January 2021 EDIT
For new readers, the post below is really outdated. Just click the tool’s link and explore it! It’s grown a lot since its inception!
I’ve been busy.
I’m building a fretboard study tool. For now it only has the major scale and its modes. I’m planning on including a bunch of other scales and chords, and also have a tool to derive chords from scales. In addition to that I want to include shape views of each scale/chord and other helpful stuff (ear training, finger exercices, etc.). And it will be somewhat customizable so each user sees only what he wants to see.
Scales and Modes are what made me have this early release, as my musical theory knowledge is still far from good. I’m not sure how I should organize the scales. The more I explore the web and books the more confused I get, as each author has his method of organization. The way I see it, every scale has modes (even if they’re not named). But, the minor scale, for instance, should have its own “page” (as would the major scale) and have its own modes or should it just be part of the major scale presentation?
It’s very far from being a stable tool, as stated in the title it’s an alpha version. Only the fretboard notes and the string tuners are outputting sound It’s not yet optimized for mobiles and small screens (should be ok with an iPad horizontal mode), sorry for that.
Sweet! It probably took some real time and effort in creating an app like that, and, such a sleek appearance and functionality! This is really quality work, beautiful.
Only suggestions might be to make the notes ring out for a longer duration of time when clicked on, maybe also just mark Aeolian (Minor Scale) or something like that, I seem to forget which of these is major, which minor when studying the modes sometimes. But these are small things.
I think this looks great already and can be helpful in many ways for practicing.
I think starting with the major scale and its modes (i.e., what you have) is the most important and already plenty for most cases. Already when you go towards the minor scale(s) it gets much more complicated.
Perhaps adding the pentatonic scales (major and minor) and the blues pentatonic scales as well as perhaps the bebop scales would be the most worthwhile next step. Blues scales are derived from pentatonic scales and bebop scales are derived from scales you already have (+ some chromatic (passing) tones added).
Don’t beat yourself up about structure and comprehensiveness - it is extremely complicated, not least because there are old (Greek) definitions, new (modern) definitions, ad hoc definitions and more “randomness” especially when it comes to the modes.
Also, there is a software out there called Tessitura Pro (at least for MacOS) that claims to have included 333 different scales and a total of 1948 scales and modes - so, an “insane” number of scales and modes, really! Unless you want to analyze the works of guys like Messiaens or Webern, we probably never need more than a tiny percentage of all those scales and modes in our musical endeavors.
Nice! My only suggestion would be a kind of ‘toggle switch’, so that you can view scale degrees as an alternative to note names. A bit like the bassguitarscales.org website.
One thing you might want to think about how to present is a special interval teaching mode for the modes of the major scale that will make them very apparent to visualize on the keyboard. I.e. Ionian is all the white keys starting at C; Dorian is all the white keys starting at D; Aeolian is all the white keys staring at A; etc. It makes them very easy to visualize for intervals.
I’m using VueJS with Tone.js. The site itself won’t be open source (at least from the start), the components (fretboard, scale visualizer and keyboard) might be.
Cool! I think I’ve settled on Angular for my personal front end choice, but Vue is my second. If you ever do open it up, post a link! Would be happy to lend a helping PR if needed.
. For now there’s only Bass as a preset
