Grapes is an iOS app for learning scales and chords. You can think of it as an index of guitar shapes. If you're learning guitar, you at some point will reference a scale or need to look up a chord, so hopefully having them all in one place on your phone can be helpful.

Getting Started

I built grapes specifically to get a better and more in depth view over the modes of the more complicated guitar scales, such as Harmonic Major and Melodic Minor. Memorizing the modes of a scale can help us master it across the fretboard. If you've just downloaded Grapes, I'm sure you're wondering how you can use this app to become better at playing guitar. It's really simple actually: Recite the diagrams forward and backward in relative and parallel keys.

Reading Guitar Charts

There's many forms of guitar charts out there, and the key to understanding them is to figure out what perspective we're seeing the guitar from. Take a look at the diagram below. The strings are the lines that have dots on them. Dots will indicate where to place your fingers.

Major Scale - Ionian Mode Pattern

Most diagrams will display the information as if you laid the guitar directly on your lap, looking down at your guitar.

The above picture is analogous to the diagram below: They have the same orientation.

Guitar Fretboard Diagram (Chromatic Scale)

Future Updates

The guitar and other fretted instruments are interesting in the sense that the order of notes and the patterns they create are physical representations of musical concepts such as scales, chords or voicings. We can use these scale and chord forms to teach ourselves music theory along the way. I'll also be working on some lessons to integrate into the app, which can hopefully be a little interactive and easy to understand. My ultimate goal is to bridge the gap for those who are just starting and get everybody improving their understanding through visual examples.

Thanks

To anybody who's left a review, I want to thank you for taking the time to provide feedback and your thoughts. Special thanks to those who commented their ideas on what they'd like to see added in future updates. I think all of the suggestions are great. They're all in development and planned to be implemented. Some ideas such as a bass mode (and modes for other fretted instruments) or having degrees for the note labels on the scales page, are a little more challenging to get done. The latter feature specifically requires some case by case solutions for problems that are created by the enharmonic nature of music and keys. As a musician I'd like to meet a certain level of accuracy and make sure everything's correctly labeled. So, at the end of the day it just takes time to input all the information. Thanks for your patience.