ABOUT THE FRETBOARD TRAINING COACH The "Lite" Version

Enter the FRETBOARD LEARNING COACH—LITE

"THE FRETBOARD TRAINING COACH—LITE" is the result. There are hundreds of fretboard apps on the web and in the app stores. But they only drill you on the names of the notes on the fretboard, such as: 3rd string at the 4th fret=B, 1st string at the 8th fret=C, etc.

But only knowing the letter names of the notes on the fretboard is rather useless. The guitarist needs to know what the notes look like on the musical staff.

My trainer is unique: it teaches you the names of the notes on the fretboard,
PLUS it makes the connection to what each note looks like on the musical staff.

READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS:
If you don't use the trainer correctly,
you are wasting your time!

The Main Points

1. On the upper left, choose whether to display flats (b) or sharps (#).
2. Direct your attention to a specific string and fret.
3. BEFORE MOVING THE MOUSE, name the letter of the note. Next, visualize what the note looks like on the musical staff.
4. Finally, hover the mouse over the note to see if you named it correctly and if your visualization was correct.

If you cannot visualize the notes on the staff, I recommend that you work with the Ultimate Note Recognition Trainer first. If you still have difficulty, work with the full Ultimate Fretboard Trainer.

I recommend following this learning sequence:

1. Learn the notes on each string from open to the 12th fret.
2. Learn the notes horizontally across the neck:
   • Open strings
   • 1^st fret
   • 3^rd fret
   • 5^th fret
   • 7^th fret
   • 10^th fret
   • 12^th fret
3. Learn the unisons and octaves. Find all the A's, B's, C's, D's, E's, F's, and G's from the open strings through the 12th fret.
4. Hover your mouse above one of the letters in white below the fretboard. All the locations of that note will display on the fretboard. In addition, the staff diagrams of the note in its various octaves will also display. Use this to learn the locations of that note's unisons and octaves.

CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO START TRAINING
WITH THE FRETBOARD TRAINING COACH!

DEVELOPERS, ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, AND THANKS

The Fretboard Literacy Project

As I noted above, I started the "Fretboard Literacy Project" in 2018. Over a period of three years, I created my two flagship trainers, "The Ultimate Note Recognition Trainer" and the "Ultimate Fretboard Trainer." They are not games. They focus on deep learning and education. But I also wanted a "lite" version of a trainer to supplement the full courses.

Enter Morten in Thailand

I stumbled across Morten (who lives in Thailand), a developer of several great music apps. I discovered that he had constructed an interactive fretboard app. He even explains its construction step by step on his YouTube channel, "Music and Coding."

I decided to use Morten's open-source code as the backbone of my "Fretboard Training Coach—Lite."

Taking It to the Next Level

There are hundreds of fretboard apps on the web and in the app stores. Unfortunately, they only drill you on the names of the notes on the fretboard, such as 3rd string at the 4th fret=B, 1st string at the 8th fret=C, etc. But only knowing the letter names of the notes on the fretboard is rather useless. The guitarist needs to know what the notes look like on the musical staff. My trainer is unique: it teaches the names of the notes on the fretboard, PLUS it makes the connection to what each note looks like on the musical staff.

My expert website developer and consultant, EK Woster, came to the rescue, taking the app to the next level by adding this functionality to the app.

Bret Pimentel, woodwind artist

Thanks to woodwind artist Bret Pimentel for his note image generator. I saved a lot of time by using his images for my pop-up staff note images.

We Made It Pretty

I wanted to make the fretboard and strings look as realistic as possible. On Codepen, I stumbled across a pen by Erin of "Guitar string styles" beautifully coded with HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Thanks to Erin for this unique and outstanding work. It took lots of effort to make the bass strings look good in all browsers, but EK Woster came to the rescue again to make it happen.