initial frequency. Usually, the major scale is thought of as occurring within a single doubling so in the key of C you'd have to divide the frequencies D and A by 2; E and B by 4 to get back into the original n2n range. Any time you double or halve the frequency you get a note with the same mood/purpose/name but one octave higher or lower. The frequency ratios end up something like this:

C = 1

G = 3/2

D = (3/2)(3/2) (/2 to get back to the initial range)

A = (3/2)(3/2)(3/2) /2

E = (3/2)(3/2)(3/2)(3/2) /2/2

B = (3/2)^5 /2/2

There's one note missing, though--the one with a 4:3 frequency ratio: F. To get that one, we invert the 3/2 relationship and take the frequency that's 2/3 of our initial frequency. That's in the halved range, n/2n, though so we've gotta double to get back into our starting range. This is the one time we go down seven semi-tones instead of the five times that we go up.

I'm not sure how useful it is to think in these terms but it does show that you can derive the major scale by using simple ratios which, psycho-acoustically speaking, are generally considered more pleasant than complex ratios when played at the same time. The relationship between B and C, (3/2)^5 == 243/32 is already pretty tense. E.g., you could alternate between two notes with that ratio to make it sound like Jaws is lurking somewhere nearby:

https://youtu.be/BX3bN5YeiQs

Sticking with the simpler 3/2 makes it sound like Superman is here to save you so you can relax:

https://youtu.be/e9vrfEoc8_g

The blog means two different sequences of jumps. The sequence of down-jumps begins from A. Then the sequence of up-jumps begins from A.

{jumps down: 1, jumps up: 5}

First, you start from A, and execute the down-jumps. In this case, there is only one. Then you start again from A (returning to A is not counted as a jump), and execute the up-jumps.

> Up two 7-semitone steps and down four gives you A minor.

Up-jump sequence: A, up to E, up to B.

Down-jump sequence: A, down to D, down to G, down to C, down to F.

Sort: A B C D E F G

I don't know what's behind this idea, or how useful it is. It seems to work, though. But I think there are simpler ways to construct the scales. Or just memorize them.

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:

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.