Who makes this
This site is written and maintained by {{AUTHOR_NAME}}.
{{AUTHOR_BIO}}
Why it exists
Most fretboard diagrams online are pictures. Someone drew a shape once, saved it as an image, and every key you might actually want is either missing or a different picture that may or may not agree with the first one.
This one is computed. Every note you see is worked out from the tuning of the instrument and the definition of the scale, in your browser, the moment you ask for it. That has two consequences worth caring about:
Every key works, and is spelled properly. F♯ major contains an E♯, not an F, because a major scale uses each letter name once. Diagrams drawn by hand almost always print F. This one prints E♯ — and if you pick a key that musicians avoid, like D♯ major, it tells you what the same notes are usually written as instead.
Nothing is approximate. The CAGED windows, the chord tones inside them, the relative major a minor key borrows its shapes from: all of it is derived rather than transcribed, so there is no diagram sitting somewhere with a typo in it.
How it is built
Deliberately plainly, and the choices are all in the same direction:
- No accounts, no cookies, no tracking. There is nothing to log in to and nothing that follows you. See the privacy page for exactly what that means.
- No network requests after the page loads. Change any control, tap any note, switch instruments — none of it asks a server for anything. The whole engine is in the page.
- It works without JavaScript. The board you land on is in the HTML before any script runs. The controls need JavaScript to do anything, but the diagram is already correct.
- It is free, and paid for by affiliate links. Those are marked, and the affiliate disclosure explains the arrangement in full.
Getting in touch
Corrections are genuinely welcome — particularly about the Portuguese terminology, and particularly from players of the cavaquinho, which is the instrument here with the least English-language material to check against.
The contact page is the way — it goes straight to me, and nothing that arrives there is stored anywhere but an inbox.