This guide talks about how to generate a Guitar Fretboard Diagram in Windows 11/10. A fretboard or fingerboard is an important component of a guitar or any other stringed instrument. It is basically the long strip made up of mostly wooden material that is present on the front of a guitar. You can play the notes and chords on the fretboard. Now, what is a fretboard diagram? Let us find out!
What is a Fretboard diagram?
A fretboard diagram basically shows dots where you can place a finger to play a specific chord. It consists of the root note, scale, tuning, notes, and more. The diagram helps guitarists to play particular notes or chords by placing fingers on dots using the guitar fretboard diagram.
Now, if you want to create a guitar fretboard diagram depicting scale and notes on your Windows 11/10, how to do that? Well, this article will help you find a solution to that. Here, we are going to show you how you can generate a guitar diagram in Windows 11/10. We will be mentioning some free online tools and desktop software that enable you to create a guitar fretboard diagram. You can save the guitar fretboard diagram as an image. Let’s check out these guitar fretboard generator tools.
How to generate Guitar Fretboard Diagram in Windows 11/10
Here are some free Guitar Fretboard Diagram generator websites as well as desktop software that you can use to create guitar fretboard or fingerboard diagrams on your Windows 11/10 PC:
- Guitar Scientist
- Guitar and bass
- Guitar Fretboard/ Fingerboard Generator
- ScaleMaster
- Guitar Chord Diagram Maker
- ChordPic
- fretflip
- Chordious
Let us discuss the above-mentioned guitar fretboard diagram tools in detail now!
1] Guitar Scientist
Guitar Scientist is a dedicated free website to generate guitar diagrams. It lets you resize the fretboard, set up guitar tuning, add notes, select a scale, and download your guitar diagram as a PNG image. It is very easy to use and provides all the necessary features to make guitar fretboard diagrams.
To set up fretboard options, simply click on the Fretboards button and it will let you adjust the number of frets, width, and height. You can also add multiple fretboards to a single diagram, flip fretboards, select the desired fretboard style. Later on, you can customize Tuning and add notations to the fretboard.
It also lets you generate scale/ arpeggio in different structures like Dorian, Lydian, Harmonic Minor, Locrian, Phrygian Dominant, Ionian, and more. Furthermore, you can set the root note and transpose notes.
When you are done creating a fretboard diagram, click on the Download button and it will let you download the guitar fretboard diagram in PNG image format.
It is a great web service to create guitar diagrams. You can use it from here.
See: Best free Music making software for Windows.
2] Guitar and Bass
If you want a free desktop software to create a guitar fretboard diagram, you can try Guitar and Bass. It is a good application that is used by musicians to learn and practice instruments like guitar, mandolin, bass, and more. It comes with a dedicated feature to create a guitar diagram. Apart from that, it offers tools like Scale Builder, Scale Analyzer, Jam band, Tuner, Metronome, Tab Editor, and Chord Finder. You can also use some exercises to fine-tune your music knowledge.
To create a guitar diagram in it, go to the Reference menu and click on the Chord builder option. This will open up a fretboard window. In this window, select Guitar instrument and choose notes and chord type. You can also set intervals and set tuning to standard, step down, or half step down. Click don’t the Play button and you will be able to listen to the music.
It provides a Save fretboard picture for printing option that lets you preview and save the guitar fretboard diagram. You can save it as an HTML file or directly print the diagram.
Want to use it? Download it from here.
Also read: What is a MusicXML file used for? How to view MusicXML?
3] Guitar Fretboard/ Fingerboard Generator
As the name suggests, Guitar Fretboard/ Fingerboard Generator is a free online tool to generate guitar fretboard diagrams. It is one of the easiest tools that anyone can use without any hassle. You just need to enter the number of frets, set up tuning, and click on the Generate button to create the respective guitar diagram. You can view sharps to flats and label the note in the guitar fingerboard diagram
It lets you open the fretboard image in a new tab and save the diagram in SVG image format. You can even generate a permalink of the diagram or directly print it out. Visit this website to use this simple online guitar fretboard maker.
Read: OpenChords is a digital songbook for guitarists and other musicians.
4] ScaleMaster
ScaleMaster is a free, open-source, and portable software to create guitar fretboard diagrams. It is a Java-based software that requires Java Runtime Environment to be installed on your PC to run. You can download its source code from github.com. After that, unzip the downloaded folder and then open the jar subfolder. Then, run the ScaleMaster jar application to use it.
You can select the diagram type as scale or simple triad arpeggio. Then, choose the length, root node, mode (major, harmonic minor, or natural minor), and the starting position. Next, press the Generate option to create the custom guitar fretboard diagram.
See: How to play and edit MIDI files in Windows.
5] Guitar Chord Diagram Maker
Another desktop software that you can use is Guitar Chord Diagram Maker. It is a free, open-source, and portable software designed for guitarists to provide them assistance regarding scales and modes. You can also use it to create a fretboard diagram. For that, just select root notes and chor types and then press the Create Chart button. It will create a guitar diagram and show it in a default web browser. You can then print the guitar diagram.
To use it, download from sourceforge.net.
6] ChordPic
ChordPic is a free website designed for generating guitar chord diagrams. You can simply enter the title of the diagram, starting fret, number of frets, and strings. Then, you can edit notes, text, colors, and shapes and it will show you the guitar fretboard diagram in a dedicated section. To further customize the diagram, you can set up options like height, style, nut size, stroke width, background color, fix diagram position, etc.
The final diagram can be downloaded in SVG or in different sizes of a PNG image. Besides that, you can also generate a URL link of the created guitar fretboard diagram and share it with others on the web. Move to chordpic.com to use this web service.
See: How to convert Plain Text to Musical Notation PDF in Windows.
7] fretflip
fretflip is an online tool to view and edit scales and chords and you can also generate guitar fretboard diagrams. You can open this website in a browser and then start making guitar diagrams. Simply select a root note, choose and edit a tuning according to your requirement, and select starting and ending fret. As you set up these configurations, it displays the respective fretboard diagram. You can save the diagram in image format using the Create Image option. It also generates a URL link of the diagram image that you can share with other people.
8] Chordious
One more good guitar fretboard diagram that you can use is Chordious. It is basically freeware to find chords and scales for guitar and other fretted string instruments like Banjo, Mandola, Ukulele, etc. It offers Chord Finder and Scale Finder tools. You can use the Chord Finder tool to generate a guitar fretboard diagram. Additionally, it also comes with Instrument Manager and Tuning Editor.
Firstly, start this software and click on the Chord Finder tool from the main screen. Now, set the instrument to guitar, select a tuning, choose a root note, and select a chord quality from the available ones. Next, you can customize various parameters from the left panel, like the number of frets, maximum frets, allow open strings, allow muted strings, allow rootless chords, add title, mirror results, add bottom marks, fret label side, and more.
After that, press the Search button present at the bottom of the interface and it will generate guitar diagrams. You can right-click on the diagram and copy the scaled or SVG image to the clipboard.
You can download it from chordious.com. It comes with both installer and portable editions; you can download whichever version you prefer.
Read: How to insert Music Notes and Symbols in Microsoft Word.
How do you find the chords on a guitar?
You can use the above-mentioned tools to find chords on a guitar; many of them let you find chords. To mention some, you can use Guitar and Bass or Chordious software for finding chords. These two provide a dedicated Chord Finder tool that allows you to find chords with respect to notes.
Hope this article helps you find a good free website or software to create guitar fretboard diagrams.
