I've built a set of free online practice tools that bring together the things I think you need for learning the guitar. I looked at what's already out there, some of it paid, and tried to improve on it in my own way. Here's what each tool does, how to get the most out of it, and what I've done differently.
There are four of them: the Fretboard Navigator, the Exercise Generator, the Backing Track Creator and the Tab Creator.
Guitar or bass, any number of strings ▶ 1:27
Before anything else, you can switch between guitar and bass. Bass gives you four, five and six-string options, and guitar gives you six, seven and eight strings. So if you want to see your scales on an eight-string, it'll show you. Ridiculous instrument, but it's there.
Fretboard Navigator: scales, arpeggios and chords in any key ▶ 1:47
The Fretboard Navigator shows any scale, arpeggio, chord or CAGED shape in any key. By default it shows the A minor pentatonic scale. Underneath you choose between three modes:
- Scale. Any key and a whole host of scales. Switch from minor pentatonic to minor blues and the blue note gets added in. You can click any note to hear it (it's a pretty basic guitar sound for now), hide notes you don't want so you can highlight particular ones to target, and view one position at a time.
- Arpeggio. Minor 7th, major 7th and so on, shown across the whole neck. Again you can hide individual notes.
- Chord. Actual chord shapes. For A minor there are 33 to work through, and as you step through them they move up the neck. Dotted circles show open strings you could also use with some of the higher shapes. You can also pick playable shapes, CAGED shapes (the A shape, the G shape, the E shape and so on), or all the chord tones on the neck.
Then there are the display options:
- Note names, intervals or blank dots. Intervals are really useful on scales. Natural minor position one shows 1, 2, b3, 4, 5, b6, b7, 1, so you can see what you're actually playing.
- A fret range, so you can black out the frets you're not working on and focus on one area.
- Every note on the fretboard.
- Flip the strings so they read like tab, and a left-handed view.
- Tunings, including a custom option, so if you've got a bit of a wacky tuning you can see what works in it.
And whatever you've set up, Save image downloads it.
Exercise Generator: exercises with a metronome ▶ 4:53
The Exercise Generator gives you a set of exercises with a metronome to play along to. For example, pick pentatonics in threes, then choose the key, minor or major pentatonic, and one of the five positions. Press play and it counts you in for one bar.
You can turn the metronome on and off, change the tempo, use double time to play it twice as fast, loop it, and change the count-in. There are arpeggio exercises too, like A minor position one with a few different shapes. It's not completely extensive yet. It's a load of generic stuff to try, and I'll keep adding to it as I come up with more exercises. You can save these as an image as well.
Backing Track Creator: build the track you actually need ▶ 6:18
This is the one I think is the most exciting. It won't sound like a finished, polished song. If you want that, you'd have to use an AI music generator, and I don't love that, and I think most musicians don't.
What I found annoying about backing tracks online, as good as many of them are, is that you can't customise the order of the chords or when they come in, and you can't loop sections. So if you want to work on improvising over just two or three chords, you're stuck. With the Backing Track Creator you can:
- Change the key, and the chords update automatically (A minor to A major, for example).
- Pick a time signature, drum groove and tempo, including swing options.
- Choose from a load of preset chord progressions, or add your own chords, including 7th chords or something properly weird like an F sharp minor 9.
- Set how long each chord lasts, for example one bar instead of four.
- Add percussion and set the volume of each instrument with sliders, or mute one completely.
For example, I picked a laid-back hip hop preset, set the B flat chord to just one bar, got rid of the guitar and turned the synth down, and it sounded a lot more hip hop. If you'd rather use a backing track from YouTube, there are links to those too.
Tab Creator: tab that works like a notepad ▶ 9:15
The last one is the Tab Creator. It does what Guitar Pro does, but simpler, and I think that's a good thing. Type in a fret number and it appears on the string, and the space bar plays it back.
What I think is better is the rhythm. In Guitar Pro you have to enter the rhythmic value of everything, which can be fiddly, especially if you're not sure what the rhythm is. If a bar doesn't add up, it highlights the whole bar red and tells you it's wrong. I found that really annoying, because sometimes you just want to write tab like you would on paper, a bit messy.
Here you can put notes wherever you want and it won't tell you you're wrong. The grid is in 16th notes (1 e and a), so if something's a quarter note you just put your next note on the next beat. You can add techniques with keyboard shortcuts (click the down arrow to see them all), like pinch harmonics, grace notes with no rhythmic value, slides in and out, and triplets.
If you're formally making tabs, you'd probably still want something like Guitar Pro. But for most people, a tab notepad is what they want. You can save it as an image or a PDF, or copy a link to share it.
Have a go ▶ 11:22
These are pretty new and I'm open to suggestions on what to improve or add. Pick one thing you're working on this week, set it up in the Fretboard Navigator, build a backing track for it, and have a play around with it.
