About the Guitar Palette
The Guitar Palette gives you a quick and convenient way to enter
chords straight onto the fretboard. This is especially useful when
you know what a chord looks like, but nothing else. Just put the
dots on the neck where your fingers are and suddenly you know every
name and every possible fingering. That's powerful, baby.
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The FretPet disk image contains a Photoshop file you can use to
make your own guitar images! Use Photoshop's Save for
Web command to convert your custom image into a PNG file,
then drop it in the ~/Library/Application
Support/FretPet folder to install it. |
Guitar Palette Features
- The Fretboard
-
All the really good stuff in FretPet happens on the Fretboard. Be
sure to have your guitar in your lap when you start playing with
this palette. The default display mode uses a vertical
orientation to save on screen real estate. You can switch to a
horizontal display mode if you prefer.
The fretboard is displayed so that the head - or "nut
end" - of the guitar is at the top of the window. Notes
ascend in pitch from the "nut end" of the window to
the "bridge end" (bottom shown here).
- Fret 0 is referred to as the Open String.
- There are 18 frets besides the open string.
- Only 6 string guitars are supported by FretPet.
- Conventionally the string with the lowest pitch is called
the Bottom String and the string with the highest pitch the
Top String. This has nothing to do with the physical
orientation of the guitar.
- Use the
sub-menu to choose a guitar image you like.
- The Fret Bracket
-
Dots appear over the whole neck, showing you the many possible
positions where you can play your new chord. But of course you
can't play all the notes at once. The Fret Bracket allows you to
choose a region of the neck in which to play your chord. FretPet
finds the most complete set of notes - one note per string - to
play.
- Click and drag in the middle of the bracket to move it.
- Click and drag either end of the bracket to resize it.
- Click outside of the bracket to jump it to a new position.
- The [ and ] keys also move the bracket.
- Note Dots
-
The notes in your chords appear on the fretboard as color-coded
dots in the same colors that they appear in the Chord
Palette:
The tone is the root note of the chord.
The tone is in the current scale.
The tone is not in the current scale.
The tone is not included in the current fingering.
- Double-click on the fretboard to toggle a dot.
- Triple-click to add a triad to the chord.
- ⌥ click a red dot to override the Fret
Bracket.
- Blinking Dots
- Blinking dots correspond to the tone at the Scale Cursor.
- Fret Cursor
-
The Fret Cursor is indicated by a rotating box. Details about the
tone at the Fret Cursor are displayed in the Info Palette.
- Click and drag in the fretboard to move the Fret Cursor.
- Clicking in the Diagram Palette also moves the Fret Cursor.
- String Tones
-
The notes that correspond to each open string are displayed at
the "bridge" end of the window. These will change
depending on the tuning.
Select tunings from the submenu.
Overriding the Bracket
The Fret Bracket is pretty helpful, but it isn't the lord of the
Fretboard - you are! Fortunately, you are not limited to the notes
FretPet chooses. You can select any dot on the neck to play as part
of the Current Chord.
⌥ click a red dot to override the fingering. (Use
to show red dots.) ⌥
click the dot again to revert to an automatically chosen position,
if one is available.
Note that anytime you make changes to a chord or move the Fret
Bracket the chord fingering is recalculated. So you'll need to redo
your fingering changes in that case.
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