i am kinda new to the genre but ive had alot of people tell me to listen to a bunch a songs but do i just try to transcribe them or figure out what they play i am confused a bit
... and I built an interactive tool, would love your feedback.
Hello everyone,
A while back I decided to try (re)learning music theory from scratch. The general principles (intervals, keys, modes, voice leading), then specifically how it all maps onto the guitar fretboard (CAGED, voicings, drop voicings, modal harmonization, and so on).
Once I started internalizing it, I couldn't resist and started coding tools for my own journey. The first thing I built was a tiny interactive Circle of Fifths on my android phone, and dynamic scale maps, for myself, then I shipped it to google play, it worked quite well but I didn't maintain it so eventually it got suppressed from the platform. That snowballed into another full project now called FretMotion, an interactive theory engine for guitar that I'm still building in the open.
It’s 100% free. At least for now, I don’t think it’s worth worrying about what could be commercialized. I genuinely just want to share the tools I wish I’d had when I started.
If any of this feels new, the best entry points are before hitting the main page (where the tool lives).
Theory primer: https://fretmotion.com/theory/
How It Works: https://fretmotion.com/how-it-works/
Those two last pages explain everything you'll see on the demo so you're not just clicking around colored dots without context.
What's in the demo right now (the homepage):
Chord input. Type any progression like Am F C G, or Cm Fm G7 Cm, or Dmaj7 Bm7 E7 Asus2, and it parses, voices, and renders the diagrams.
Auto key and degree detection. It tells you the key and labels each chord by its Roman numeral (i, iv, V, and so on), including borrowed chords like the major V in a minor key.
Interactive Circle of Fifths. Pick a root and a scale (ionian, dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian, locrian) and the wheel rebuilds itself with the correct parallel mode harmony, proper enharmonic spelling (Bb in flat keys, not A sharp), and tappable diatonic chords.
Mini fretboard viewer. Switch between scale view and chord view, with audio playback using real guitar samples.
Style filtering. The same progression rendered in folk, jazz, blues, and other voicings so you can hear and see the difference.
Alt voicings and a nearest neighbor optimizer. Cycle through voicings of any chord and see how it changes the hand movement distance to the next chord.
Everything is computed by a music theory engine I wrote from scratch. No MIDI files, no pre baked tables, just the math.
I'm not stopping here. Coming next:
Full scale explorer (modes of melodic minor, harmonic minor, harmonic major, symmetric scales).
Chord scale relationship browser.
Practice and progression builder.
Reharmonizer.
Singer key adapter (transpose for vocal range).
Chord X ray to deep analyze any shape.
A bunch of other tools already half built behind the scenes...
One honest note about the rate limiting. The demo on the homepage has a rate limiter. It's not a paywall. It's there because the moment you put a public API on the internet, bots and scrapers hammer it around the clock and I'd rather keep the server bill sane than block real humans.
If you hit the limit and want to keep playing, just register a free account and you get effectively unlimited use. No email spam, just an email and password so I know you're a person and not a script. That's it.
I'd genuinely love feedback from people who actually live in theory! Does it check out on edge cases like the modal V in minor, secondary dominants, tritone subs? Are the voicings idiomatic for the styles? What's missing that you'd actually use?
Please roast it, suggest things. I will read everything and continue developing until the loop is closed !
Is it realistic to play some sort of poor man's chord melody style by playing walk ups and walk downs that pick up on the melody. Or am I having a lend of myself and just settling for a crappy chord melody.
Hi. I recently began learning guitar. And as i learn about notes, it's history, names, and everything just gets so confusing.
Cool. So, i will summarize my understanding until now and you have to evaluate it solely based on facts. I am confused about how these notes came and were realized? What is the hsitorical flow? Below is what i understood, but these are two diff paths, and one has to be right.
Humans saw a string, attached to bone and pluck it. they heard a sound
Now, they placed finger halfway, and plucked it. They heard the same note, but higher. They judged it by ears. So they realized that b/w a full string, and a half string, there's a loop. And they need to fill the spaces in bw.
They then plucked 2/3 of the string, and heard a new melodious note.
Now, from this point, i am confused that what happened.
Approach 1-
They now, plucked 3/4 of string, and found it good too. They also realized that this feels like a step high to the note played for string length 2/3 of original.
So, till now they have 4 points. x, x/2, 2/3x, 3/4x. and a realization of audible distance bw 2/3x and 3/4x.
Then the found the ratio b/w 2/3x and 3/4x to be 8/9x.
Now, the implemented this to the full string till x/2, while keeping the points 2/3x and 3/4x. and got total of 7 notes.
The distance 8/9 became full step, and the small distances that came due to presence of 2/3x came to be known as half step.
The good part is this approach only gives 7 notes, so confirming that 5 notes were added later on. The problem with this is it produces music of step WWHWWWH, meaning first note is what we called today as C. Now, this is confusing. Why would they call first note as C? That's just straight away confusing. Also, lowest note they say was called A. and ofc, full string plays lowest note, so it has to be a and not c.
Approach 2-
They found that playing 2/3 of x is giving us new note. So they kept doing it, pulled back the out of string notes. This would now however, give total of 12 notes, but we had 7 notes earlier, and 5 came later on. Also, this also doesn't give justice to naming. If the stopped at 7. first question is why would they randomly stop at 7? when coould keep proceeding? And then the first 7 notes that come by t his method are also not abcdefg. they are diff.
And one thing i am am assuming is that the note we call today as ABCDEFG, are def the first one that were discovered, because ofc that's why they were named such, and later additions became theri sharp/flats. So, nothing in history seem to fall into piece and justify anything.
So, What path did history took? And how we came to what we are today? Which approach happened first, and which happened later? Show me every step and naming process. Don't just say and this continued. show me even the each and every math steps, even if repetetive, and tell me properly the naming convention and order. Take your time. Evaluate my whole statement. And answer properly. You are being evaluated.
Can anyone share the idea of learning about scale cz I am stuck with this one for long time haha.
I start with c major scale i know the pattern but my friend said just remember the shape even though i remember the shape like when i play e key major scale i cannot connect scale like c major scale. It is like need to remember every note on the fretboard?
I would really appreciate if u guz share your thoughts.