A scale is a pattern of distances, not a pattern of fingers. The distances never change — a minor pentatonic is the same five steps whether you are holding a bass or a cavaquinho. What changes is the neck you lay them on: how many strings there are, what those strings are tuned to, and how far apart the same two notes end up sitting.
That is why this site draws one instrument at a time rather than showing you a grid of “shapes” to memorise. Every diagram here is computed from the tuning up, so what you see is where the notes actually are on the instrument in your hands.
The four necks
Guitar — six strings, standard E A D G B E, twenty-four frets. The one instrument here with a shape system worth naming: CAGED divides the neck into five overlapping positions, and it works because standard tuning’s interval pattern is what it was built on.
Bass — four strings, E A D G. Those are the guitar’s bottom four strings an octave down, which means the arithmetic on the neck is identical and the fingering is not. There is no CAGED here, and that is a fact about the instrument rather than a gap in the tool.
Ukulele — four strings, G C E A, and the G sounds above the C and E drawn below it. Reentrant tuning is the thing that breaks most fretboard diagrams. It does not break these ones, and the reason is worth understanding.
Cavaquinho — four strings, D G B D, the tuning that samba and choro are played in. Almost no English-language fretboard tool draws it at all.
What is the same everywhere
The neck repeats at the twelfth fret. Every instrument here is fretted in semitones, so twelve frets is an octave and fret 12 sounds the open string again. Learn the first twelve and you have learned all of them.
A note’s name depends on the key. F♯ major contains an E♯, not an F, because a major scale uses each letter once. Most diagrams quietly print F and hope nobody notices. These print E♯, in every key, on every instrument — and if you pick a key nobody writes in, the readout tells you what it is usually called instead.
The tool is the same tool. The instrument selector on any of these pages switches the neck without reloading anything, and it remembers what you play next time you visit.
Where to start
If you have never worked on scales positionally before, start with the minor pentatonic on guitar. Five notes, and it is the scale most of the music you already like is built from. Once its five positions feel connected rather than memorised, CAGED is the map that explains why they connect.