The guitarist's toolbox

See it

Shape Explorer

Light up any set of scale degrees across the whole neck — every string, fifteen frets, in any key.

• Pick a key from the menu at the top.
• Turn degrees on and off with the chips — 1, ♭2, 2, ♭3 and so on up to 7 — or tap a note on the neck, and every other place that degree lives lights up with it.
• Or start from a preset: major and minor triads, major 7, dominant 7, minor 7, and the major and minor pentatonic.
• Change key and the shape moves with it. The degrees stay put; only the frets change.
• Every tap plays the note. The speaker button turns that off.

Why it helps: a chord or a scale stops being a fingering to memorise and becomes a pattern of degrees you can watch repeat up the neck.

Test yourself

Key quiz

Name the seven notes of a random major key — and when you miss one, see why on the circle of fifths.

• The letters are given. Every major key uses each letter once, so for each one you only pick sharp, natural or flat.
• Get it right and the next key comes straight up, and your streak grows.
• Miss a note and the circle of fifths walks you from C to the key, one sharp or flat per step, with the one you missed picked out.
• Father Charles — the sentence that gives the order the sharps and flats arrive in — closes every explanation.

Why it helps: knowing which notes a key uses is what lets you find its degrees on the neck without counting frets.

Rather learn the method first? Father Charles, in full — with a worked example for any key.