The most important step to learn your instrument is to familiarize yourself with the layout of the fretboard. You have little choice but to learn all notes. Only if you can find their position completely automatically will you be able to read and play music from a sheet. Only with an understanding of where the notes are and their relationship to one another will chord-fingerings begin to make sense to you. While this step can be frustrating and outright boring you have to commit towards going through this initiation period. The probably most effective method to learn the fretboard is to go through a repetitive training like this one where flashcards pop up and you try to remember and memorize positions and names. A midi player is integrated to give you sound feedback. While the soundquality is not quite perfect it will help you to quickly know if you are off with your fingering. The same player is also behind the tuner.
To keep you focused on the fretboard, the notes on the stave are shown directly underneath the fretboard position. This is not how you will later use sheet music but during this stage it may be helpful to keep your eyes from rapidly flipping forward and backward. however a small area is kept in the stave to line up the notes/chords in the more familiar way. For the right-handed fretboard view it is in the right end of the stave. For the left-handed view it is move next to the key.
This software will help you to learn positions on the fretboard by working
in a flashcard mode. You can control to have
these notes (cords) displayed in random order (useful to learn note positions)
or go through them in order (something that may be more appropriate when playing
scales).
You have a few different ways to determine the notes that you want to explore
and learn.
This activates all notes in the selected fret range that you can limit or extend with the menu choice Range. Under Range you can limit by bracketing your region through a choice of selected frets and you can select strings as well. The choices are not further explained in this help because they are obvious. List boxes will pop up and with your mouse you can make your selection. The displayed frets can go from 0 to 36. Be aware that you also can place a “capo” (see Settings ->Add Capo) in a similar way.
Other choices under the tab Flashcards are the Random Order How many sets? Exercise Time to reveal and Repeat Note after reveal tabs.
Random Order switches between sequential presentation of the flashcards and a random choice (default is random).
How many sets? Lets you adjust the number of sets in a flashcard pile (choices are 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9; default is 3).
Exercise Time to Reveal pops up a gauge to adjust the time that goes by after showing the notes before naming them.
Repeat Note after reveal controls if the note(s) is (are) played again.
The Start Flashcards and Stop Flashcards have the same functions as the buttons for Start and Stop. Keyboard shortcuts for these functions are Ctrl-S and Ctrl-Q (Hold control button at the bottom of the keyboard and hit either S or Q)