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Show HN: A game to memorize scale degrees on the guitar fretboard (fretboardfly.com)

83 points by udit99 ↗ HN
Hey all, posted a similar game a few months ago for memorizing the notes of the fretboard. This time round it's intervals/interval functions/scale degrees .

This game is just for the ascending scale degrees and comes with an accompanying course to learn them (https://www.fretboardfly.com/learn/FBG-201). There are similarly other games for descending scale degrees and its accompanying course (https://www.fretboardfly.com/play) and (https://www.fretboardfly.com/learn)

37 comments

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xeckr
Nicely done. It would be good if you linked to a resource that allows the user to study the interval rules on the guitar.
ano-ther
Very nice. Does anybody else also picture the lower strings as being at the top and the headstock to the right (like watching someone else play)?

That kind of trips me up here because the image is mirrored.

reactordev
This usually isn’t how guitar is taught, learned, or tabbed. The low E is always on the bottom, just as it is in sheet music.
ano-ther
You are right. And i can read tabs. But still can’t help it when watching a real fretboard. Guess it’s the student’s view on the teacher’s guitar.
reactordev
Do you want to watch or do you want to play? To play requires visualizing the guitar in 1st person perspective. You want to play guitar right?
ano-ther
Play.

The app made me realize that I have several mental representations, depending on whether I read tabs or a score (low at bottom) or when shown by someone else (front view, low at top).

Guess it comes from teachers and bandmates showing me something on their guitar.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
guhcampos
Can't use it in my iPhone 13 mini: the cookie prompt is rendered below (in Z terms) of the fretboard, becoming unclickable.

My suggestion is to add some sort of splash or landing page, as landing on a message telling me to tilt my phone was confusing, and that landing page could also prompt for cookie consent before moving to the actual app.

udit99
whoops...let me temporarily remove the cookie prompt. There is a "landing page" at the root (www.fretboardfly.com) but I wanted to link directly to the game. Thank you for the feedback. Stay tuned and I'll let you know about the cookie footer
arcbyte
Just ditch the cookie banner permanently. It's unnecessary
djbusby
Or ditch the reasons that banner could be necessary.
zozbot234
I find that it's easiest to think of the different intervals on the fretboard in terms of diatonic "distances". Diatonic distances are like diatonic intervals, the major third and perfect fourth etc. of usual music theory, except that they are zero-based: a string forms a unison with itself, so it's at diatonic distance zero. Numbering the guitar strings from the sixth (lowest) to first (highest), the diatonic distances that are crossed in the conventional tuning are 3-3-3-2-3. Just add one to the sum of distances and you get the figure for the corresponding interval: so the 2nd and 1st string form a fourth, 3rd and 1st form a major sixth (as do the 4th and 2nd string), etc. You really don't need any kind of brute force memorization.

Then you can just use solmization in your mind to figure out how to build any scale pattern on the fretboard regardless of key, keeping in mind that e.g. ut-fa is always a perfect fourth, ut-mi a major third etc. and that mi-fa is always the semitone interval. (There is no ti in historical solmization, you just sing sol-re-mi-fa for the upper tetrachord then pick up again with re-mi-fa etc.) Memorization comes most easily from repetition, the deliberate effort should go towards figuring out the underlying patterns and how to think of them most intuitively and musically.

(BTW, solmization is also very helpful in making musical sense of isomorphic keyboards, which much like the guitar fretboard are essentially non-diatonic. It helps you keep track of where the semitone intervals are in a musical line, since they will always be associated with mi and fa.)

LewisVerstappen
This is AWESOME! Fantastic, fantastic job.

Any possibility of making it open source?

Do you have a donation link? Would love to send a few bucks your way as a thank you. Currently working on memorizing the intervals and this will be super helpful.

udit99
Thank you! Honestly I intend to eventually make enough of these and put them behind a subscription paywall. Releasing them for free for now to gather feedback. There are a few games and courses already at www.fretboardfly.com and I'm working on adding more like Triads, Scales, Chords etc.
anilakar
I don't get it, are you supposed to have absolute pitch?
udit99
Actually no, the game relies on the location of intervals on the fretboard based on where the root is.
kazinator
Wants player to identify a flat 10th as a flat 3rd.
udit99
So I accidentally ended up posting the link to the actual game instead of the "Details page" and that page has some context: https://www.fretboardfly.com/play/FBG-201

"For simplicity 9ths, 11ths and 13ths are considered 2, 4 and 6 respectively"

brianmorris10
I don't understand what I'm looking at
dieselgate
Agree with above, I'm pretty active playing the guitar but don't know any formal theory/naming and am not sure how to get started.

Maybe a help tab or some sort of instructions would be useful - or maybe I should "just be better"

The web mechanics and UI work well though, cheers

udit99
I accidentally ended up posting the link to the actual game instead of the "Details Page" of the game so it's kind of an abrupt transition for people without context.

Here's the link to the game with some context: https://www.fretboardfly.com/play/FBG-201

And no, you don't need to "just be better", that's what the app's for: Here's a course to go with the game: https://www.fretboardfly.com/learn/FBG-201

And here's the link to all the games and courses in this series (Intervals/Scale Degrees): https://www.fretboardfly.com/themes/intervallic-functions-gu...

I have similar ones for learning the fretboard notes and I'm building one for scales, triads and chords as well

udit99
I posted this to the child comment but here's some context:

I accidentally ended up posting the link to the actual game instead of the "Details Page" of the game so it's kind of an abrupt transition for people without context.

Here's the link to the game with some context: https://www.fretboardfly.com/play/FBG-201

And no, you don't need to "just be better", that's what the app's for: Here's a course to go with the game: https://www.fretboardfly.com/learn/FBG-201

And here's the link to all the games and courses in this series (Intervals/Scale Degrees): https://www.fretboardfly.com/themes/intervallic-functions-gu...

I have similar ones for learning the fretboard notes and I'm building one for scales, triads and chords as well

tristanMatthias
I really want to try the lessons, but I don’t have a google account. Can you add basic auth?
miniupuchaty
I was playing guitar for many years, and was always learning each scale separately. Let's say I knew A minor, F major, D pentatonic. It was taking a lot of time to learn and my playing was quite limited.

Then I've learned about all fourths guitar tuning.

The standard guitar tuning has two highest strings tuned half step down. Which is nice for some things. Makes it easy to play some open chord shapes. But completely breaks the pattern!

After the switch it was easy to see that major scale and all it's modes(Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian...) and all the keys where the same shape moving around.

With that I learned all the modes and keys of the major scale in a few days. When I start playing I just check where in the pattern I am and everything becomes clear.

khqc
Were you able to transfer some of what you learned back to standard tuning or did you never go back?
miniupuchaty
I never went back. But it still helped me for the standard tuning(mostly for playing other people songs).

When playing in standard tuning I see 6 string guitar as two parts a 4 lower string and 2 higher string that are offset half tone.

So I usually end-up with less movement in the standard tuning as I usually just stay on either those 4 lower or 2 higher strings depending on which note I've started.

Jumping between those two sections is not that much of a problem but I have to do it consciously.

But it still a lot better then just learning each scale and key separately! I just see no need for standard tuning in my playing and probably could get better at this "section jump" if I had used it more.

i_read_news
I actually use Tenuto for this purpose - it includes this specific exercise, but also a plethora of other exercises for guitar along with others (staff, key memorization, piano) and utilities like cord construction. Best money I’ve spent on an app.
udit99
I really like Tenuto as well. What I'm building is intended to be a deeper and more polished version of just the guitar (and eventually ear training) parts of Tenuto.
dang
Once a story has had significant attention in the last year or so, we treat reposts as duplicates (see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) and this is also true for Show HNs (see https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html). Since https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36084503 spent 14 hours on the front page only 6 months ago, I'd say this repost is too soon.
udit99
Hey dang This is a different game. The first one is for notes. This is for intervals. Completely different but similar concepts Thanks