Guitar Notes Master - Software For Learning Notes and Scales on the Guitar Fretboard

You're not alone! I've been playing the guitar for over 20 years, but a few years ago I decided that I wasn't playing as well as I wanted to. After all, when you've been doing something for over 20 years, you should have become pretty good at it, right?

So, I decided to sit down and really analyze my playing and try to discover what was holding me back, and you know what I discovered?

That's right - despite over 20 years of playing, I could only quickly find notes on the E and A strings. And as for scale knowledge - sure, I could play the usual major, minor and pentatonic patterns in the most common forms, but my scale knowledge didn't stretch any further than that. Even those scales I did know, I could only play in one or two positions which seriously limited my soloing ability. My chord knowledge was not much better either, only stretching to the common open chords and barre chord forms and with little ability to find my own voicings.

When you think about it, this is really quite amazing. Imagine a piano player who'd been playing for 20 years admitting they don't know all of the notes on the piano keyboard. Unthinkable! Yet, due to the way guitarists often learn their instrument this is the case for a vast number of guitarists. All of their flash technique and cool sounding effects are often covering up a dirty little secret - that they don't really know their instrument as well as they should!

So, what's the problem? Well, whether they teach themselves or are taught by a teacher, most guitarists go about learning the fretboard through a repetitive process of mindlessly repeating a few scale patterns until they are committed to memory. Similarly, chord shapes are often learned purely by rote as and when required to play a particular song, without any consideration or understanding of why the chord is the shape it is.

This method of learning is usually enough to get the guitarist to the point where they can sound "cool", so many don't bother taking the extra steps to really understand what it is they're playing and as a result they're limited to the same old tired patterns and chord shapes, and they get totally lost if ever challenged to play outside the confines of their normal patterns.

I realised that my lack of knowledge of the guitar fretboard was the main thing holding me back from achieving my dreams of being a really great guitarist. So, I resolved to do something about it. But, my attempts at learning fretboard theory from books was short lived - the books were just so boring, and I really couldn't keep motivated to work through them all.

So, I tried looking for some software to help me. But the only software I could find seemed content just to teach the names of the notes on the fretboard by repetitive questions, and I realized knowing the notes is...