Chord Locator Tutorials

Generic Chord Locator Tutorial

If this is your first time with the Generic Chord Locator try this simple exercise. Let's look for F major triads in the basic C6th tuning.

Exercise 1

  1. Select the Basic C6th tuning from the Select Tuning menu.
  2. Leave the Bar Option Settings to the default (Straight Bar). This means no slant bar positions will be shown. Notice that Triads are selected by default in the Chords to Show area of the Display Options panel.
  3. Type 'F' in the Chord Root field and select Major from the Chord Type menu.
  4. Press the Find Positions button to view the results in tab notation. Notice that the results are sorted by location on the fretboard, lowest to highest.
  5. Notice also that the 5 positions at fret 17 are essentially the same as those at fret 5. You can eliminate the redundancy by selecting the Hide Positions Above Fret 12 checkbox. Do that and press the Find Positions button. This is a good way to reduce the clutter in your results. Note: If you are including open string positions, using this option may hide some important results.

Exercise 2

  1. Perform the steps for Exercise 1 unless you've just done it.
  2. Uncheck the Hide Positions checkbox, uncheck the Forward slant checkbox, and hit the Find Positions button to return to the complete F major results from Exercise 1.
  3. Let's add forward slant positions for F major triads. The locator remembers your previous settings, so all you need to do is select the Forward checkbox and rerun the search. Notice that the results are no longer sorted by fret. That's because the default sort (by Open:Slant:Fret), sorts slant positions first, then by fret so that the slants appear at the end of the results. You can see this more clearly by selecting Fretboards from the Display Options panel. Do that and rerun the search. Now you can easily see that the forward slants are sorted last. Notice that fretboards near the nut (like the first one shown) show the nut as a bold vertical line. The fretboards up the neck show a reference fret number above the fretboard diagram.
  4. Open String Positions are set to 'Omit' by default. To see why, select the 'Include' option and press the Find Positions button. Aiyai! Quite a few positions to absorb. You would most likely choose the Include option if your initial search produced nothing or very little. Let's try this out.
  5. Select the Omit option in the Open String Positions field and let's look for D major 9th positions.
  6. Enter 'D' in the Chord Root field and select Major 9th from the Chord Type field.
  7. Run the search and notice how few results there are.
  8. Select the Show Only option in the Open String Postions field and rerun the search. Now only open positions are shown and there are quite a lot of them.
  9. To narrow down the search results select only the Forward slant option and rerun the search. Narrowing your searches can help give you more meaningful results. In this case, the first few results are often the most useful, as open string positions far up the neck tend to sound a bit muddy or can be harder to play in tune.

Exercise 3

  1. Let's do a search for C Diminished chords using the default settings (select Straight bar only in the Slant Bar Options panel, Triads only in the Chords to Show area, and Omit in the Open String Position area).
  2. Type 'C' in the Chord Root field, select 'Diminished' from the Chord Select menu, and press Find Positions. Nothing there! Diminished chords aren't that easy to find.
  3. Now select the Include Open String Positions option and re-run the search. Now you have a couple of very playable postions using open strings.
  4. Now let's go back to the Omit Open String Positions option and select the Dyads checkbox. Now re-running the search gives you some very playable positions. Now try adding Forward slants and rerun the search. This gives you all you need up and down the neck. To get a better view of the positions up the neck, select the 'by Fret' sort option and rerun the search. Now the results are neatly arranged in order from lowest to highest fret.

Advanced Locator Tutorial

The Advanced Voicing Locator displays all possible positions for a given chord voicing on any given steel guitar tuning. To use this tool, you must know the specific chord voicing you're searching for.

Exercise

Let's take the basic C6th tuning and look for a simple F major chord voicing built on degrees 1, 3, and 5

  1. Select the Basic 6-string C6th tuning from the Select Tuning menu.
  2. Leave the Slant Bar Option to the default Straight Bar setting.
  3. Enter '1', '3', and '5' in the Tone fields. Enter 'F' in the Chord Root field.
  4. Press the Find Positions button to view the results. The listing includes all possible F major positions for your voicing.
  5. Notice that the listing includes F chords from 2 different octaves. You can further limit the results by entering a specific note in the Chord Root field in scientific notation. Enter 'F3' in the Chord Root field and rerun the search. (The keyboard diagram will help you make scientific notation entries.)
  6. Now let's look for a more advanced F chord voicing, Fmaj7—you don't usually hear this chord with common steel guitar tunings. Enter a '7' in the Tone 4 field and rerun the search. No results are found. Now select 'Include' in the Open String Positions display panel and rerun the search. You now get several ways to play this voicing.
  7. If your search produces no results or very few for your chord, you can do a Chromatic search to see if there are transpositions of your chord to other keys that can be played with open strings. To run a Chromatic search, select the Show Only (All Keys) option under the Open String Positions diplay panel and rerun the search. You now find many '1 3 5 7' voicings in several keys.