A metronome, a tuner, every scale worth knowing and 75 chord shapes — free for anyone to use. Works on your phone, tablet or laptop, with nothing to install.
Tip: if a passage trips you up, drop the tempo until you can play it perfectly three times in a row, then add 5 bpm. Slow and clean beats fast and messy every time.
Play one string at a time and let it ring. The needle turns green when you're within 5 cents.
Try this: pick a root, put the metronome on 70, and play the scale up and down one note per click. Then try it on just two strings — that's where solos start to sound like music rather than exercises.
Switch to Degrees once a shape is under your fingers. Seeing 1 ♭3 4 5 ♭7 instead of A C D E G is what lets you move the same shape to any key — you stop memorising note names and start hearing the intervals. It's the single biggest step from playing patterns to playing music.
Where to start: minor pentatonic, then blues, then Dorian and Mixolydian. The modes, altered and bebop scales further down the list are there when you're ready for them — they're not a queue you have to work through.
Reading these: the thick line at the top is the nut. Dots are where your fingers go, numbers are which finger (1 = index). An ✕ means don't play that string, an ○ means play it open. A number to the left means the shape starts at that fret.
The jazz shapes are movable. None of them use open strings, so the whole shape slides up or down to change key — move it up two frets and you're two semitones higher. The root sits on the 5th string for the C shapes and the 6th string for the G shapes, so find your root note on that string and put the shape there. Finger numbers are left off deliberately, as in most jazz chord books: the fingering depends on what you're moving to next.
Where the 5th went. Several of these leave out the 5th, and the bigger ones leave out the 9th as well. That's normal — you only have four fingers, the 5th adds least to the sound, and in a band the bass player has the root covered anyway.
Tap the fretboard to place your fingers, and it'll tell you what you've made. Use the ○ and ✕ buttons on the left to set a string open or muted.
Why it sometimes gives two names: the same set of notes can be more than one chord depending on which note you treat as home. C–E–G–A is both C6 and Am7 — which one it is depends on the song around it. The first name listed uses your lowest note as the root.
These tools are free for anyone — keep them. But a scale diagram can't hear you play. Cesar teaches guitar, bass and ukulele in Mona Vale and online, for all ages and levels.
