This is the main work area of the app. Use it to explore note locations, chord shapes, and scale patterns. Learn to recognize characteristic sounds and subtle differences in tone using available controls, or simply by clicking on notes. Make on-the-fly modifications by adding and/or removing notes. Manage your own list of favorite chords. Note: It is not necessary to access this screen via other tabs. You can simply use it as a blank "canvas", if you want, and build chords from scratch. See the reference to clicking notes in "Content Control". At any point you can "clear the slate" and start over again by clicking the "Reset" button (See "Controls").

The tab is self-explanatory. Simply click the note(s) you want to display on the fretboard. This feature is intended to help the beginner become familier with where notes are located and to recognize relational patterns that make it easier to remember that information.

Use this feature to become familiar with some of the most common scales used by guitar players. All of these use five overlapping patterns (or shapes), and the app provides navigation buttons to easily cycle through these, one at a time. There are options to play the distinctive notes in a scale, or to play the entire pattern, which is the usual practice. Over time you can learn how to transition from one pattern to the next while moving up and down the fretboard. To display a scale, simply select a key, select the scale, and click the red "Display" button. Optionally, you may choose to exclude certain scale notes (highlighted in green) by clicking on them. Click once to remove and again to reinstate.

Chord exploration is really the heart of this app. Use this feature to cycle through the many variations of a particular chord as you move up and down the fretboard. For three-adjacent-string triads, you can also navigate among the differnt string groups. Review the remaining documentation on this page to get a better idea of all the options available. To display a chord, simply select a key and a chord type; then click the red "Display" button.

This feature is intended to provide users with the ability to save and recall their own selected chords. Multiple lists can be stored and retrieved by name. This facilitates the retention of chords favorites as well as the creation of chord progressions, which can subsequently be played back easily in sequence using "play" and "play next" options. Please see the sections "Browser Storage" and "Storage Format" on this page for more information.

This page provides some simple exercises to help with the development of tone recognition (ear training) and familiarization with note locations, scale patterns, and chord shapes. In most cases, by expanding the number of selections in "Data Pool Setup", you can gradually increase the difficulty of these skill tests to keep yourself sufficiently challenged. See the page itself for more information on how to use.

Buttons and checkboxes are available to navigate through and control the notes, scales, and chords displayed on the fretboard. In addition, buttons are used in "Display Options" to define what scale or chord should be displayed in the first place, and in which key. Finally, it is possible to customize any scale or chord by adding or deleting notes. Clicking any note that is currently displayed on the fretboard will remove it from the scale or chord shown. Clicking a note that is not displayed (or, more accurately, is only faintly visible), will add it. This can be a useful aid in experimenting with different tones and harmonics.

CHECKBOX LIST

Context, Chord Display: "Pluck strings" - Check to hear chord notes played individually, rather than being strummed, when the "Play" button is clicked; "Show all notes" - Check to display semi-opaque markers for each note included in the currently displayed chord across the entire fretboard, in addition to the fully opaque notes of the current chord.

Context, Scale Display: "Play all" - Check to hear all notes in the displayed scale pattern sound when the "Play" button is clicked, not just the notes of the scale in sequence; "Show names" - Check to show the names of the scale notes, rather than the sequential number of each note; "Show all notes" - Check to display all notes in the scale across the entire fretboard, rather than just the notes of the currently displayed scale pattern.

You can single-click any note on the fretboard, whether it is currently displayed (100% opaque) or not, in order to hear it played. This can be particularly helpful if you are building or modifying a chord. In addition, there is an option that allows you to hear each note in a chord plucked individually, rather that simply hearing the chord strummed. This can be very helpful in comparing different chord voicings and choosing the best one for your purposes.

This app allows you to save your own chord favorites or customizations to your browser's built-in storage, under "site data" associated with the fbmapper.org website. This allows you to keep such information indefinitely, to add to it as desired, and remove any unwanted chords at will. Bear in mind, though, that your browser also provides a means of purging this storage via settings, so you may need to take care when clearing browser data. There will be options to customize this action and retain any information you don't want to lose.

When scales or chords are displayed, notes are rendered using the following color scheme: red for root notes, green for major thirds, blue for perfect fifths, and goldenrod for all others. Notes added via click are rendered in gray. The "Note Map" display makes no distinction in color, with all notes rendered in red. Likewise, the "Stored Chord" display renders all notes in orange.

This app uses different levels of opacity when displaying notes, in order to minimize distraction when showing supplemental content, and to control what notes are heard when the "play" button is clicked. An example would be the use of the "show all notes" option when chords are displayed. This displays all notes across the fretboard associated with the current chord in semi-transparent gray, thus providing additional helpful information without overwhelming the main subject. Subsequently, if the play option is used, only the notes of the currently displayed chord, those rendered at 100% opacity, will be heard.

This app uses the following format to store or "copy to clipboard" chord note information: "[n,n,n,n,n,n]". This text represents a group of fret numbers, where the position of each number in the group represents its corresponding string (starting from the left, low E to high E). For example, the C major chord would be represented as [-1,3,2,0,1,0]. A string with a negative fret number (in this example, low E) is not played. A string with a zero fret number is played as an open string.