Whether you are a brand-new player who sees the fretboard as a disordered matrix of randomly placed notes or an experienced musician who is trying to breakdown the location of every possible way to play a specific chord: most fretboard visuals don’t allow for a level of interaction that would permit you to customize what you see depending on your specific needs.

The Fretboard Explorer gives you string-by-string and note-by-note control over what you see, and more importantly, what you don’t see as you explore and learn the fretboard.

The user interface allows you to:

• Deactivate every single string
• Deactivate every single note
• Set the visible fretboard range
• Learn every chord and scale
• Change the base note or tonic
• Change the instrument and tuning

You can change the information on the chord diagram:

• Nothing
• Notes (Settings) Note names according to your settings
• Notes (Theory): Note names according to the music theory
• Intervals
• Relative notes
• Fingering

Use the Fretboard Explorer e.g. to:

• Isolate single string scale views by shutting off all but a single string.
• Examine the constant relative location and spacing between two notes, for example, a root note and a b5.
• View triads for the V chord in any key along just three strings at a time by eliminating all extraneous note information for that particular study focus.
• Experiment with modes by shifting the tonic in any given key.
• Jump back and forth visually between pentatonic and diatonic scales with a simple screen press or two.
• Create arpeggios for chords within a specific key/scale and then instantly shift back to a full note by note representation of that same scale.

▶ Matthew Faris’ video gives a comprehensive overview: