Positioning of the fingers on a guitar neck calculated by formula rather than pictures

[EatMe]

Positioning of the fingers on a guitar neck.
Calculated by formula rather than pictures.

And then dazzling at the opportunities this gives for learning musicians.

Whatever this post means are *not* promises to make this, only sketches.
But I'm basicly done with a first working version.

I already have developed on the free tool ChordLord by EatMe + Panda + Suva, for (with free demo of) Renoise by the Renoise Team and taktik of Renoise GmbH.

To make it so, that instrument string finger fret on neck positions will be displayed for each of the chords in any tuning. That people then would choose their own string note tuning, and that the positioning of the fingers on a guitar or any tuned instrument neck will be displayed after being calculated by formula, taking in account the user configurable tuning of each string and the configured maximum reach of a say human hand to grab the chord over the length of the neck.

Also, a couple of standard tunings could be added, like a guitar, a ukulele, higher capo tunings, and for 5 string basses the B as starting string.

What would be the maximum acceptible hand distance? This would also need to be configurable over a number of frets on the neck, to impossible configurations for those wanting to play note per note, but not greater than the room on screen provides.

What would be the maximum acceptible string length? This is something limited to the longest type of neck on real-life instruments, and can also be done with numbers instead of taking up graphical space.
edit: looking up details of longer neck instruments, it seems that 40 frets would be a safe distance to aim as maximum.


How would an existing way to display a chord match the real-life examples? This is where the tricky part comes in. Calculating all ways to grab a chord would be possible in the end, but also prioritizing and preferring the grabs that are practical is difficult. Some logic has to be in that makes account of the ability of the fingers to reach out, and a factor of easyness for each finger position related to other chords or the other fingers.

How would this be displayed? Users should be able to add or remove or disable and enable strings and configure the tuning for each string. The fret positioning would simply be a circle on a fretboard or other horizontal lines. There could be a number in the circle to indicate the fret number. Those circles and horizontal lines with fret number would be a grid with homemade .png images to use in the Renoise tool.

Your ideas and encouraging formulae for calculating hand positions on any tune string system will be read. I am not looking for a topic full of other not-related posts (thank you, vurt vacherach, for reading everything).

[lfm]

How much a stretch a player can do is individuall, and it's also different at low frets than high frets.
- and distance between frets of Gibson scale 24.75" and Fender or others at 25.5"

I was exposed to a course long ago that started off on fret 3 and you needed to do double fret distance twice right from start
- C second string, third fret, then scale C, D and E then to next string
- I could not do that at that time so did not continue that course, felt tutor was out of touch

Petrucci in his book Rock Disciplin, he starts off doing exercises and warmups around fret 12 to 15, so no problem starting out. Then he goes down the neck and your stretch improves this way,
- he knows his stuff

I got a book more than 50 years ago with 1000 jazz chords, and ways to do any chord in 5-6 ways and you just stick to those that are convenient for your playing.
- just an ordinary chord diagram style in one position, then transpose is easy on guitar
- so filter out chords and present graphically is smooth, I think, maybe tabs as well

To your formula, make a couple of entries for user that are relevant
- can you make a stretch at fret 1, 3 and 5 as an example and filter out non relevant positions from that
- at which fret can you do two double steps in frets, 5-7-9 or similar without moving hand

So a user can get chords that are convenient for that user at this time.

And maybe minimum or max number of sounding strings, many chords have muted strings etc.
- 4 strings are often enough to get a good sound, even 3 works

When using different tunings, open strings like for slide purposes, is also useful to get suggestion for chords. If guitar is prepared with high action for slide, you can also fret notes behind slide to alter chords with an added 7 or 9 and similar. Fretted notes then avoid the slide being pressed, due to being lowered as fretted and slide is nicely "fretting" other notes.

When started playing slide a bit, I found that tricky to figure out variations of chords depending on tuning used. I found one page presenting this in a nice way that I don't remember now but here is one:
https://guitargearfinder.com/guides/open-d-tuning/

And in general if using a pick and finger picking is also different what you can do having certain strings sounding and not others.

A couple if things. Good look with your formula.....

[Karbon L. Forms]

I made an app like that 10 years ago. Abandoned. More recently did a half-arsed MIDI Device version in M4L as an exercise. Only got as far as MIDI input or moused in FretMarks, as I called them, showing in all positions along with chord detection. Tuning and number of string or frets were all variable. Was good for pumping in a basic chord then seeing all the notes all over the fretboard. Or seeing how a MIDI clip could be played (perhaps in a particular tuning). Even displayed bends. Also, looked much nicer than the fretboard in GuitarPro 7 (not seen 8's one). Vector graphics, fully resizable. You had to work out which actual fingers to use yourself though. FingerMarks could have note names or scale degrees. Keep meaning to resurrect it.

[EatMe]

I made an app like that 10 years ago. Abandoned. More recently did a half-arsed MIDI Device version in M4L as an exercise. Only got as far as MIDI input or moused in FretMarks, as I called them, showing in all positions along with chord detection. Tuning and number of string or frets were all variable. Was good for pumping in a basic chord then seeing all the notes all over the fretboard. Or seeing how a MIDI clip could be played (perhaps in a particular tuning). Even displayed bends. Also, looked much nicer than the fretboard in GuitarPro 7 (not seen 8's one). Vector graphics, fully resizable. You had to work out which actual fingers to use yourself though. FingerMarks could have note names or scale degrees. Keep meaning to resurrect it.

It's great news that this is already made by you and you want to resurrect that.

There is help information about the Renoise Lua Scripting API.

The interface is built with (without the markup ----- )

Code: Select all

vb:row { 
--vb:column {
----vb:bitmap {
------id="imgHere",
------bitmap="here.png"
----},
----vb:text {
------id="txtHere",
------text="text here",
----},
--},
},

and can then be changed with lua code:

Code: Select all

vb.views["imgHere"].bitmap="There.png"
vb.views["txtHere"].text="text there"

There is no transparency for the images. That makes editing sometimes quite cumbersome for many images to make for variations of overlays.

I would love to make ChordLord display a set of strings in a separate window with the pressed chord buttons. These are all defined in the chord library in binary patterns 0 for note disabled and 1 for note enabled, and each semitone higher note following. There however also is a inversion that shifts the notes an octave down or up, maybe it would need to be constructed following the inversion.

[EatMe]

I did it I did it I did it.

A first test version of ChordLord v4.02.235 is available with fretboard for bass (4+5 strings)/violin, ukulele, and guitar. http://www.eatme.pro/software/chordlord and https://github.com/free-music-by-eatme/chordlord for a first impressive impression.

[lfm]

In the process of getting the fretboard into my backbone, and where the notes in the scale are I did this.
- I think some symbols or coloring like this could assist anybody that want to do this
- in this position of the chord I, III, V are where?
- then add 7, 9 or 2 or 4 or else as you please
- major, minor and respektive pentas
- you find chords on any string combinations you wish on just a few adjacent strings
- you can search for the inversions easily etc

I quickly found many new ways to make inside chords that I did not think of before.

Square=root, Triangle=third, Green ring=fifth, Yellow small ring=rest of scale
- just look for the E-, A- and C- or D-shape for the basic tonality
- or figure anything out from the big symbols

Probably out there similar stuff, but working with it a bit is first step. Might be something wrong too.....

[EatMe]

Thank you, dear user lfm , for sharing your thoughts on this. This looks very interesting. I do not know if it is possible to implement all these features with a complete graphic view. I will overthink what is possible to make even more distinguishment between each note.

The translated versions of each language have been done and can be https://github.com/free-music-by-eatme/chordlord downloaded.

I have to work on the manual for the new fretboard changes, then again I will update all the repositories.

[Karbon L. Forms]

Here's my shitty resurrection attempt... Showing E Major. I just clicked the open chord notes. Bugger all features. lol. Selected notes not even highlighted. The "E Major" text on UI is actually from my own chord detector.

Screenshot 2026-01-23 222959.png

[EatMe]

The interface is easy to clutter up with all the different small portions.
I can read the current ChordLord string neck in one overview.
I can not read the positions as easily from the mockups of what you posted above.
My fingers also do not turn another color.