My mission

When you are learning guitar, and we are all learning no matter how advanced you are, looking up chord diagrams, checking out the chord structure you are working on or looking for a particular scale becomes part of your everyday practice life. Getting this information is so easy these days but I still found I needed to find several websites to get it. Often when I found a good site (and there are many!) I still had to click through several pages to get to everything.

There are probably apps that do everthing I have tried to do and more but then you are restricted to a device that has an operating system like android or apple. I guess also you will have to pay for that app.

This site is written im html, css and javascript and can be accessed from any device as long as you are connected to the internet. It is also free.

Mission 1

was to bring as much of this information together and make it quick and easy to find. In the chord finder, once you have chosen your chord, you can see each chord move up the fretboard and not have to skip from one gate diagram to another. Choose the one you want to work on and then go from there.

If you are working on more than one chord at a time why not use the chordalyser. It uses gate diagrams but you can still click through most of the chords in my database and check out 9 at a time. This widget is great if you are working on a song you want to learn. Once you have pumped in chords from the tune you can shift them around to different parts of the Fretboard- from open chords to right beyond the 12th fret.

Mission 2

Learning about chords and scales can get vary technical. This is all fine if you can read music and have studied it alot but many guitar players have only a little theory at their fingertips or can't read music at all. Dyslexics struggle here a bit.

While providing technical information I have tried to make everthing as easy to follow as possible. While a bit of theory is a very good thing it can confuse things a bit if you are not used to it.

A few tips on learning chords and scales

My first tip is to go easy on yourself. It takes a long time for new information to get from your brain to your fingertips. If you think about how long it took to ride a bike. It took a lot of wobbling around and staring at your feet before you were able to cruise down the street without even thinking about it.

Similarly, learning a new chord is a similar process. you can't cram it all into one day. Spend a few minutes each practice session on the chord or scale. Slowly but surely your brain will rewire, your muscle memory kick in, and then one day your fingers will just do it! Frustration and impatience will dampen your enthusiasm.

Secondly go easy on your fingers. If a chord is a big stretch and it hurts don't push it. You can do some tendon damage and halt your abilty to play for a long time. Do it gradually and in the meantime use an easier, less stretchy chord. Warming up first would be a good idea also.