About

• Instruments
• Instruments in Action
• infinite-neck Walk-through

This tool, infinite-neck, helps you visualize notes across the neck of your instrument.

The fretboard is displayed as a spreadsheet-like table with cells representing each fret/string position. Clicking on cells puts "notes" on the virtual neck/fretboard, showing where you'll play them on the real fretboard of your instrument. You can add bars and beats, and loop the song. There's music theory baked into the tool, so you can automatically highlight all legal notes in G Mixolydian, for example, with separate sets of colors for chord notes, root, scale notes, passing-tones, and blue-notes.

infinite-neck has the following uses for practice and sharing:
✓ writing down new-to-you and interesting chord fingerings.
✓ capturing a concrete way to play a song.
✓ communicating the fabric of a sound: the possible notes and their moods.
✓ creating art with the patterns of notes, another way to internalize the layout and relationships of notes.
✓ improvising over the changes while looping.

You can run the program from my website:
•  demo.laramiecrocker.com/infinite-neck
•  No login required, free to use.
•  Download/save the songs you create for later use or sharing.

Or, you can download the project from source in Github: github.com/laramie/infinite-neck
•  Written in HTML, Javascript/jQuery, and CSS.
•  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
•  Serve it up from a localhost python  server such as python -m SimpleHTTPServer
•  Serve it up from a localhost python3 server such as python3 -m http.server 8000
•  Point Chrome or Firefox at http://localhost:8000/, and enjoy!

Instruments

✓ Supported instruments: guitar, bass, mandolin, cello, piano, midi-pads, uke, and banjo.
✓ All support left-handed and right-handed players.
✓ Each instrument may have multiple tunings.

For example, a left-handed, six-string guitar could be in Standard tuning, or it could be in P4, Drop-D, or DADGAD.

Here is the tunings table, which shows all tunings for all supported instruments. (It's easy to add your own tunings.)




Or you could really get lost in the world of alternate tunings and follow George Howlett's RĀGA JUNGLISM.

Instruments in Action

Most of the examples below and videos on our youtube chanel feature guitar. Here are snapshots of what the other instruments look like.

Piano



Two Ableton Controller surfaces, when used with Theme: DJ TrailMix.

Novation Launchpad 8x8


Linstrument 8x24


We support Banjo


We even support the Chapman Stick!

infinite-neck Walk-through

Here is a blank song, with a Theme that shows the piano key coloring scheme (i.e. Ebony/Ivory) as a backdrop for each fret:

Here are a P4-tuning 6-string guitar, and a Standard-tuning left-hand 6-string, both playing a cowboy-chord D-major, and showing those notes across the necks. They are in editing mode with titles and controls, and are displayed in the same workspace.

Here they are in full-screen mode.

You can assign colors and styles to notes.

For example: named notes (C#), chord notes (I, III, V), scale notes (natural minor), mode notes (Mixolydian), enclosure notes, or passing tones can all have different colors and styles so you can visualize these patterns up the neck.

You can create Sections, and Beats within Sections.

A Section is like a bar or multiple bars where the underlying notes, modes, and keys don't change. Within a section, a beat can highlight any notes. The next beat could highlight different notes, but "Named Notes" stay for the whole section.

Each new section gets: new keys, number of beats, caption, enharmonic sharps/flats.

That is, a Song has one or more Sections, and each Section has one or more Beats.

Each beat's length (time duration) is determined with the "BPM", or "Beats Per Minute" setting, and there can be any number of beats per section, from 1 to some large integer.

You can then loop over the Beats in one Section, or in all Sections.

Transport showing Section 1 of 5, on Beat 3 of 4.

You can save your songs to share with someone or to come back and practice them later.

Within Sections, one key is the root key for the band, and optionally, a separate root key for the "lead". ("Bill is playing F# over Dave and the band's B".)

To show four chord changes over, say, a Dmin mood, you could use one Section with four Beats, or you could use four Sections.

With four beats in one Section, the neck would look like, say, a sea of bluish notes with several notes highlighted in golden backlight.

• the chord changes would be shown by MultiHighlight or by MidiHighlight, which highlight just the relevant notes across the neck(s) with golden box-shadows.
• the band is in multiple blue colors, e.g. slightly different colors for the I, the V, the minor 3, the Seven.
• these notes keep the same position and color for all beats in this Section.

Or, with four Sections, the neck would look like a sea of bluish notes, and as each section is played, you'd see notes change style and color, forming one chord per Section with their color changes, that are different than the Dmin mood, and so draw your eyes to the chosen notes/positions within a whole fabric of playable notes. You can also add beats (Highlights) to these Sections for more expression.

I find it essential, when communicating with musicians, to "think Piano". So in addition to the note markers, or fret positions that you should play, should not play, could play...etc., I have styled the guitar necks with piano key coloring embeded as ivory and ebony box inlay, though in software they look more like lit-up MIDI controllers built into your guitar neck like Guitar Hero with half of Synthesia bolted on.

That is, ahem, a Song has one or more Sections, and each Section has one or more Beats.

Why

Obviously, the neck is NOT infinite, since we play instruments with a fixed number of strings, and a playable number of frets, generating a listenable set of tones. (But you could have an infinite number of frets, since they get infinitely smaller as you approach the bridge, albeit infinitely more unplayable.)

And thinking about the neck as infinite helped me to learn the repeatable patterns of the neck, and not be rooted to the nut or open strings as much. In fact, I use open strings more now as drone notes while I'm playing high up on the neck, because going up the neck doesn't unroot me from the scale I'm playing.

The point is that the instrument that got me started on this madness was the Strandberg Boden 8-string guitar with 24 frets! It seemed infinite to me!

Also, deciding to play this beast meant that when switching to 8-string bass (or 5-string bass), I'd have to know different layouts than Standard guitar tuning. So I decided for my own practice, I would use Perfect-Fourth-Tuning (P4) on this 8-string guitar and all my basses. Soon, the logic and playability of this P4 system led me to convert some of my 6-string guitars to P4. My soloing and comping advanced remarkably. I never realized that the part of my brain that likes to improvise gets all anxious and goes away when I hit that major third between the G and B strings and I play a real clam because I'm missing a half-step.

Along the way, I had to sort out where my Classical training and Jazz training had different names for the pitches of a scale, and what to call these enharmonically, and what to call these pitches when the key changed, but the played note was the same.

  ☞  e.g. the band jumps from the key of A to the key of D# and you want to play the minor third function in the new key, or you want to know what that minor third you were playing in A means, now that everyone else is playing in D#. "Girl from Ipanema" anyone?

  ☞  Classical purists note--here we show your choice of [all sharps] or [all flats] in any key, per Section, but no weird enharmonic names or mixed sharps and flats--sorry, no B# or C## for you!

So I decided to share this tool and to include other tunings, and ambidexterity, so you can use this tool in your instrument and tuning of choice.

Open some of the example files under "File | Open song from: [Song Library]" to see it in action, or watch some of the videos on our youtube chanel.

You'll want to use this tool to:

• Understand Laramie's system of scale note/function naming (a hybrid between Jazz and Classical conventions), and its uses for singing, playing, and visualizing modal and modeless playing.
• Try the benefits of Ebony/Ivory visualization from the piano, brought to the guitar. Especially when learning modes or playing in "The People's Key".
• Apprehend the patterns formed by scales and chords across and up the neck.
• Move these patterns around the neck.
• Watch lead patterns moving against patterns of comping, and practice improvising over the patterns and changes.
• See the difference between tunings in real time (pull up two tunings and press Ctrl-minus in your browser to make them both fit).
• Practice a song someone has saved in some other tuning, by switching it to your tuning.

Contact Laramie with any questions, comments, or gripes.

Help Videos

• infinite-neck Video Playlist
• Intro
• GUI Menus

Help File

• About
  • Instruments
  • Instruments in Action
  • infinite-neck Walk-through
• Why
• Help Videos
• Help File
  • Laramie's system of scale note/function naming
    • Alternatives
      • Built-in alternatives
      • User-added alternatives
  • Usage
  • Note Types -- special handling
  • Context Help Topics
    • File
    • Section
      • Section Destination
      • Transposition
        • Allow Transposition
        • Transposing
      • Key Change
    • View
      • Display Options
      • Subscript Options
    • Themes Menu
    • Fill
    • Tunings
    • Palette
  • Options
  • The Graveyard
  • Themes Gallery
    • Adult Swim
    • Everyone into the Pool
    • Zinfandel
    • Autobahn
    • Late Nite
    • Big in Japan
    • Pool Shark
    • Blade
    • Coffy Brown
    • Landau Top
    • Renfaire
    • Robin Hood
    • Shire
  • Keymap
  • Command-Line Menu
    • Keys
    • Useful Commands
    • Full Menu Listing
  • Techie Bits
  • Glossary

Laramie's system of scale note/function naming

All note functions with all note names (Key of C, P4 tuning):

All note functions, root C shown in aqua, diatonic C-major notes in yellow, and black keys in gray with no notes, because C-major has no black key notes.:

Note functions for just one octave, chromatic scale in C:

Classical music theory provides only 7 note names, and then expects you to glue on words like "augmented", "diminished", "altered", "major", and "minor". The problem is the symbols can change, so that for example the "II" becomes "ii" if diatonic, which makes it minor. Add Jazz lingo and you'll hear terms like "flat 9" or "the flat 2". And in Classical terms it would not be correct to notate a 12-tone chromatic scale thusly: I ii II iii III IV v V vi VI vii VII. Because ii represents the minor mode and not the flatted II. Modernized Solfège get close, but few people use this system, and it does not have single-character symbols. These examples don't explain the problems well, or even correctly, but that's kind of the point. These systems do not precisely address what I want to express: a unique set of single letter names for each of the twelve tones of the chromatic scale. I do this by assigning names concretely, which apply in any 12-tone playing, assuming you know where the "root" is, or the key of the band or dominant instrument, usually the bass player. I used symbols familiar to Jazz and Session players, and added a few new ones where singular, concrete names were needed.

Features of the system

• The "Name" is my name for that symbol and function
• The "Pronunciation" is my way of singing that symbol, for example "m" is named "mi" and is pronounced like the English word "my".
• "Symbol" is also called Function, Function Name, or Note
• A Θ is always 7 steps up from the root.
• If you change root, the new Θ is calculated as 7 steps above the new root.
• A III is always a major third.
• An m is always a minor third, and so on.
• It's easy to think of the notes as simple: one character, one syllable
• I think the easiest to sing sounds are shown in my pronounciation--one syllable, ends in vowel.

Here, the Root Key is set to the key of C:


Here, it is the key of F:

Alternatives

Navigate to the Function Symbols in the View menu:

NoteFunction symbols dropdown shown:

There are built-in alternatives, and a way for you to define your own.

Built-in alternatives

The best way to understand these is to fill up the neck with NamedNotes, then select each of the schemes in the dropdown to try them out. They update in real-time, but you may have to scroll to see the neck.

As you do that, the editing box called Function Symbols will get populated with the internal string of characters and HTML character entities.

Setting the scheme Function Numbers for Function symbols:

The Function Symbols get set to this:

The notes display like this:

User-added alternatives

You can change the NoteFunction symbols to any string or HTML Entity you choose. A string is anything you can type on the keyboard; an HTML Entity is something like &blah; where blah is some string of numbers and letters--the browser turns them into things you can't type, like symbols. You just need to edit the array here:
View | Function Symbols

This is a Javascript array, so the commas, quotes and braces must remain exactly as they are--just change the values between the quote marks, leaving the quotes, commas and braces.

They default to this:

Or you could go crazy and use lots of HTML Entities:

Or use regular strings, such as Solfège:

Early in the design phase, I tried extending the Classical notation to use chord function names as note function names. I find it confusing, being all too similar. So this scheme is not available in infinite-neck. Drop me a note if you have a better idea, but here is what that would look like:

Usage

The neck is shown as a table of cells, like a spreadsheet. A cell is one of the squares on the neck, and represents one fret on one string.

infinite-neck allows you to mark the notes on your Instrument with various types of notes, shown below. Otherwise, a cell is empty. (You can also choose to show all the note names in all cells, but these won't have an inner border or backglow behind them as notes do.) When a cell has one or more notes or highlights, it is called "Active".

With the various types of notes, you can express notes which should be known anywhere on the neck, or which should be played exactly where shown. With recording Beats and ordering the Sections, and with Looping, you can then arrange the song into a practice sheet, or a visualization of notes to play or notes you could play.

To help you visualize the neck, infinite-neck shows where the piano keys would lie on your tuning. In most Themes, cells have a white background for white keys on the piano, and a gray background for black keys on the piano.

Tunings may change on your guitar, such that a C may the the first fret on the second string, or it may be the open second string in P4. But a C is always a white key, and a C♯ (or D♭) is always a black key, except for these Themes:

• "Coffy Brown" does not make a distinction between black and white.
• "Blade" has black for black keys and hexagons in the white keys.
• "Reverse" has white for the black keys, and black for the white keys.
• "Snow" has white for all keys, with subtle grey borders.
• "Wite-Out" has everything white and behaves as a completely blank canvas.
• "Blackout" has all black keys.
• "Matrix" has all black keys and command-line colors.
• "Landau Top" has brown and tan keys (just like a cherry, stock Chevy Monte Carlo).
  

And any Theme can be changed by choosing the same color for noteWhiteKeyColor and noteBlackKeyColor in the Theme.

Here are six cells showing four white-keys, and two black-keys. A "Single" note is placed on A, and a "NamedNote" is placed on F♯ which selects all F♯s.

Click a Palette note kind (Named, Single, Tiny, Bend...).

Click a Palette radio button to select a note role, e.g. Root or Chord,

or just some color you like.

Click any cell. Cells of that note name turn the selected color.

• e.g. Click C, E, and G.
• Now with "Named" notes, you have all Cmajor chords shown.
• With "Single" notes, you just have the cells you clicked.
• With "Tiny" notes and "Bend" notes, you'll have smaller note functions placed over the cells.

Click the Clear radio button, then any note name you want to clear. (These are specific to the kind of note, so also select the kind of note.) Actually, while you have a note style selected, you can also just click the note again with the same style to remove that note--click on, click off, click on, click off. Karate Kid anyone?

Check the 'Highlight' checkbox to put a border around just one square, e.g. to highlight the actual chord voicing you would play. With "Pitch" and "Multi" notes, you'll just highlight those notes:

• Pitch shows all notes with one MIDI pitch highlighted in yellow outline on that instrument. Here it's a P4 guitar, showing all positions with MIDI pitch 62.
  
• Multi lets you highlight multiple notes at once, by played position. Here's that same P4 guitar. We have, again, shown a D-major chord across the neck with NamedNotes in blue. The actual fingering we'll start with is shown with SingleNotes in filled-in magenta. Plus, we have highlighted, in magenta outline, a handy dominant seven chord, which we could play as a substitution if we wanted a Blues seventh.
  

Click the 'keep' radio button, to avoid making changes when scrolling around.

Click the 'clear' radio button to delete a note of the kind selected (Named, Single, Tiny, Bend).

Note Types -- special handling:

        ✓To keep highlights: record them in individual Beats within Setions.
            ♦ Highlights you get when "REC" is inactive are not kept in the Section.

        ✓NamedNotes persist in Sections, but can't be recorded in Beats.

        ✓SingleNotes, Tiny notes, and Bends persist in Sections, and can be recorded in beats.
           ♦ If "REC" is active, notes record into beats, as you click them
           ♦ If "REC" is inactive, notes record into the Section, that is, they persist for all the beats.

        ✓SingleNotes are like NamedNotes, but you only get one note, not all notes that match the note name.
            ♦    So a NamedNote "F#" will select and color all F#'s on the neck.
            ♦    A SingleNote "F#" will just color one F# cell: the one you clicked.
            ♦    A SingleNote has a corner rounded off in its display, and a brighter default backglow.

Here is a snapshot of a part of the neck showing all the Active I's and III's with NamedNotes, and one Active τ with a SingleNote.

Context Help Topics

File

The file menu lets you open songs to play or edit:
  ✓   songs from your local system you created
  ✓   songs someone sent to you
  ✓   from the library on our web server

The file menu lets you save songs to your local system.
  ☞   Enter a name for your song (e.g. change the name from "Round-midnight" to your song name).
  ˙   This file is in JSON format, which is readable in any text editor.
  ☞   Click the "Download Song" button.
  ˙   Affirm the system dialog, choosing a location for your file.
  ˙   From here, you can archive it, share it, and upload it later to view it again.

Section

The Section menu lets you:
  ˙   create, delete, and reorder sections
  ˙   Clone sections (make a full copy)
  ˙   Shallow Clone sections (make a copy with NamedNotes, but not SingleNotes, TinyNotes or Highlights)
  ˙   add a beat after the last beat [+]
  ˙   delete the current beat [-]
  ˙   add a beat before the existing first beat [^]
  ˙   loop over the beats in just one section as you add notes to the beats (different from Loop Song on the Transport)
  ˙   save DisplayOptions, which include the Root Key and Lead Root Key, plus all the items on the View menu, plus Theme and Stylesheets
  ˙   transpose all NamedNotes in the Section
  ˙   set the enharmonic choice of sharps or flats for the key of the Section. [See Key Change below]

Section Destination

When moving, creating or cloning Sections, pay attention to the dropdown called "Destination after §". This is where the new/moved Section ends up. So chosing "Destination after §" of 3 creates or moves to Section 4. Chosing "BEGIN" as the Destination creates or moves to Section 1, pushing the existing Section 1 to Section 2, and bumping all other Sections later as well.

Transposition

Allow Transposition

If the "Allow transposition by keyboard shortcuts d, U, u, D, j , & J" checkbox is checked, then these keyboard shortcuts work; otherwise they don't. This prevents you from inadvertently transposing a Section, which is confusing if you don't notice the transposition hint. The hint is that all the NamedNotes move (which you might miss), and a yellow highlight is placed around all the new Root notes (which only hangs out until you click a note or change sections).

You can change this from the command-line:

• unlock the song (allow transposition by keyboard shortcuts):/fu (file unlock)
• lock the song (disallow transposition by keyboard shortcuts):/fl (file lock)

Transposing

Transposing "Up" moves the notes and the Root Key up the scale one half-step. Transposing with the "j" key ("Jump") moves the notes and the Root up a fourth, which is up one string on a P4 instrument. Remember that Jumping up a fourth from the G string to the B string in Standard guitar tuning will not be on the same fret.

Here we show a Section with a C major chord shown in NamedNotes (all legal notes on the neck) which will move when we transpose. We have added a B-flat SingleNote, which is the dominant seven. Since it is a SingleNote, it won't move when we transpose. (Also, all SingleNotes have a thin yellow backglow so they look different from NamedNotes, much thinner than the fat yellow Highlight which surrounds the entire cell.)

Transposing from C to D-flat then looks like this:

Before:

After:

Notice that the C major chord is now a D-flat major chord, that all D-flats are highlighted with a fat, yellow Highlight to show you the new Root, and that the B-flat SingleNote is still a B-flat, but its Note Function has changed from the dominant seven to the six, since its relative position to the Root has changed (it was two strings up from the Root, same fret; now it is still two strings up, but one fret back). You can see the new Root key in the caption bar of the instrument: a small, sunken box has a D-flat where before it had a C. You can also see that AutoColor has shown the Note Functions being the same in the new key, since AutoColor assigns colors to Note Function, regardless of NoteName or Root Key. In this AutoColor ColorScheme ("CycleOfColors2020"), the Root is black, the V is red, and the III is a kelly green. In this scheme, Dominant seven (δ) is a pool blue, while the 6 is a chartreuse green. [The updated default AutoColor scheme is "CycleOfColors" and is different than these examples.]

Key Change

If we had just wanted to change keys but leave all the notes, we would just change the key of the Section with the dropdown "Key". Mashing on the "Flats" or "Sharps" buttons first sets whether the "Key" and "LeadKey" dropdown will show sharps or flats, and also always updates how the neck will display them. The result would look like this:

Before (Root = C):

After (Root = D-flat):

Notice that the notes stayed in the same positions, but the keys have changed. (The Note Names are still [C,E,G] on the same frets and strings.) Thus all the notes have new Note Functions. Since AutoColor is on, the notes automatically get new colors--AutoColor assigns a color per Note Function.

The keyboard shortcut for changing the key is "k", which cycles through the keys in chromatic order, so that you can quickly try out different keys. This allows you to see which key makes the most sense for the notes chosen. You will see the function names (and auto-colors) change as you change keys, since the Note Functions are relative to the Root Key. "Shift-k" cycles through the keys in reverse chromatic order. The new key root is shown in the caption bar of the Section and the caption bar of the instrument, and all the notes that match the key letter are highlighted until you do something else.

The "Sharps" and "Flats" buttons in the Section menu let you choose whether to show the notes on the neck with sharps or flats. This is just a display option, and does not change the actual notes on the neck, which are always the same MIDI pitches. So if you have a C# note, it will be shown as C# if you choose "Sharps", and as D♭ if you choose "Flats". The command-line shortcut for doing this is /ss, for section | sharps, or /sf, for section | flats. [After any command-line command, hit ESC to close the command-line.]

Just like using the dropdown "Key" or "LeadKey" on the Section menu page, on the command-line you can also set the key of a Section with the command /sk. This brings you to the menus choices of white keys where you can choose the keys: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, which sets the Root key, and sets Sharps to true for the major keys A,B,C,D,E and G which have sharps, and sets Flats to true for the major key of F, which has a B♭.

At that /sk menu, you could also select black keys where you can choose the keys: a♭, b♭, d♭, e♭, g♭, because these major keys have flats. You can then override Sharps or Flats with /ss, or /sf.

So choosing "e♭" would set the Root key to E♭ and Flats to true. If you then chose Sharps, the Root key would be D♯ and all other black keys would be shown as sharps.

LeadKey is only displayed on the neck using TinyNotes, and these show only the Note Function, not the Note Name. So just set the LeadKey dropdown to the pitch you will be playing, even though its enharmonic name may be incorrect, because whether Sharps or Flats are shown in the LeadKey dropdown is chosen by the Section's Sharps/Flats buttons, which also set the choices displayed for the Key dropdown. Similarly, using the command-line to set LeadKey, choose the correct pitch using the available "black keys" menu choice, e.g. D♭ instead of C♯, which is not available through the command-line.

Remember, this is just a display option, and does not change the actual notes on the neck. Suppose you want to play in Gminor, which has two flats. You would select G as the Root key, and select Flats. infinite-neck doesn't know about major and minor keys or key signatures. It just lets you display all the black keys with either Flats names or Sharps names. No mixed use of sharps and flats is displayed, there is no concept of accidentals, there are no double flats or double sharps, and there is no display of enharmonic names like C♭ B♯ E♯ or F♭.

Remember, this is just a display option, and does not change the actual notes on the neck. So it is possible to choose B as the key with Flats, and the neck will display the following notes: B♭, B, C, D♭ D, etc., even though this may be enharmonically weird. If you are playing in G, set Sharps to true, and if you are playing in Gminor, set Flats to true.

To recap, here are some example command-lines. To get these to work just start typing the command letters shown. The initial forward-slash key / pops up the command-line. (It's best to have any Button Menus closed by hitting ESC first.) Note that the Sharps and Flats change in the display of each cell, following the command-line choice. To create these examples, we chose different notes that matched the scale we would be playing.

Input notes for D♭major, then set the Root Key to D♭:

/skbd ESC

Input notes for Gmajor, then set the Root Key to G, for playing Gmajor:

/skwg ESC

Input the notes for G natural minor, then set the Root Key to G, then ENTER twice to go up two command-line levels, then f for flats for playing Gminor with Flats:

/skwg   ENTER   ENTER   f   ESC

Here is how it looks (and is enharmonically incorrect) if you chose G with Sharps, but were playing notes in Gminor:

View

Display Options

All the controls on this page update the fretboard display in real-time. All can be saved to the Section Display Options, such that when you navigate to another Section, the Display Options you saved will be restored upon coming back to this Section.

If you want to save these options, it is best to set them at least in the first Section, so that when looping the song, or opening the song from a file, the default options you chose get restored logically. When you navigate to another section, the options persist until you hit another section that has Display Options set. As you change Sections, if the View menu is showing, you'll see the option controls get updated.

Also click Save Display Options to overwrite previously saved options for just the current Section.

Click Clear Display Options to delete these options for just the current Section.

These buttons also appear in the Section menu, and apply to the current Section.

You can audit all the Display Options for all Sections that have them set with the command-line /vdd Scroll down to see the audit of all Sections with Display Options. The options that change are highlighted.

You can also sit on the View page and watch the controls change while you hit the Transport next section buttons, or the keyboard shortcuts ( < and > ). Remember that if one of the controls traps the keyboard, click in some blank spot of the screen or hit ESC and then V to come back to the View menu.

There's a bit more info in the Glossary::Display Options entry

Subscript Options

You can play around with the following options:
  Show Right Subscript
  Show Right Subscript in Center
  Show Left Subscript
  Show MIDI Number
  Right Subscript: Function | Notename

These will render various results like these, which you can also tweak with the sizing options.
For all these examples, "Show Left Subscript" and "Show Right Subscript" are checked.

Right Subscript: Notename


Show MIDI Number, Right Subscript: Notename


Right Subscript in Center, Right Subscript: Notename


Right Subscript in Center, Right Subscript: Function


Right Subscript in Center, Show MIDI Number, Right Subscript: Function


Right Subscript in Center, Show MIDI Number, Right Subscript: Notename

Themes Menu

Normally, you can change Themes by just selecting one from the dropdown in the main menu button bar. See screenshot of Themes Gallery in this helpfile.

The Theme menu is for tweaking the current Theme, and for building new Themes. It's a bit techie, so we'll explain it in a video at some point.

Fill

Fills in order of: Scale, Chord, Root.

• To fill just Scale, set Chord and Root to "Keep".

• To fill Scale and Chord, set Root to "Keep".

• To erase, select "None" for color and click "Fill Notes" again.

• AutoColor chooses colors based on the note function colors: [note1, note2, ... note12], which overrides noteChord, noteScale, and noteRoot.
  So to see the color effect of filling, AutoColor button should be punched out, not punched in .

Tunings

Look under the "Tunings" menu to turn on and off various installed tunings, and customize them (number of frets, left-handed). These controls update the instruments in real-time, but you may have to scroll down to see them.

Palette

The Palette lets you choose what kind of note you'll be placing when you click in a cell, and what color and hatching will be used.

First, choose what kind of note: Named, Single, Tiny, Bend, Pitch Highlight, Multi Highlight, or Fingering. There's more detail in the Glossary about these note kinds.

Then, decide whether you'll use AutoColor. With AutoColor, Note Functions are assigned a color each by the current ColorScheme. Without AutoColor, more color buttons will appear: these are colors assigned to Roles. A Role is something like Root or Chord. All Root notes then have the same color. All Chord notes have the same color. (Except that we provide not just one but [Chord, Ch2, and Ch3], so that you can have three different chord colors to be assigned as you click.) If you just want a color for each note, that you'll assign, then click "More..." after the Major Seventh role color radio button. You'll then see the full palette infinite-neck provides. Whenever AutoColor is active, your color choices for individual colors chosen this way will be ignored.

AutoColor uses a ColorScheme. infinite-neck comes with a Default ColorScheme, called "CycleOfColors", which is based on my whack theory that associating a color with each Note Function helps to learn and spot patterns of chords. That is, a Major Seventh chord always looks the same, color-wise, so seeing an inversion of that chord on the neck should stimulate a memory, and help us navigate the pattern of that chord all around the neck. If you find it weird or annoying, you have two options: 1) turn AutoColor off; 2) customize AutoColor to a scheme of your liking.

Customization also allows you to have multiple ColorSchemes, for example, one scheme for minor moods, another for major moods.

With AutoColor off, you can still have the colors and hatches mean something, by using Roles. A Role for Root or Chord was discussed above. You can also use or customize the Roles for Avoid, Avoid2 and Avoid3, so that these notes mean "Avoid this note!" To do this, you would turn AutoColor off, then click Avoid, then click in a cell to place that Avoid note, either a SingleNote, or a NamedNote. You can do this in multiple keys, such that in Section 1, in the key of C, the flat II (τ) would be an Avoid note, while in Section 2, in the key of A playing a Gypsy scale where the flat 2 (τ) is legal, then the natural 2 (II) would be an Avoid note, so you'd place a Role note of Avoid there.

Customizing the colors for the Roles [Root, Chord, and Scale] sets these as the colors for the Fill menu. When using Fill, you probably want AutoColor off to take advantage of this.

To change ColorScheme away from CycleOfColors, click the [Customize...] button on the Palette menu. Chose colors and hatches for each of the Note Functions [note1, note2, ....,note12] using the little picker buttons and their pop-up pickers. (Click the little button again to make the picker go away, or click a color/hatch to chose it and make the picker go away.) When you have colors selected for each of the Note Functions [note1,...,note12], then click the [Record Stylesheet] button. You can provide a Stylesheet name, or the name "user" will be filled in for you. Now the Stylesheets will be shown, the same as if you had clicked the [Stylesheets] button, and your new Stylesheet will be a the bottom of the list. The bottom row is the composite stylesheet of built-in stylesheets plus your user stylesheets, as selected with the links and checkboxes, which you can play around with. This result is your active ColorScheme, and is saved in the song. To apply it to other songs, open this song first, delete any Sections, then open the Song you want to view using the "Append sections to current song" checkbox on the File menu. (There always has to be one Section, so just mash on the Delete Section button repeatedly in the Section menu until you are down to one Section and it is blank.) Now when you open the other song, you'll see that song's Sections, along with its saved Stylesheets, and your new Stylesheet.

You can also customize the colors for Fingering the same way. You'll see that the Default stylesheets are broken up into CycleOfColors for Note Functions, Fingerings for fingering colors, and Roles for Role colors. You may overide any of the individual colors in your stylesheet, and leave some Roles or Fingers or Note Functions as Default by not adding things in your stylesheet. You may also have multiple stylesheets by entering different names in "Stylesheet name" before clicking "Record Stylesheet".

There is another way to record a stylesheet: manually place colored NamedNotes on the neck, then click Section:NamedNotes==>Stylesheet. This will create a stylesheet for the Note Functions only, based on the colors you chose for those Note Function locations. You do not need to do all Note Functions--you could just override the II and the Δ for example. Then, when AutoColor is on the two notes in your stylesheet would override the Default, but other notes would use the Default.

Finally, there are several special "Color" buttons: [Clear, Keep, and Find Color].

"Keep" disables placing new notes, so is useful if you just want to click around and not change anything, or if you are doing a presentation and don't want to mess things up.

"Clear" lets you delete notes of the kind selected. Actually, you can also just click on a note, and if you have the note kind selected, that note will go away. If you click again, the note will come back, but with whatever color you currently have active.

To find what color you used before, make sure AutoColor is off, then click "Find Color", then click the note on the neck. The color name will appear in the Caption of that instrument, so open up the Caption row with the little hamburger on the instrument. If the whole Caption on the instrument is missing, press ESC then SHIFT-A to show it. The color will also be highlighted on the Palette, so you will have to have AutoColor off, and you should click "More..." after the [Δ] radio button to show the full color palette.

Two more colors are special: [Emboss, and Auto]. Emboss just creates a note with transparent background. This is useful if you'll be using AutoColor, so as to be obvious when AutoColor is off--all the notes will just be transparent but still have borders, highlights, etc. Emboss is also useful if you'd like to just display the Named Notes so you can see their positions all the way up the neck, and then use color to draw your attention to SingleNotes that you'll actually play.

The color called "Auto" places notes with a color selected by AutoColor, but that color persists even when AutoColor is off. This is useful if you want the colors from a ColorScheme to apply while placing notes, but you don't want to use AutoColor because you are using color Roles, or are using Emboss.

Options

Beware that keyboard shortcuts may be captured by textboxes such as the song name or BPM, or even the radio buttons of colors on the Palette. Hit ESC to close up menus to ensure the keyboard shortcuts documented here behave as expected.

When checked, pressing w or W while menus are closed will increase/decrease the width of the frets, but will use the natural mathematical proportion of frets, such that they get smaller up the neck. This is the default. When not checked, the w and W keys still increase and decrease, but all frets have the same width.

Certain instruments in the library have an option in the JSON file called fixedFretWidthMult which scales the fixed width, and thus do not use Natural Fret Widths. Piano Schroeder is one of these.

When checked, pressing u or D while menus are closed will transpose any named-notes up chromatically, preserving their role colors/styles. d or U transposes down. Pressing j or J will transpose by fourths, or Jump strings up or down. When not checked, these keys cannot trigger transposition, which is the safe default.

The Graveyard

Objects that are deleted are buried in the Graveyard. They can be revived, which will place them back into the song as though never deleted, except perhaps in a different order if things have been added or deleted in the meantime. See the help sections on how to move Sections and Beats. The order of Stylesheets is part of setting the Stylesheets for a Song, so check the Stylesheet order (in Palette | Stylesheets ) after reviving them.

The Graveyard can be found under the File menu, and in the command-line under /fg.

Menu :: File :: View Graveyard

(It is presented at the bottom of the page after all instruments, so scroll down if autoscroll doesn't take you there.)

Click "show/hide" to see the object that was buried.

Click "raise" to revive the object that was buried. The "lastRevived" timestamp will be updated, and the object will be placed back into the song.

In fact, you can revive an object more than once. This makes clones, which is useful. For Sections, there are more detailed cloning buttons on the Section menu page: Clone, and Shallow Clone.

You can delete all objects from the graveyard (and receive a download of the song just before the deletion) by using the command-line /fC documented in the Useful Commands table.

Themes Gallery

Themes, we got Themes, baby! Just choose one from the dropdown (or edit them in super-geek mode under the Themes Menu).

Adult Swim

Everyone into the Pool

Zinfandel

Autobahn

Late Nite

Big in Japan

Pool Shark

Blade

Coffy Brown

Landau Top

For those of you who didn't live through the 70's a "Landau Top" was an interpretation of old carriage option from Laundau, Germany, which was implemented in Pleather (Vinyl) in the stock 1978 Chevy Monte Carlo, with these hip-daddy colors.

Renfaire

Robin Hood

Shire

Keymap

These keys can be pressed at any time. If you have other menus up, or the command-line, keystrokes may go to those. Just hit ESC first, to hide menus and the command-line.

Note: TAB order works in this application, and SPACE key and arrow keys are not overriden, so all keyboard navigation should work. (However, we remove all the transport buttons from TAB order, and other controls you can reach by the command-line or keyboard shortcuts.) So tabbing to the hamburger button means SPACE will click the hamburger, as usual. Tabbing to radiobuttons lets you then use arrow keys to select different colors, for example. There is one radio group for all the Note types, and one radio group for the colors. Once you are in the palette, however, a p key will get trapped by the radio buttons. So to exit the palette, you must use ESC.

Command-Line Menu

Here is the command-line interface, so you can type commands one-handed while balancing your guitar on your knee.

The menu is structured to give unique, quick access to many of the things you can do with the mouse. Many quick functions are available via the global keyboard shortcuts. The global keyboard shortcuts plus the command-line commands together give you access to the options of infinite-neck you need when working in a flow and don't want to be digging around in menus.

The command-line menu commands don't change because they all start from the root of the menu. Any menu item that you use can just be typed again and again without even looking at the screen. All menus end with "x" so you can end any command with x and close the command-line. Most of the time you can also just type / in the command-menu to restart at the top. A few of the input dialogs in the menu will trap the / in which case you can hit ESC to exit the command-line.

There are also some advanced or diagnostic items that don't belong in the Graphical User Interface (GUI). As you get more familiar with using infinite-neck, please check this reference, or poke around in the command-line menu to learn some of these advanced features. A few, like the Display Options dump, or the Sections dump, are essential, and can't be launched from the GUI. Output from these commands often appears at the bottom of the main page, below any instruments, so you'll have to hit ESC to hide the command-line menu and scroll down to see them.

Here is the whole app with the command-line showing. Just press / to pop it up.

Here is the whole app with the command-line showing with the view menu options set to tall menus ( /vmt ).

Note that in the upper left you can see the command items you have typed so far. That plus the letter you type for the current menu item forms the full command-line you would type later if you want to execute this current menu item again. So in this image, you can see /s and the current menu item could be f to set the Section to use Flats. Thus the full command-line command would be /sf which you can type any time to set the current Section to use Flats.

Keys used in the command-line

Useful Commands

Most of the command-line menu items are self-explanatory. Here are some notes for ones that aren't.

Any command that "prints" out a result does it on the main page, below any instruments. Close the command-line with ESC and scroll down to see it. You can leave them down there, or use /vdh to get them out of your way.

NOTE: The global keyboard shortcut m pops up the command-line at the menu depth you left off last time. Whereas the keyboard shortcut / pops up the command-line menu at the root of the menu every time.

Full Menu Listing

/vdm prints out a plaintext listing of the entire command-line heirarchy.

Here, for example, is the command-line menu structure as of 20260217:

Techie Bits

        Using the command-line Menu, you can view Diagnostics:  /vd
                song model:   /vds
                    the model of the entire Song
                in-memory model:  /vdi
                    the model of just one Section
                menu dump:   /vdm
                    condensed, simple printout all the menu items in menu.js
                user colors: /vdc
                    full display of colors in userColors.js
                    This is better seen graphically in Palette | Stylesheets
                displayOptions: /vdd
                    all the DisplayOptions stored for each Section

        In the object model, and therefore the file format, here are the objects:
            sections - An array of section objects in song order.
            section - An object in the sections array that represents one Section.
            namedNotes - A dictionary of note objects that apply to all instruments 
                              in that Section.
                         Named Notes appear at every cell on the neck 
                              that corresponds to that note name, e.g. "B".
            section :: noteTables - a dictionary of arrays that store all played notes in that Section 
                              on one instrument instance. 
                         Played notes are all notes that are not namedNotes: 
                              they have a single spot in a note cell. 
            visibleNoteTables - An array of instrument instance names, 
                              that corresponds to the keys used to store section :: noteTable objects.
                            Save the file makes the memory model reports this correctly.           

        In Chrome::Inspect you can use Developer tools Console
           to directly access the ObjectModel of the Song:
                getSong()

        Synopsize the "noteTables" collection:
           getSong().sections.forEach(function(a){console.log("id"+JSON.stringify(a.noteTables))});

        Delete all played notes (noteTables) in a song, leaving Named and Recorded notes only :
           getSong().sections.forEach(function(a){a.noteTables = {}; });

        Delete all Recorded notes:
           getSong().sections.forEach(function(a){a.recordedNotes = {}; });

        Set entire song to sharps:
           getSong().sections.forEach(function(a){a.sharps = true; });

Glossary

Contact Laramie with any questions, comments, or gripes.