I will spend some time on this later next week. At first glance my preferred D standard tuning (DGCFAD) does not seem to be available.
Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
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Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Levine is a great resource, but music theory, and jazz theory in particular, is a super dense subject. Having an experienced teacher to guide you through and help you internalize it is very valuable, even if it's only for the occasional lesson.
Definitely agree about the teacher bit, if you can find a decent one, or can afford it. I find that sitting in or jamming, or even playing over standards is really helpful just to get things going. You have to remember that a lot of the jazz greats of the 20th century had little to no formal music education, let alone the complexities of jazz theory.
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#23For those of us scrubs just learning guitar, do you have a guide on how to use this? or a link to a good guide?
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.
The best ones I have read take it a little closer to the guitar: "Learn the freboard" Learn why the freboard is the way it is, why it is tuned the way it is, why no one for hundreds of years has been able to come up with a better tuning system -- then learning rhythm, chords and scales will be a bonus side effect. The very excellent book "Fretboard Logic" takes this approach
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#24Great 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.
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#25Just wanted to say thank you as well for this. Great tool! What are you future plans for it?
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#26Great job on this, it's an excellent visualisation.
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#27Awesome project, thank you to the author!
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 :)
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#28Very 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.
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#29This 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.
This is really good advice. With all the different places you can play the same note on guitar, it makes it a little more difficult to visualize. The one note to one key ratio can help to make things like chord structures and inversions make a lot more sense.
Re: Show HN: Guitar Dashboard – Open source music theory explorer for guitarists
#30Very 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.
I guess the minor pentatonic is just Aeolian without the 2 and the 6, but I agree.