Call me stupid but what is the fretboard display for? I know what a fretboard is, I know all six strings, and I know all the notes of each fret and each string. But this is showing some notes in blue, others surrounded by a gray box and other just in gray. I know you can’t play two notes on one string yet I’m seeing this all the time in the fretboard display. How is what it shows a benefit in any way? I’ve looked at it for days and have no idea what it’s supposed to represent. Especially the 2nd image with the degrees in Roman numerals. I assume that I, IV, and V represent the 1, 4, and 5 chords but one cannot play a chord on a single string as it shows on the fretboard display.
What am I missing?
Thanks!
(see images)
Hi @macster . The fretboard view could be useful for a number of reasons. It may be a visual reference for guitarists looking to play guitar along with Scaler, or it may be a preferable view for non-keyboard playing guitarists compared to the regular piano style instrument panel. But it’s up to you if you find it useful or not.
It’s always reflecting your selected scale. Notes from the selected scale appear in blue, notes outside the scale are grey.
The Roman Numerals in your second image represent the degrees of your selected scale. I assume you have the A minor scale selected as A is the first note of the scale represented by ‘i’ e.g. 5th fret of low E string, or open A string. B is the second note represented by ‘ii’, C is the third note etc. So this is useful if you’re less interested in the name of each note, but more interested in how each note relates to your selected scale.
When you mouse over a chord, or play a chord, the exact notes from that chord are highlighted in light blue. The notes highlighted in dark blue are also the notes of that chord, but at higher or lower octaves than they actually appear in the chord. So you playing those notes would result in a chord of the same name, but with a different voicing compared to the one being played.
Note that this is simply showing you where each of the notes from a chord appear across the fretboard rather than displaying how to practically play a chord on guitar. This is why you’ll see multiple notes on each string. You can turn on Chord Charts in Fretboard Tools to see how to play a chord on guitar. But this won’t always be 100% accurate for every chord in Scaler.
Hope this helps!
1 Like
I really appreciate the response, Tristan! Very nicely described!
So I get it now. And you’re right, I don’ think that this will that useful for me (keyboard player). But I can certainly see that it could be useful for guitar players!
Thanks again!
Hi Tristan
In my name and also the left handed community in the Scaler community I would like to ask for the chord charts to have the option of “Left hand” in the layout preferences .