Scale Degree Fretboard Trainer for Guitar
by 
Pick the Scale Degre! (The Root Note is Red) 1 ♭2 2 ♭3 3 4
♭5 5 ♭6 6 ♭7 7
Scale Degrees
Options
| Tuning: |
You can practice picking the scale degree relative to the root or to another scale degree note.
Scale Degree Fretboard Trainer
This fretboard trainer is designed for learning scale degrees on the fretboard relative to a root note.
It is similar to our interval fretboard trainer but a little different. An interval is the distance between two notes while a scale degree is equivalent to the interval between a note and the next lowest root note.
These terms “interval” and “scale degree” can be used a little loosely in the guitar community with some guitarists using the term interval to refer to what we are calling scale degree here. Other guitarists might use a term such as harmonic function.
To understand these scale degrees see our article on Viewing the CAGED positions as intervals. This article describes the concept.
Of all the ways to look at the notes on the fretboard, it is my view that these scale degrees have the closest relationship to how we actually hear and appreciate pitch in music. For this reason, this is largely the basis to my own view of the fretboard.
The app allows you to select the strings on which the root note can appear and to specify if the other note needs to be within an octave of the root note or not.
This allows a number of different fretboard views to be trained. For example, Tom Quayle, a popular exponent of this sort of fretboard view, advocates being able to see the root note on all six strings while viewing the other pitch within an octave above or below the root note. Martin Miller on the other hand limits his view of the root note to the 4th, 5th and 6th strings but will then see a greater range than an octave for the other notes.
Personally, I tend to like to be able to see the fretboard similar Tom Quale’s approach here, with the view of the position expanding to a full CAGED position (as detailed in this article) quite quickly after starting to play in the position according to Tom Quayle’s view.
The app also allows you to train in picking the scale degree of a note relative to another scale degree rather than the root. This is more unusual but I find this useful for finding root notes in chord progressions using fretboard geometry rather than the letter names of the chords. For example, if you have a chord progression I – vi – ii – V, and you are currently playing the vi chord, you may want to be able to find the root of the ii chord relative to the root of the vi chord rather than knowing the letter name of the ii chord in your key. This is then useful to test knowledge of scale degrees relative to other scale degrees (such as the vi degree here) rather than relative to root notes. I’m not sure I’’m communicating this concept well here but you it might be helpful to look at this article on playing chord progressions in any key to get the idea. The basic mode of picking the scale degree relative to the root note is certainly the mode you would use when working with scales and arpeggios on the instrument though.
by 