Fretmap: Chords & Scales

Fretmap shows you where to put your fingers.

Pick a root and a chord, and the shapes appear — six ways to play it, spread
along the neck, each one checked to make sure a hand can actually reach it. No
scrolling through a list of songs to find a diagram. No account. No connection.

WORKED OUT, NOT LOOKED UP
Fretmap does not store chord shapes. It knows how your instrument is tuned and
what notes the chord is made of, and it finds the shapes from that. Switch to
drop D, DADGAD or open G and the diagrams change with you — including for the
tunings nobody publishes chord charts for.

CHORDS
24 types in all twelve keys: major, minor, 7, maj7, m7, m7b5, dim, dim7, aug,
sus2, sus4, 6, m6, power chords, add9, 7sus4, 9, maj9, m9, 13, 7b9, 7#9, 7#5
and 7b5. Every dot can show its note or its degree — or nothing at all, for a
plain diagram — and the root is marked in red so you can see the shape rather
than only copy it. The notes are spelled the way they are written: the third of
C minor is Eb, never D#.

SCALES AND MODES
14 of them across the whole neck: major, natural minor, major and minor
pentatonic, blues, harmonic and melodic minor, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian,
Mixolydian, Locrian, whole tone and diminished.

HEAR IT
Tap a shape and it strums, lowest string first, in the voice of the instrument
you picked. Tap a single dot on the neck and you get that one note. Every pitch
is generated on the device and checked to within a fiftieth of a semitone, so
what you hear is what the diagram says. Turn it off in settings if you would
rather work in silence.

THE CHORDS IN THE KEY
Under every seven-note scale sits the row of chords that belongs to it — C, Dm,
Em, F, G, Am, Bdim for C major. Tap one and its shapes open. It is the fastest
way to work out what a song can do next.

FOUR INSTRUMENTS, TWELVE TUNINGS
Guitar in standard, drop D, Eb, DADGAD, open G and open D. Ukulele in standard,
low G and baritone. Bass in four and five strings. Mandolin. Left-handed
diagrams throughout.

WORKS WITHOUT A CONNECTION
Everything is calculated on the device. Nothing is downloaded, nothing is sent,
and there is no sign-up. The app remembers your instrument and the last thing
you looked at, and that is all it keeps.

Fretmap is a reference, not a lesson. It never listens through the microphone
and it asks for no permission to do so — it shows you where the notes are, plays
them back when you want to check, and gets out of the way.