February 2016 version 4.

Table of Contents
February 2016 version 4.3 ........................................................................................................................................ 1
Overview ........................................................................................................................................................................... 6
SightReader ....................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Keysignature ................................................................................................................................................................. 8
Selected note jump ....................................................................................................................................................... 8
Swing 8th off/ on ............................................................................................................................................................ 8
Time signatures ............................................................................................................................................................. 9
Presets........................................................................................................................................................................... 9
Deep Rhythmic editing .................................................................................................................................................. 9
Clean fretboard ............................................................................................................................................................. 9
Note Rhythm selections ................................................................................................................................................ 9
Chord Options ............................................................................................................................................................... 9
Accidentals .................................................................................................................................................................. 10
The Guitar Neck .......................................................................................................................................................... 10
The Menu .................................................................................................................................................................... 10
The Deep Rhythm Editing Tools .................................................................................................................................. 11
The SightReader Music Window ..................................................................................................................................... 12
Sight-reading Primer ....................................................................................................................................................... 13
Chords ......................................................................................................................................................................... 13
Credit where credit is due. .......................................................................................................................................... 14
The Main Window Menu ................................................................................................................................................ 15
Registration and activation ......................................................................................................................................... 15
Activation ................................................................................................................................................................ 16
Install ....................................................................................................................................................................... 16
Backup Everything and Import.................................................................................................................................... 16
Tips and Tricks ............................................................................................................................................................. 17
Help videos .................................................................................................................................................................. 17
Lessons ............................................................................................................................................................................ 18
The Browser .................................................................................................................................................................... 18
Transcriber ...................................................................................................................................................................... 19
Export to lick library .................................................................................................................................................... 20
The Metronome .............................................................................................................................................................. 21
Basic features .............................................................................................................................................................. 21
The Splitter .................................................................................................................................................................. 21
The Bass Movement Tool ............................................................................................................................................ 22
The Chord Player ......................................................................................................................................................... 22
Random tempo ........................................................................................................................................................... 22

Record Control ............................................................................................................................................................ 22

Tempo advice .............................................................................................................................................................. 23
The Invertor .................................................................................................................................................................... 24
The sequences: ........................................................................................................................................................... 25
Selecting notes ............................................................................................................................................................ 25
Button Files ................................................................................................................................................................. 26
Free form..................................................................................................................................................................... 26
Export to Neck Builder ................................................................................................................................................ 28
QuickChords .................................................................................................................................................................... 29
Chords with Scales ...................................................................................................................................................... 30
Pluralities..................................................................................................................................................................... 32
Output ......................................................................................................................................................................... 32
Just Scales ............................................................................................................................................................... 33
Chord Library................................................................................................................................................................... 35
The edit window ......................................................................................................................................................... 36
Layout.......................................................................................................................................................................... 36
Text.............................................................................................................................................................................. 36
The Menu .................................................................................................................................................................... 37
Guitar SightReader Clipboard ..................................................................................................................................... 37
The Recorder ................................................................................................................................................................... 38
Audio ........................................................................................................................................................................... 38
Lick Library ...................................................................................................................................................................... 39
Eartraining ....................................................................................................................................................................... 47
Interval Testing ............................................................................................................................................................... 49
Chord and Scales Test ................................................................................................................................................. 49
Melodies for Intervals ................................................................................................................................................. 50
Interval over Bass ........................................................................................................................................................ 50
Melody Movement ..................................................................................................................................................... 51
Note match ................................................................................................................................................................. 51
Random Note .............................................................................................................................................................. 52
Library Perfect Pitch ................................................................................................................................................... 52
Perfect pitch method .................................................................................................................................................. 53
Progression Recognition ............................................................................................................................................. 53
Tempo Recognition ..................................................................................................................................................... 55
Progression Center .......................................................................................................................................................... 56
The Progression Creator ............................................................................................................................................. 56
The Progression Player................................................................................................................................................ 58
Add/Edit Chords .............................................................................................................................................................. 59

Add/Edit Scales ............................................................................................................................................................... 60

Practice Scheduler........................................................................................................................................................... 61
Creating a practice schedule ....................................................................................................................................... 62
More Tools ...................................................................................................................................................................... 63
Exam Creator and Tester ................................................................................................................................................ 63
To Create an Exam ...................................................................................................................................................... 64
Community Content ........................................................................................................................................................ 65
Setlist Manager ............................................................................................................................................................... 66
Neck Builder .................................................................................................................................................................... 67
Learning the Fretboard ................................................................................................................................................... 73
The circle of 4ths ......................................................................................................................................................... 73
Spelling ............................................................................................................................................................................ 74
Chord Spellings............................................................................................................................................................ 75
Chord Shorthand ............................................................................................................................................................. 75
Final tips .......................................................................................................................................................................... 76

Foreword

Hi! Welcome to Guitar SightReader Toolbox the most killer guitar and bass training software on the planet!
My name is Sean Clancy and Ive been making guitar software since 1991. Back in 2001, I thought I would like to
work on my sight-reading. I scoured the net looking for such software. There were a handful of piano based sightreading apps around but nothing for guitar.
So I made my own. It started with SightReader (guitar) and then I progressed further with these apps:

Bass SightReader
Guitar freak toolbox
Guitar SightReader Master
Guitar Freak Workstation with SightReader Master Extreme

All of this culminated in Guitar SightReader Toolbox. These previous applications were limited to Windows. I learnt
a new programming language and after 5 years of work, Guitar SightReader Toolbox was launched for both Windows
and Mac.
Im adding new tools from time to time. At the time of writing this, I have 1 in development and 1 in my mind that
Ill be adding.
As Guitar SightReader Toolbox is license based, this means you can upgrade your computer, reformat the hard drive
and your license will recognize your computer without having to dredge up password keys or track me down.
However, I am very trackable, and I will answer any questions, take notice of any bugs (Im the only programmer, so
bugs can happen) and even skype with you if you need help!
All this tools were on my wish list for things that I wouldve liked when I was starting to play. They all work not only
for Guitar, but also 4, 5 and 6 string Bass. Its granted that you may not use all the tools right away but whenever
you want to work on any area of your playing or musicianship, theres a tool here to help!
I myself have been a musician and playing guitar for most of my life. Most of those years I have been giving guitar
lessons and clinics, toured the world and accumulated over 10.5 millon views on YouTube.
I poured myself into this software and I wish you the very best in your musical pursuit.
Best regards,
Sean Clancy
sean_clancy@yahoo.com

Overview

Overview
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

SightReader
Sight-reading Primer
Instrument Selector
The Main Menu
Lessons (videos)
Go to www.guitar-sightreader.com
Open the transcriber
The Metronome
The Invertor
QuickChords

And number 21 will open more tools

Exam Creator
Community Content
Setlist manager
Neck Builder
Guitar Change Runner

11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.

Chord Libraries
The recorder
The Lick Library
Ear training (10 different tools)
Tuner
Progression creator and Progression Player
Edit and add chords
Edit and add scales
The practice Scheduler
The Worksheet

SightReader

Many players are interested in reading music. After all, most other instruments can do this and it opens a player to a
brand new world of music.
However, guitar players, and to a lesser extent, bass players, are notoriously bad at this.
You could solve this by buying a ton of sheet music and reading it (which is always a good thing to do). The only
problem is that reading a piece over and over again will lead to muscle memory.
The SightReader addresses this tool by providing new sight-reading material at the press of a button. Best of all, you
can customize it in order to work on the things you want to work on as well as restricting it so you can actually get
through it.

Lets look at the SightReader Option Window on the next page:

On the left we have the option to choose our key signature, Scale, How far the notes can jump, swing setting and
time signatures. On the top middle, we have presets that we can choose and make, access deep rhythmic controls
and clear the fretboard. Below that we have note controls and below that we have the controls for ties, chords and
accidentals (sharps and flats). The blue buttons control how often that thing will appear in the music.
On the guitar fretboard, Ive chosen some notes. I could do this individually or just mouse-drag over a section and
select all the notes in that drag motion.

Keysignature
We can set a keysignature i.e. G major. In G Major, youre going to see all the notes in that key on the fretboard. In
G major, whenever you see an F or a C, youre going to play them as a sharp. (see this link in Wikiedia to learn more
about this). When you choose the Blank Keysignature, youre going to see the sharp symbols before F and C.
The scale function will enable you to choose a particular scale (With the root of the keysignature chosen) to use. You
may want to choose chromatic if you want complete control over which notes you want to choose on the fretboard.

Selected note jump

This will set the jump between notes. We can choose random (any notes chosen at any time), or we can create a
sense of order using the combo box. If we choose 3 notes away, the jump could be 1 note away, 2 notes away or 3
notes away. You have up to 7 notes away.

Swing 8th off/ on

In jazz, 8ths notes are often swung. In this setting, two 8ths notes will sound like 2 scud missiles going off one after
each other, but sound like a triplet where the first note holds for the first 2 notes and the last note is shorter, just
for the length of the last note of the triplet (see wikipedia here for this).

Time signatures
Choose which ever time signature you would like to work on.
For more on time signatures, heres wikipedia again

Presets
If you are working on something, you can save it as a preset here. Just type a name for it in the text box at the
bottom of the tool and press the plus icon. It will now appear as a preset in the preset box. To open your preset, or
any other of the ones you have, or downloaded from community downloads, select a preset and press the triangle
with load on it.
To delete a preset, select a preset and press the circle with the minus sign in it.

Deep Rhythmic editing

See at the end of this section

Clean fretboard
This will wipe the note selections off the fretboard. Choosing a new key signature or scale will also do this too.

Note Rhythm selections

Heres where you choose which rhythms the notes will take in your music.
Pressing the blue notes will cycle these:

None
Rarely
Average
Often

This work the same for any of the other settings with these blue notes
The rhythms actually are presets that affect the deep rhythmic settings. You can set more control over those in the
Deep Rhythmic editing page.
Ties are lines that tie one note length to the next. In 4/4 there is a natural invisible bar-line between the 2 and 3
beats. If a note crosses over that value, a tie will automatically appear (to make it easier to read). Setting the tie
control to something other than none will mean that ties will appear in other parts of the music.

Chord Options
Chord options are chart chords (chords that appear above the music) and notation chords (chords in music
notation). You can open the tools for each of these by clicking on the actual text (Chart Chords or Notation
Chords).
Chart chords are pretty self-explanatory. I added this feature as playing a gig in a big band, most certainly on a cruise
ship, they will give you a chart where you have to play the chords, but with the top note being the single note in the
music (brutal eh?). I would printout the chord library Robert Conti Melody chords for chord voicings to get this
down.

Notation Chords will use chord libraries for the

source material for the notes that will appear.
You just drag them into the top box. You can
also right-click on the chord libraries to see
them.

Accidentals
Here you can choose sharps or flats, or include double sharps and double flats. These doubles are definitely not for
the faint-hearted. A double sharp of C (or CX) would be D. A double flat of C (Cbb) would be Bb.

The Guitar Neck

First of all, this example uses a guitar neck, but you can choose also bass (4, 5 and 6 string bass). The clef that will
appear in your music as a bass player will be a bass clef.
The notes that you can choose on the fretboard will have orange note names on them. You cannot choose notes
without the text. But you can organize any combination you like between the key signature and the scales settings.
Like I said, you can choose notes individually or drag over a section to grab a whole bunch of notes and then fine
tune it by turning notes on or off. If you are planning to use chord notation, you will need to do a new selection
after choosing your neck notes

The Menu

Instrument sets your instrument. You can also choose this from the main window.
SightReading Mode allows you to choose 2 bars (default), 4 bars or 16 bars of music.
Export/import allows you send and get imports of presets to and from the export folder or the web.
Pitch choice allows you
o Music written for Guitar. Guitar and Bass are transposing instruments, which means that the music
you play from reading music will sound one octave lower than if you play it on a concert pitch
instrument like a piano.
o Concert pitch. What you would do is play your selection of notes 12 notes (an octave) above your
note selection.
o A Bass plays for Guitar Chord Charts. Its a little rudimentary but useful for some.
Guitar Sounds give you different instrument sounds. The graphic designer of my software is a flute player,
so I made the option here to choose many different instrument sounds during playback.
Help a video to show you how to set it up in pictures and sound.

The Deep Rhythm Editing Tools

Heres where the deep rhythmic control goes on.
When opened, you get this window.
If you click on any of the rhythms, itll play for you
these rhythms. The note used is the note C
(which is a great note to play back in your mind
for a form of absolute pitch).
This is really useful as getting to know what a
rhythm looks like associated with how it sounds is
half the battle.
Press S and you get all the options available
Here you get the more
refined option to select
specific rhythmic figures
for example:
If you want your 8th notes
in groups of 2 rather than
groups of 4, you can select
that with this window.

So thats how you set up your options. As you can see, you can totally set the music to whatever level you like or
set it up to work on your sight-reading weakness so they can become strengths.

Our next stop? The SightReader Music window. This happens when we click this button

The SightReader Music Window

The SightReader music
window is very straight
forward.

Pressing the button or the

corresponding key g will
generate a new piece of music
based of the settings in the
previous options window.
You can change the tempo by
, = down by ten
. = up by ten.
These keys also have a < and a > usually on the same key pads. Space can used to play or stop.
M starts playing the metronome. It also turn off the metronome. This is useful if you want to work out the music
before playing along. The play, stop and pause buttons are self-explanatory. The gear button will take you back to
the options.
P will print your music onto your printer. Great for taking your music on the run or for students!
Here are the 3 SightReader modes
2 bar music

4 bar music

16 bar music

It is important to notice the button next to the printer button

Two bar. W will play both bars. 1 will play just bar 1. 2 will play just bar 2.

Four bars. W will play both bars. Like above, number keys will play the corresponding bars.
16 bars. This is a little different. 1-8 key pads will play the corresponding staves (which are 2 bars each).
Playing from any of these staves will play all the way to the end of the music.
Use the play button (or space) to play the whole 16 bars.
Finally, reading music is hard not because of playing the right notes, or playing the right rhythms. Its hard because
you have to play them together. Get familiar with notes and rhythms. Then dont forget to play it so it sounds
musical!

Sight-reading Primer
Do you want to learn the notes on your
fretboard?
Are you new to sight-reading?
Are you next level and wanting to work
on reading chords?
The Sight-reading Primer is for you!
Here we see a 5 string bass. There is a
yellow line. This sets the frets where the
notes can be found. This can be set by
using the Lowest Fret list or the
Highest Fret list. You can also click next to the fretboard to set the highest fret and right-click (cmd+click on Mac)
to set the lowest fret.
We also see that all strings (B,E,A,D,G) are enabled so it can happen on any string. We have selected the Aeolian
scale (natural minor scale). I have clicked generate and we see a note. Press space again and we will see

Then we can press space and that will generate a new

note.
The method
1. Generate (this needs to happen the first time
around after setting new keys, instrument and scale)
2. Find the note on your instrument
3. Press space to see the note
4. The position on the neck is not really important.
You looking for the match between the sound of your
instrument and the note played by your computer.
5. Repeat

Chords
Ive changed to guitar as Ive made a lot more chord
libraries for guitar than bass.
Ive changed from single note to chords (just click on
the dial to change it.
Im in C major and Ive dragged Robert Conti Melody
Chords and Cool Chords in to the chosen Libraries.
These chord libraries are where the shapes will be
chosen from.

Ill press generate (this may take a while as creating a whole list of chords is a lot more different than single notes)

Here we have our chord

We have these notes from the top going down

D
B
G
A
Press space and we get

A11 is our chord! We can see it and hear it!

So, just repeat the same steps as the single note method
above and youll start getting some real results!
If you can read chords, single notes will be a cinch!

Credit where credit is due.

I was inspired into making these sight-reading tools by studio great Tommy Tedescoe. He wrote a book called For
Guitar Players Only. He was a great sight-reader and had some fantastic exercises in his book. Unfortunately, I
realized that, although they were great, I had just memorized them. Basically I needed some more material. Hence,
that was the kernel of the idea for the sight-reading stuff.
I get emails telling me how music students are passing exams because of my software and that make me feel great!
However, recently I heard of another company trying to pass themselves off as SightReader Theyre basically a
flash card system. I wrote to them and as far as I know, they are still trying this stunt. I saw their rude flash card app
and decided that I would destroy it with this one tool and I think that this tool speaks for itself!

The Main Window Menu

Theres a lot going on in this menu.

Vital inbuilt installs you need to do

Registration and activation
Setting up audio (crucial because you might end up with a crash)
Check for updates
Help videos
Mass Backup

And other things

Registration and activation

Guitar SightReader Toolbox comes with 10 days free trial. This is so you can see and try out all the tools!
Once you agree that there is nothing like it, you may want to go ahead get some licenses.
The standard license is $79.99 USD. This is for one computer but I also create an additional license and a bonus as
lots of people want it on their desktop and laptop. There are other bundles but the standard license seems to be
most popular.
Buying licenses used to be automated and maybe one day in the future it may be again but I find dealing with
customers personally far better. There is a whole video on registration at www.guitar-sightreader.com
Anyway heres how it works.
In the software, you go to the Registration Menu, click on it and select Get licenses.
After filling this in, you will get taken to a true PayPal
site with all the things you expect from PayPal
Once youve paid into PayPal, an email gets sent to
me. Im in New Zealand, so there may be a little bit
of a wait before I check the email (for example I
might be asleep when it arrives). But as soon as I get
it I will generate 2 licenses for you and send you an
email to let you know youre ready to activate!

Activation
Once you have your licenses, you are free to apply your license to any computers you want to. It doesnt matter
whether theyre Windows or Mac.
Go to the Registration Menu, click on it and select Activate your computer
Enter in your email that you used to
register the computer.
Fill in the second field (it can be anything at
all). Press activate and you will get sent an
email from
guitarsightreadersean@gmail.com

Its really important that you add this to

your contacts otherwise it may end up in
the spam folder.
Click on the link in your email and you will go to a webpage which says your software is activated. You have 48 hours
to do this.
Restart Guitar SightReader and enjoy.
The great thing is that if you upgrade your operating system or reformat your hard drive, just activate and your
license will recognize your computer and automatically activate it (you will need to restart GSRT again).
Important: I do not sell or give any of your contact details to any 3rd party.
If you have any problems, I can help you. Just email me at sean_clancy@yahoo.com. I can activate your software
from my side if you have activated it from your side and havent received the email.
Install
When you start Guitar SightReader Toolbox for the first time, youll get presented with a window called vital installs.
For the windows version, youll need to install Open AL (its a very small audio
system), QuickTime (Almost all the audio in GSRT uses the QuickTime engine
when I ever get some decent money for the software, I will change it so we dont
need QuickTime) and Java (which is what I use to create the beautiful musical
notation).
For Apple, we only need to install Open AL.
I know that some people will consider it bloatware but as of this date, I couldnt
figure out a way to install these things without you, the user doing it. However,
this first page contains internal links to all the installers and they can even be
installed offline.

Backup Everything and Import

Sometimes, you may have to completely reinstall everything. If so, you will lose all the presets you so cleverly
made. You may have added some new scales or chords or have some chord libraries you want to hold onto to.

Before you press the nuke button to reformat your hard drive, Go to Tools on the main menu and click on
Backup Everything. This (if you havent got it already) will back up your data files to a folder called
Guitar SightReader Toolbox exports. Save that folder to a pen drive and then reformat.
Afterwards, put it back on your desktop (after reinstalling GSRT) and
Go to Tools >Import Backup. Navigate to the folder and youll see a corresponding folder there to import.

Tips and Tricks

This will be a section where I will post videos showing ways I use GSRT and ideas behind them.

Help videos
All the help (aside from this manual) are in video form. You will need Adobe Flash Player to view these. You can
install this from the main menu > help

Lessons

Included in Guitar SightReader Toolbox are lessons.

Videos on musicianship are ongoing and there is a wealth of information here.

Notice that there is download feature to the bottom left of the video. Here you can download the material for the
lesson. The lesson window may take a couple of seconds to load as it streams via the web.

The Browser

This will open up your web browser to my site www.guitar-sightreader.com

There are a bunch of articles and interesting stuff to check out. The articles are on sight-reading and other things I
discovered I could do after playing around with my own software! There is a blog and links to other software that
works great with Guitar SightReader Toolbox.
There is also a free jazz course available on my site. This is going to cover all the things we covered at Jazz University
at the New Zealand School of music.

Transcriber

What ultimate guitar and bass training software would be without a tool to change the speed of music without
changing the pitch?
After youve loaded your music file, or chosen a tune from the recently played files, you get a wave image. Clicking
on the wave image will set a start point and right-clicking (or ctrl+click on Mac) will set your end point. This is good
for working on certain parts of a tune. Its spacebar to start and stop.
I made a bookmark here called solo which will load
when you now choose this song.
You can use the slider to speed up or slow down the
music. If you click on the numbers above the slide,
the speed will click right to those.
The comma and full-stop keys will speed up and
slow down 5% - so you can build up to playing your tune at full speed.
You can see a tap tempo on the grey area. If you click on that in time with the song, it will set the tempo. The
metronome will also match to that tempo. When you slow down and speed up the music, the metronome will
follow the change.
However, a powerful feature is the ability to record yourself through your computers microphone and check if you
are really nailing the part. Being a good player means listening to yourself play and seeing what you can improve on.
The guitar is a very physical instrument and sometimes we cant listen to ourselves objectively.
You can also speed up and slow down your own recording so you can check for good articulation or what it would
sound like faster!

Export to lick library

Find a lick in the song you like? Export it to a lick library.
I have personally gone through whole albums of my
favourite players and compiled my favourite licks into
lick libraries for later study and transcribing with
Guitar Pro.
Fill in the export text field and press export selection to
lick library and youll get the following window:

All your lick libraries are selectable in that combo box under that blue window. This is where your lick will end up.
Cool eh?
There will be more on the lick library tool in this manual but I wanted to let you know about this feature.
The Setlist tool (in more tools) will also let you export to the transcriber.

The Metronome

This is the best possible metronome possible. I thought very, very carefully about this tool and compiled a wish-list
of what I wanted it to do.

Basic features

First of all, its movable, so you can drag it anywhere on the screen. Youve got the self-explanatory controls. The
metronome is based on notes (or crotchets). The time signature here is 4/4. If you hover over those numbers,
they will change colour and you can use your up and down arrow to change their values.
Here I have changed it 6/8. This means that it will play beats twice as fast as 120
(basically like 240 8th notes in a minute and the accent will happen on every 6
beats).
You can turn the accent (click on 1) off by pressing c on your keyboard. Space
will stop and start the metronome and comma and full stop will change the tempo
by 10s and the up and down arrows will change the tempo by ones.
The transparency control will make the metronome, well, transparent. Thats so that you can see through it if you
have something in the window below the metronome you need to see.
Click on 2 and 4 This is useful for 4/4 beats. In jazz school, this was a big deal. Itll make the only beats you hear
the 2 and the 4 (or in a pop song the snare drum). It helps to improve your sense of time as you have to locate the 1
beat. Tip: count like 2.. 4 2 4.1..2.3.4..
Lots of jazz musicians play like this and so I decided to include this feature!
Lets look at the other tools:

The Splitter

This will split the beat into clicks. Here, for every beat it will click three times triplets. You can change volume of
the clicks and also see how many notes a second it is (for you speed freaks). The speed will adjust when you change
the tempo. If you hover over the 3 here it will change colour and you can use the up and down arrows to change it.
When you hover over click, you can change it to bar so you can hear the click split over the whole bar.

The Bass Movement Tool

This is a great tool with lots of uses. Say you learnt a new lick and
want to play it through all 12 keys. Bass Movement will play all
those 12 notes in 12 different ways.
The most common in jazz school was the circle of 4ths. You can
also get the bass note to change every bar or hold over 2, 4 and 8
bars.
The next bass note coming appears on the right while the last
bass note been is on the left. Obviously, the big one in the middle
is note playing.

You can use this for licks, new chords, ear training and any number of things!

The Chord Player

Ill tell you what I use this for I make chord specific licks over it.
Basically itll play any chord types you have (or have added to
GSRT), in any key and in a variety of inversions (drop 3, drop 2
voicings (see Quick Chords of those)).
It will play our chosen chord on the 1 beat of every bar.

Random tempo
Playing licks solidly means that
you can play them at a variety
of tempos. Set the lowest
tempo and highest tempo here
and whenever you press R,
your tempo will change to a random number between these two values!

Record Control
Recording yourself playing with the tempo can also be great for
personal feedback.
If you change this control to on, every time you start the
metronome, your computer will use your microphone to record
you as you play along. Use h to hear the result. You can also
speed it up if you like and save it to disk.

Tempo advice
Timing is one of the hardest skills for guitar players to pick up. The metronome is a crucial device to have in your
toolkit. It can teach you to play in time and lock in. However, to develop great feel, you need to be able to practice
without a metronome and play in time so that it feels good that means everything you play must be in-time with
itself. Make use of the recorder tool for instant feedback. Timing is more important than the notes (though notes
are important).

The Invertor

With this tool, a whole world of opportunities opens up. You can take a scale or chord, make a shape and move it
up, down and sideways across the neck, conforming to the notes in the scale/chord.

We have our neck (all tools are also for 4, 5 and 6 string bass) with the selected scale (C major). We have our
mouse with the Hot Keys seen, a list of sequences, a loop control, a metronome, visual display controls and at the
top we see a curious block where we can store our neck shapes a button files.
Lets see how it works:
Ive chosen a shape in C
major

W takes it down

S up

Youll notice that the shape morphs to fit the chosen scale loads of possibilities!

A sideways

The sequences:
There is a list of 40 sequences to play your selection.
You just click on a sequence and click your space bar!
Sequences are a great way to spice up your soloing and these could be a launch
pad for some brave new ideas.

For the speed of playback you have a metronome (comma and full stop key go up
or down in increments of 10).
If you hover over the 8 in 8 notes a click, the 8 will turn orange and we can
change its value with the comma and full stop key)
We can choose between scales or chords, see the notes, see the spelling, hide the
text and choose enharmonics (example FX (F double sharp) becomes G).
I think the looping thing is obvious.

Selecting notes
To make things easier to see, Ive made it possible to change the colours of the notes. If you click on notes itll turn
blue, if you right click (Ctrl+click on Mac), it will appear yellow. Heres a sweep arpeggio Ive made in A harmonic
minor:
I chose the spelling view in
the controls.

I chose to hide the text and

Ive pressed W

again

And again.

So now we have 4 really cool sweeps that will fit to harmonic minor. We could have done this all on paper (I spent
hours doing this in my early years as a player). But with a simple hot key, I eliminated any need to waste trees!

I can play these back in any of the sequences and by pressing Ctrl+C (Mac -apple+C), I can send this image to the
computer clipboard, or use Ctrl+F (apple+F) to save it on the hard drive as a jpeg. Depending on your view controls,
thats how the image will look. Unless specified the menu option (under export graphic), the image will be cropped
to show only the frets with notes on them and a fretnumber like below:
And this image was made exactly this way!

Button Files

Sometimes, youll come across some shape ideas you really want to hold onto. You can store it as a button. With
your shape selected, press one of the little yellow buttons. That button will now be loaded with that shape,
complete with its scale/chord. To recall it, just press the big button with the notes on it.
You may have a couple of cool shapes. If you press the blue i button, youll open a blue window where you can
add some information about this collection on shapes. This button file will now be available for saving.
When you press Ctrl+O (Apple+O), the button file manager will open and you
can recall any button files you saved.

Free form

Say you dont know what scale a cool shape you found is in. You just think it sounds cool and you want to take it
through its inversions. Choose Free form on. Now whenever you click on a note, that note will be added to the neck
as a possible inversion note.
This feature was added after spending a couple of hours via skype through guitar master Derryl Gable.
He was working on some chord inversions using very specific shapes without root notes. This tool was
for that very thing.

Here are some inversions for the Gmaj7 chord. This isnt just for shredders!

This last example is the same as the third example. I pressed D to take the same notes and play them on a
different set of strings.

Export to Neck Builder

The Export graphic menu, we have a lot of options.
As of writing this manual, the newest tool is Neck Builder.
We can export our graphic straight from the Invertor to Neck Builder and
work on it further there.

Here are some examples!

QuickChords

A long time ago, before jazz school, I wrote a book called Learn to burn: The Guitar Speed Manual.
I had discovered a book several years before that covered chords in drop 3 voicings and drop 2 voicings. I didnt
really understand what drop 3 or drop 2 were, but as I worked through the exercises I suddenly realized that my
fingers had memorized how to play a variety of chords in any place on the neck without having to think much about
it! I had actually come across these chords before with PG musics jazz guitar software. This company makes one of
the best accompaniment software of all time (band-in-a-box) as well as one of the worst DAWs (Powertracks).
QuickChords is the answer to these chord solutions. On guitar and 6 string bass, itll give you 25 ways to play any
chord! Not only that, but itll give you a list of scales that fit this chord that you can click on and see around each
voicing, the option to see each chord as chords and scales, just scales or arpeggio. You can also see pluralities (this
means other chords that share all or some the same notes great for substitutions).

The neck. Whenever you click on one of the chord voicings, youll see and hear it on the neck.
This will also be displayed on the zoom window on the top right. By clicking the options to the right of that,
you can see also the notes or spelling in that view.
See the list of scales in the little notepad? Click on any of those and youll see each voicing with those scale
notes around it.
You can store up to 4 different chords in the button tool (see the Invertor about how to use it).

You select chords by clicking on choose a chord up the top. A drop down menu will appear where you can select
your chord.

Chords with Scales

Lets choose Ami7.

We get a list of scales that fit Ami7.

As you can see, there are all sorts of scales!
Lets choose Dorian. Dorian is one of the basic modes. It has a minor bluesy sound to
it.
Below, you can see the chords plus the scale of A dorian as it fits over each of them.
The grey notes in the scale lets you know that these notes are also notes from Ami7.
I clicked on the 2nd down on the left. This put it onto the neck and into the big view as
well as playing it!

Application: Using this, you can come up with cool lines that fit this chord. Start on a chord tone or a grey note and
finish on a grey note. To get extra chord colour in these, alternate between chord tone, white tone, chord tone,
white tone, etc. and finish on a chord tone. For cooler, fresher lines go for wider jumps!

For a more in depth look at A dorian, click on the scale info button.

Youll get a break down of the notes in A dorian and all the chords that fit in it. If you click on the chords they will
play. You also get a list of scales that share the same notes (these happen to be all the major based modes) and
scales that dont have the same amount of notes, but what notes they do have also fit A Dorian (and you also play ad
see information about them

Views

You have four views to choose from. Arpeggios is a great choice of

you wanted to see all the chord tones in these voicings.
Now, you see that some of the notes have numbers i.e 1,b3, b7.
These can be turned off in the menu bar under Chord Notes.

The 3 and 7 notes (in this case, b3, b7) are called guide tones. You can actually get away with just playing these two
to play a really low impact version of this chord. This works really well if youre playing guitar in the same band as a
busy piano player whos playing every chord note they can get their hands on. They are also great notes to launch
solo lines from. The 1 is the root note of the chord i.e. A
Arpeggios can definitely be used to make chord licks as all the notes fit the chord in question. As when making lines,
wide intervals will make them more interesting. If youve been playing for a while, you may agree with me when I
say that the harder to play licks sound the most interesting!

Pluralities
Pluralities are accessed from the little note book.
They are essentially chords that have similarities with this Ami7 chord.
C6 has the same notes, A, C, E and G. B#6 is the same as C6 (C=B#)
If you got rid of the F out of Fmaj9, you would have notes that fit Ami7
You could also play a C chord and have the lowest note play a A note.
These can be used for substitutions. You could spice up Knocking on Heavens Door
for like this:
[G
with [G

|Am

|C

|C

|Fmaj9

|C

|C/A

Just remember to tell your band mates.

Output
Each voicing can be right-clicked on, then via the menu that appears, be sent to the computer clipboard, to file, to
the GST Clipboard (for use in Chord Libraries or the worksheet) or opened in Neck Builder.
You can print your chords and depending on the view youve chosen, itll will determine the printout.
Chords:

This will give you the 25 chord shapes as well as all the scales
that fit and their notes.
You also get a list of pluralities.
This is similar to the printout of chords and scales and
arpeggios, with the 25 voicing being replaced by how the view
was.
On the next page well see what happens when you have
chosen Just Scales in the view

Just Scales
So, we have the scales in 25 shapes, the black note being the root.
Scales that share the same notes
Information about the scale
All the chords that fit this scale.
Pretty awesome right?

Why so many chords?

Well, changing chords smoothly by moving each note in the chord (or voice) as little as possibly is called good voice
leading. If you only know your E-shape Chords and youre A shape Chords, then its not going to be good voice
leading. Check out this example for good voice leading.
The chord progression is Dmi7, G7b9, Cmaj7. As you can see, only 2 notes are changing at a time.
Dmi7

G7b9

Cmaj7

Ill think that youll agree that QuickChords is an incredibly useful tool.

In guitar or 6 string bass there are 25 voicing shown

In 5 string bass, there are 15 voicings shown
In 4 string bass, there are 4 voicings shown

Right-click on any chord shape and you can send it to Neck Builder. This will be a different output depending on the
view, i.e. Chords, Chords and Scales, Just Scale and Arpeggios. Its a great way to save for further study!

Voicing simply means a way of playing a chord with the chord notes played in a different order. On guitar you have
6 different voices.
Drop 2 voicings are formed by taking a chord and then dropping the next to the highest note, or voice, to the lowest
note of the chord.
Drop 3 - this voicing are made dropping or moving the 3rd voice from top at the octave below.

Chord Library

Although QuickChords will provide many more chords than any player might use, there are without question all sorts
of chord shapes it doesnt cover.
The Chord Library tool is for exactly that. Not only can you compile a list of great chord voicings, but you can build
libraries that you could use for SightReader or Sight-reading Primer to use as source chords for musical notation.

I have a chord library titled ii-V-I-VI. You can see that up the top of the window. If you make any alterations, an
asterisk will appear beside it.
I have clicked on the top chord and it has appeared on the fretboard (also it played through my speakers). Then I
right-clicked on it (Crtl+Click on Mac) and a little menu appeared allowing me to send it to the edit box on the top
right.
You can also see that its laid out nicely. I wanted a chord library to have the function to be readable.

Lets see how you add chords to it

The edit window

We have our fretboard here (strings going down, frets across).
First we may want to set the Root note of the chord. This does means that will probably
mean that you will need to know your fretboard (I will list a sure-fire method for this at
the end of this manual).
Press the key change button. Click on the note in question. Then we can start adding the
other notes. If you dont want a string playing (even the one with root note on it, you can
turn it off by changing the fingering).
To change the fingering, just click on the fingerings above the string and clicking on them
will cycle through all the possibilities. We can also click on then and type on our
keyboard for the symbol).
The arrow buttons to the left give us the ability to move our shape up and down the
fretboard. If you end up with a root note of C# and want the root note to be Db, click on
the flip key to change from C# to Db.
Sometimes we want the notes to be a certain spelling or note. We can use our right-click
(Ctrl+click Mac) on the notes themselves to toggle them between different notes of the same pitch.
If I right-clicked on this b3 here, it would change to #9. This may not be such a big deal but if
youre using for SightReader Chords, it would make difference to the way it is displayed in
notation!
As shown, you can see the notes and the spelling aby using the control on the right side.

The final step is to give it a name. You can type directly in the text box on the top. If you click on a place on the big
page, you will see a blue square appear. When you press the put/update key, the chord will get put there.
If you click on a chord and the blue square box appears around it, pressing get will bring it into the edit box.

Layout
Put the chords where you want. You can press the blank selected to remove and put white space. Pressing add
right separator and adding anything to a blue square box will add a vertical line to whatever you add or blank.

Text
Change tabs in you little notebook at the bottom to this:
You can type into this box. You can set the font size. As you can see, its 15 right now.
This font also has some other cool tricks. Typing % will give you a flat (b) and typing at #
will give you a sharp (#).
Then press submit and then put/update to add it to your blue box.
This thing about the sharps and flats is universal inside GSRT. That works anywhere
where you want to add a description or information about anything.

The Menu
File contains your usual suspects New Library, Open, Save, Save as, Print and exit.
Import /Export has four options Import from file and Export to file has to do with the Guitar SightReader Toolbox
Exports folder on your desktop. Import from the web will open up the community content, and export will open up
a web browser where you can post it to me to add to community sharing.
Pages Add new page (the maximum is 5 pages), clear page and delete page.
Notes toggle on root notes and guide tones
Open up here you can open up the metronome or quick chords
Help the help video for this tool
GST Clipboard clear the Guitar SightReader Clipboard

Guitar SightReader Clipboard

Look over at the neck there is a tap control at the top
You can add your chords to the Guitar SightReader Clipboard by right clicking on them and
choosing this option. You can also do this in QuickChords.
The benefit is that you can now drag any of the chords in the list box into any place in Chord
Libraries. This is cool if you have some chord from an opened library that you want to add to a
new library, or you want make use of some chords you got out of QuickChords to use in a library.
Other applications you can use them in are Worksheet and Neck Builder.

You can also add some information about your chord library via this icon on the top right.

By right-clicking on any chord diagram in in your library, you can export it to Neck Builder

Will become

Then you can use Neck Builder to stylize as much as you want (change colours, note shapes, etc.).

The Recorder
This is a cool little tool to record you playing through your computer microphone.
This is great if you want to hear how you sound like. You can also change the speed of your recorded track.
R to record
H to hear it
S to stop (recording or playback).
Speeding it up will help you create new technique goals for yourself. It you have a clear example of how something
should sound, its easier to nail. In an interview with Yngwie Malmsteen, he said that he used to go to the studio to
record and when he played it back at home, the tape player where he lived played back faster than usual.
This tool is found in various tools in Guitar SightReader Toolbox

Transcriber
Lick Library
Progression Player
Metronome.

Audio
As of the manual, there are two ways to record. QuickTime and OpenAL. This can also be set to off if you get
crashes. GSRT may crash if you use QuickTime when you run an of the Audio tools. Be calm and change it OpenAL.
If that crashes then set it to none. All of this can be accesses via the main page menu.

Lick Library

I wrote a book 7-8 years ago called Guitar Virtuosity of the Everyday Man. Back then I used diagrams of my old
software Guitar Freak Workstation. One of the sections was on creating a lick library exercise book.
Here how I set out my way of storing licks.

Well, when I started this software, I thought this:

What about a tool that I can store my licks from my music collection as sound files, able to speed them up and slow
them down and able to import a graphic from Guitar Pro or other software. Could I get it to automatically store the
song and the time position? Could I store it in easy retrievable libraries?
Well, I present to you a tool that can do all that!

This window is quite self-explanatory. Our list of saved lick is here in the middle. If we click on a lick and press the
play button, we can hear it.
We also have a scroll bar on the right so we can scroll the page if it larger than our screen size (my laptop is 1366
x768)
On the next page, we can go through the process of storing a lick.

When we open the Lick Library, we get this window:

As you can see, I have more than a few lick libraries. Ive used the
transcriber to go through all my albums of these players and compile
libraries of all my favourite licks.
Note: I cannot share these libraries with you as you must make your own
out of your own record collection. Dont muck around with copyright
laws. Its just not worth the world of pain you may reap.
Ive already clicked here on add. Im going to add a library called sample.

The main Lick Library window will be opened and this will have created
the sample library. Its empty:

So its time to add a lick!

Click here

And youll get this window:

You will want to get your sound file. On the menu do this: Tools > Launch Audio Snipper
The Audio Snipper will open:

Load a song. Im going to add a lick from Alcatraz (featuring Yngwie Malmsteen) called Hiroshima mon amour.

Now, Im going to find my lick I want to get

Ive found a lick. Do this, set a start point (left click on the wave) and set an end point by right clicking on the wave
(Mac = Ctrl+click). Then we can check it by pressing Audition. If you dont like it, refine it until you get the snippet
how you like it. I like to have a little time before the lick so that I can determine in the bar where it starts. Be sure to
set the end point as that will make the start point work. You can see in the above example that the start marker and
end marker both have time values.
Ill Trim and copy to the clipboard.

Thats our lick. I can audition it to check how it sound and then press Close.

Now to add the lick:

Go to the menu bar and go Insert > Sound > Load from Audio Clipper
Now you have your lick:

Youll also notice that theres new info in the section on the left.
There is the track name, and the start marker.
Let add the rest of the information by clicking on that area. This will open and we can fill out any other information
about the song. Then press X.

Now, I tab it out. I used Guitar Pro 6 for this. Its a great tool and works really well for tab. You can get a copy
here.
Windows: Use snip which is a windows screen capture tool. Then edit>copy from the snip menu bar. Its now
on the clipboard
Mac: Use Command-Control-Shift-4, then select an area: It will take a screenshot of an area and save it to the clipboard

Go to your menu and its : Insert > Image > Take from Clipboard.

Viola!

While I was in Guitar Pro, I noted that the song was in B minor, also at 110 Bpm, so I added this additional
information. Yngwie records in Eb tuning (all string tuned down a step). This tab i written as if he was in standard
tuning.
What if I want to practice this? Press M to start the metronome. When you slow down the lick the metronome
will follow. If you want to record yourself playing this lick, via your computers microphone, to see if you can nail it,
press the red circle at the top

If you read up the recorder, youll know how this bottom panel works!
When youre ready, press Save This Lick and close:

Congratulations! Youve just added your first lick.

If, in the Lick Library your lick doesnt appear, if your screen is big enough, it should show a refresh button at the
bottom Scroll down using the scroll bar on the right and press it. Heres what it now looks like!

Click on it and press Work on Ticked Licks

Youll open up a similar window but its not editable. There is the option to edit it from the above window.

I want to show you something else. Go tools>Add lick to the familiarizer.

Now close this window and in the main panel go Launch Tools > Launch familiarizer Tool

Youll get this window

This is the familiarizer Tool.

Here, you can select any of the licks in our
libraries that you added to the familiarizer and
play them over and over.
Why?
Well, I believe, that in order to nail a lick, you
really need to know what it sounds like.
The clearer the picture the more likely you are
to play it well.
Press this arrow button on the bottom right.

You can see a whole bunch of lick Ive sent to

the familiarizer. Our Yngwie Lick is the 4th from
the top.
Tick the licks you want to get familiar with and
then press the arrow button again.

Check out the tools in the menu and then you can play
these straight or shuffled.
Also, if you have a huge list of licks, you can create a
preset so you dont have to go through and click all the
licks you want again.

These tools are exclusive to Guitar SightReader Toolbox

and I think youll find them really, really useful!

Eartraining

When it comes to ear-training, Guitar SightReader Toolbox has got you covered. There are 10 tools.

Let go through each one of them:

Interval Testing
The most basic of all ear-training is the ability name intervals. Chords and melodies are built of intervals. This tool
will train your ear to do this.

You simply tick the boxes of the intervals you want to be tested on and press test. When you hear the interval, you
click on the name you think it is. The box under Success rate box will show you the first note, so you can also use the
keyboard to name the note if you know it.
The first list is intervals with the 2nd note higher than the first note and the 2nd is for when the 2nd note is lower.
I would recommend that, for beginners, they get familiar with the melodies provided in the Melodies for Intervals
tool.

Chord and Scales Test

This should have been called Chords and Scales
Test, but in my defence, I was living in Poland at the
time and English wasnt a priority!
However, if you go to a jazz school or get any kind of
tuition where youll have to identify chords and
scales by ear, this is a great tool!
You simply drag chords (right now its set to scales)
from the right box into the middle box. You can save
them as presets and recall them by selecting them in
the boot left box and clicking on the load triangle.

The scales here are shuffled and after hearing them, you click on the one (this middle box) that you think it is!
Your success rate is able to be reset by clicking on the box that it is in. In the Menu option, you can also turn on of
off the computer voice.
You also have the option of having the root-note of the chord or scale change, with a variety of options

Melodies for Intervals

When you first start interval training, its helpful to learn melodies that start with intervals.

For example, a classic Perfect 5th is the first 2 notes of StarWars. When you click on any of the text on the left, you
hear me play the interval, then the melody. I always start with a C notes (If you can recall a C back just by playing
it back in your mind, have really good relative pitch and then transfer that to either your voice or your instrument,
you will have rudimentary absolute pitch).
I have included YouTube clips when possible. Due to YouTube, sometimes youll get unplayable video. You may get
prompted to watch in YouTube (that will run in the same window) or you may have to hit the reload control on the
bottom of the video.

Interval over Bass

All credit for this idea comes from the mighty Brett
Garsed (Australian Guitarist). To improvise well,
you need to be hearing the note youre playing
over the bass (or chord).
Then you can plan where to go.
This tool will save the interval selections you make
for when you open it next.
Click test and then the interval over the bass you
think it is.
You can even use a piano keyboard if youre not a
guitarist.

Melody Movement
1. Press start. The first note will play.
2. Press space and the neck note will play
3. Click on the interval you think the 2nd note
moved away from the first note.
4. Repeat from step 2
You can also use the time based option, but you
either need to pretty quick with your mouse or use
hot keys for the piano.
Develop your ear and your transcribing skills by using
this tool. Imagine being able to transcribe music
away from your guitar or bass?
Using single notes and after using this over short
consistent time a day will give you an incredible new
skill.

Perfect pitch tools

Note match

I based this on an article I read where a husband and

wife conducted an experiment. One would play a
note on 1 keyboard and the other one would try and
play it back on the other keyboard. After a while
they become completely accurate even if it was
the first note of the day.
Ive created a tool for this.
Use the note match filters and the fret controls to
limit the test area and click Use Filter
You can also turn off and notes by clicking on the
fretboard.
Press test. It will play a note. Use either the
keyboard or your own guitar to locate that note.
Press space to reveal it. Press space to go to the
next note

Random Note
This is one of the most effective Perfect pitch tools.
You choose your note in the location note.
Play it on the keyboard (the far right note is C).
Get used to it.
Press S and random notes will begin generating. Whenever you
hear the C, hit the space bar.
To get harder, make available more notes from the tick boxes
below or increase the speed or increase the octave choice.
Ill think youll find that C will stick in your head for hours after 5
minutes on this tool!

Library Perfect Pitch

Audiation is where you play songs
back in your mind. This happens in
the same key you often hear it in. The
more things you can associate with
the song (i.e moving our hands to the
chords) the clearer and more precise
you will play it back.
Get songs that you know well in your
music collection and use this tool to
get familiar with them.
You can make notes in Pitch
information about what pitches the
song starts with.
Having the keyboard handy means
that you dont need to go and get our
guitar in order to find the first pitch notes that youll be remembering.
1. Clicking on the track name loads it into the media
2. Mentally recall it sing the first series of notes
3. Play it back on the media player did you get close to it?

Perfect pitch method

For those of you who bought David L. Burges Perfect Pitch
course, I pity you for having to sit through 5 hours of this
guy raving on and on about how nice it is to have perfect
pitch. On the last CD he says:
You recognize the colours of the notes by
Eb will sound mellower than an F# which sounds twangy in
comparison.
Also, you may not have a partner to practice the exercises.
So I made a partner for you!

Progression Recognition

This tool looks truly daunting I know. Its a way to recognize progressions.
In the top right box, you can make progressions. You can info on them, play them back. When youre ready to save
it, choose a progression group and click save. This will then save it into that progression group.

When you are ready for testing, choose a progression group and click on the load arrow. There is a list of the
progressions in that group. You can turn progressions to be tested on with the tick boxes.

off the
Click Test and choose the progression you think it is.
If youre making a progression and you want a chord type that isnt in the box (I mean the one that has Major at the
top here). Just right click on it and it will show you a menu of every chord type in GSRT and you can add your
preferred chord type to the box.
You can export and import your progressions like in the other tools.
There is lots of scope here for making recognition tricky. Recognising progressions will do wonders for your ear,
musicianship, learning of songs and transcribing!
If youre just starting off, make some progression groups with really easy chords.

Tempo Recognition
Have you ever been in the position of starting the band and completely forgetting the tempo?
I have! With this tool youll be able to recall tempos by simply playing back songs you know well.
1. Click on the songs to load them into the medium player.
2. Listen to them in your mind and imagine the tempo and start counting it. Make a mental note of the tempo
number.
3. Play the song in
the media player and see
how close you got.
When you add a song, the
tunes with the highest
tempo will go
automatically to the top of
the list.
Hint: In a song (pop song),
the snare drum will be on
the 2 and the 4.

Music is a hearing art, so developing your ear is the most crucial aspect of becoming a musician.
Things to work on
1. Practice playing a note in your mind and then bringing it out into the open world by singing it. You dont
have to be Pavarotti If you have a song playing in your head, so if you can hum it in the same key.
2. Practice singing the major scale. Sing the numbers i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. Practice singing sequences.
3. Learn to sing in semitones (i.e. jaws r fur Elise). Then you can alter the major scale degrees to make other
scales (i.e. Jazz Minor is 1, 2, b3, 4, 5, 6, 7). Sing the 3 down 1 semitone (of 1 fret lower) to get b3.

Progression Center

For the improvising player, learning to play over chord progressions is essential. This is one of the key skills you can
develop with the progressions center. The progression center is comprised of 2 parts - the progression creator and
the progression player. There is a 4/4 version and a 3/4 version.
When we click on the progression center, we are greeted by this window
Here we can choose the time signature. We can go to the player or we
can go to the creator. In the creator, we can create progression sets. We
have 3 here. We can add or delete these sets as seen. Were going to
choose jazz progressions and press the choose button.

The Progression Creator

These tools rely on the concept that you understand music spelling. At the end of the book, you can read up on this
topic in order to get a handle on it. For the purpose of learning about this tool, well assume that you already
understand it.
We can choose up to 4 bars for a progression. The red hand is the beat where the chord we will choose will be
inserted. The red hand can by moved to any of the 16 beats just by clicking on them. Right now the key signature is
C, and the I of C is C. Whenever you choose any of the roman numerals, they set the chord with a default chord
type. That can be changed by clicking on the Choose Another Chord Type button.
We see a list of the progressions listed in this Jazz Progressions set. Also, we can see, in Roman numerals (the
spelling), the progression for each. All the chords are shown using nomenclature, which is a type of musical chord
shorthand. This can also be checked out at the end of this book.
A great benefit of this tool is that it can be played.

Here I have selected Major II-V-I in the progressions and pressed the Edit button. Its now loaded. I can now press
the Loop off button to make it loop, which will play the progression over and over. Then I can jam over it.
The comma and the full stop keys decrease the tempo by 10 respectively and the up and down arrows alter it by 1
for fine tuning.
Like the progression player, the chords are chosen from 4 drop 3 chord voicings and will randomly choose from
these 4 voicings for more colours during playback.
I think the save buttons and import/export features are pretty self-explanatory.

The Progression Player

The progression player lists all progressions from all sets available. To select the progressions to play, simply click
and drag them from the left box into the right box. You can see Ive dragged and dropped 2 progressions here.
I love using band-in-a-box. Nowhere is this tools as sophisticated (and expensive) as band-in-a-box, but it serves a
different purpose. First of all, these progressions can play back in a variety of key centers. You can either select
them individually or use the presets on the left. I clicked on vanilla for this example.
We see 2 staves of chords here. The top stave is what is playing now and the lower stave will move up and become
the top stave after the top stave has finished playing.
I see on the top stave two 2 bar minor I-V progressions. The first is in the key of F and the second is in the key of D.
The key center is dictated from the key selected when the progression was created and these progressions play
relative to that.
Essentially, it gives you a fantastic vehicle for practising your improvising over changes, chord comping and eartraining (trying to guess which progression is playing).
The menu gives you several options including:

Click features: Every beat, only 2 and 4, no click

Chord Display (Use long chord names or musical shorthand)
Instruments. Turn off the bass or keys and set whether the bass only plays the root note of the chord
Control list
Print up to 5 pages of progressions based on the selected keys and progressions.

Also available is the option to record yourself playing along via your computers microphone and listen back to see
how well you did.

Add/Edit Chords

There is a whole bunch of chords that come with Guitar SightReader Toolbox.
However, you can also add Chords here is you dont already have it.
You will need to know musical spelling if you want to use this or for adding or editing scales.
You can also reorder the list of chords by dragging them around in the list.
When you save a chord, it will save under the chord selected in the list. You can give it a description, hear it and see
it on the neck of your instrument.
If you add more chords, I would suggest you do a Mass backup (see the main page menu on how to do that) when
reformatting your hard drive or reinstalling Guitar SightReader Toolbox, so you can reimport them along with your
other presets.

Add/Edit Scales

Adding scales is pretty much the same as how you add chords.
There are some extra features however. You can add a special passing note. Ive loaded in the Bebop scale and in
this scale the passing note is a B note. If we play this scale without the passing note, its a mixolydian scale. But
you can read about that in the description! You can learn a lot about these by clicking on a scale and reading the
description. Once again, there is a huge list of scales to choose from but feel free to add any that you cannot find
here.

Practice Scheduler

Practicing is a big part of being a good player, unfortunately, as creative individuals, we can get distracted easily.
The practice scheduler is a tool directly suited to make your practice time more productive. It also can be exported,
saved to a USB and given to your students so they can use it with their copy of Guitar SightReader Toolbox (see what
I did there). This will make sure they get down exactly what they should before the next lesson.
Lets have a look at it.

Ive loaded up a saved schedule called The Jazz Guitarist.

The time for each subject will change depending on how long you have to practice.
Simply enter in the free time you have, or choose a preset time, look at your first topic (Warm up) and press Start!
Your clipboard on the main window will look like this

If you forget what youre practicing, just hover over the top of the clipboard and youll get a little
tooltext telling you what topic youre on.

When its time to start the next section a timer window will open and let you know what youre about to practice.

The key to getting good at something is just a matter of

clocking the hours. Some people believe that it take 10,000
hours to get good at something. Well, if practice is well
scheduled, youll get there a lot quicker that 10,000 hours!

Creating a practice schedule

In your clipboard menu, choose File > New Practice Schedule.
Click on the Design tab on our window.

The design section is based on 1 hour. Simple enter in your practice Title, choose the amount of minutes for that
section and click Add. The 60 minutes will now reduce to however long the section you added was.
Dont worry so much about the order. You can drag the sections in the list to whatever order you like!
Notes: This is where you may enter whatever you like more detailed descriptions of practice sections, things that
you discover that brought you to the next level.

More Tools

Due to the amount of real estate of the main window and the ever increasing tools
that I keep adding to Guitar SightReader Toolbox, Ive created a way to open
additional tools by clicking on this here toolbox image.

Well look at these tools in depth.

Exam Creator and Tester

Exam Creator allows you to make any number of tests, on any number of topics. It actually came out of a software
program called Pinglish. I was living in Poland at the time and I wanted to make an app that would help both
English speakers learning Polish (like me) and Polish people learning English.
I was just a matter of time before I realized that this would be incredibly useful for Guitar SightReader Toolbox.

To Create an Exam
First, create a new exam by going File>New Exam
Enter your headings

The heading box has two fields. The first will replace Key Signature and the 2nd will replace scale.
Ive just made one.

Now, to add an entry I press Control + R (Apple + R for mac).

Ive added two questions for my exam

Ive also selected them so I can be tested on them.
For testing I have two choices

Ask Questions - I will have to type the chords to the songs

Mark Questions to Answers. I will be given the chords and I have to name the song.

After your test, you will get a score and how much time it took you to finish the test.
When answering, spaces are not important; neither is Upper case or Lower case.
This can be great for testing yourself or students. You can also produce great printouts (if you want to give a written
exam to your students for example).

Community Content

Here you can download presets for your tools. In any of these tools, when you export a preset or file to the web, it
opens a webpage where you can email the file to me. Ill have a look at it and then add it to our community content.
I also plan to create some more content here!
Oh you have to be on the internet to access these presets.

Setlist Manager

Heres a great tool for working musicians. I actually developed when I decided I need an app for a covers band I was
playing in. It was a trio and we were using playback for keys, other backing vocals and the occasional extra guitar
part.
The drummer would have a list of tunes and when he would hit the space bar it would move to the next tune.
I also thought it might be good to have some kind of area to include extra information like song form and chords. It
would be extra helpful if I could print that out also!

To add a song, click the Add New Song button. You can either type in the name, or leave it blank and attach an mp3
or another music file format by using the Load a Music File (Playback) button and it will also load the song name into
the new title.
You can reorder the song list by dragging the space for the earphones around (the earphones are shown when
theres an attached music file.
Other Controls:

M stop song
Spacebar next song
S - Restart song
R Start from beginning of list.

There are also some other goodies when you right click on the song title. You can send the attached song to the
transcriber for closer study or to slow down to nail the more difficult parts.
You could use this for guitar show backing tracks, your bands set-list, a list of songs you want to learn to play and
whatever way you might find this tool a use for!

Neck Builder

This tool was introduced in Guitar SightReader 4.1.0.

Its a graphical way of designing anything to do with the neck when it comes to chords or scales.

It can be designed, saved, gotten or edited on a local database. You have an array of symbols you can use, as well as
a variety of colours.
When we open this tool, it looks like this:

We can click on the fretboard. This creates a square. A 2nd click will place a note shape set to the
current colour. At that point we can also place some text as well.
On the above picture on the right-hand side, there are numbers and note letters. Clicking on
these will add the text to the fret place. It doesnt need to be on a note shape either.
You can choose individual colours for every note and text.
The text controls also can have flats, double flats, sharps and double sharps by clicking on the circle buttons.
Returning them to normal is with the Natural circle button.
You can add your own text by typing in the Alt. text box and pressing enter. Typing nothing in that box and pressing
enter clears any text.

You can add fret numbers in the same way you add text to fret placings.
Just click to the left of the fretboard and then press on the numbers or note, or
use the alt. text box.
Sometimes, if you use double digits (like
10) the text might get covered up by a
note. In the tab control, choose lines, fret
no.
Moving the slider to the left increases the
distance of the fret numbers to the left of
the fretboard.
As above, you can see theres a line in this shape.
You can right click on any fret place and then right click on another and that will create a line between them. Use
Ctrl+click on the Mac.

This is a bit of an
extreme
example.
You can turn this
line off by
unclicking the
second line box.
You can also
delete it by rightclicking it and
choose delete
from the menu.
Saving involves pressing the save button. It will take about 3 seconds to save as it is writing quite bit to disk.
Getting an image, editing an image and deleting an image are done by right
clicking on the images on the left.
When you edit an image, the save button disappears and you get an update
button. The only way to get out of the edit mode is to choose File > New Shape.
When you are in edit mode, changing the number of Strings or frets will wipe
your fretboard. Try not to do it!
Searching for your chord is done on the tool at the far left. Enter a name for a
chord in the Name Box and press enter.
You may have made chords and scales for a particular tune. If you saved those
shapes with the group name being the song title, leave the name box empty and
enter the name in the group name box and press enter. You could look for a
specific chord by filling out both boxes.

Changing the finger number at the top is quite easy. Just click on the number (It will receive a blue box around it and
enter any one of the list on the right with the keyboard.

You can import fretboards from QuickChords, Chord Libraries and the Invertor Tool. Go check those out for more
information.
Exporting your graphic is where the power is. You can save it as a graphic or copy it to the computer clipboard.
Also, you can export it in a variety of sizes, 100%, 75%, 50% and 25%.
I highly recommend this tool for instructional video, handouts, publications and your own study. I know thats why
Ill be using it!

Guitar Change Runner

This tool I added for mostly selfish reasons.

I wanted to pinpoint the actual notes that change and the notes that stay the same when moving from chord to
chord or scale to scale.
This is also the tool that will show you a chord or scale as it is all over the neck.

Opening this tool will present you with 3 fretboards (it can be guitar or bass). On the left hand side panel we have:

New wipes everything, ready for new inputs

Opens the chord and scale chooser
Display you can see the note alterations (which are in red) or without.
Views you can see either note names, scale degrees or no text.
The lowest and highest fret filter. This just fills in selected areas of the neck. You can also left click on the
first fretboard to set the lowest fret and right click (Ctrl+click on Mac) to select the highest fret
Load a preset select from the list below
Save Preset create a name in the text box and press the button to add a preset to the box
Delete Preset pretty self-explanatory

When you click the chord/scale chooser you get the window where you can edit the chords and scale

To edit each of the four necks, click on the bar in the staff to edit.

You can see that I am currently editing the 3rd guitar neck.
For each, choose a root note. You can then choose any chord or scale in Guitar SightReader Toolboxes vast list of
these things.
If you choose a chord, the scale pull-down list will be limited to only the scales that fit that chord.
You also have wonderful option of sending your selection of chords to the Progression creator!
On the next page, there are our necks after press the close X on the top right

I also limited the range to between the 5th and 9th frets.
The yellow notes are the notes of the chord
The blue notes are the notes of the scale that are not part of the chord
The red notes are the notes that are different from the neck on the left of each neck.
There are several applications for this tool, I have mine and I look forward to seeing how others use it.

Learning the Fretboard

Learning all the notes on the fretboards may seem like a daunting task.
In this following method, I want to give credit to Derryl Gabel, guitarist extraordinaire and an excellent on-line
teacher from Florida. I learnt all the notes a long time ago, but I could have saved a lot of time with this.

The circle of 4ths

Lets learn these notes

Bb Eb Ab Db

Gb

Now, these are all 12 notes. Notice that it starts with C and F Circle of Fourths.
Next we have the word BEAD and then a G the first time all flats, the second time without.
1. Do this on one string
2. Say the note name as you play it (very important)
3. Time yourself how fast can you do it?
Youll learn all the notes in an astonishingly short amount of time!
Learning the circle of 4th is extremely important for people who are interested in Jazz as a lot of jazz tunes are
comprised of chords that follow this cycle Play the following example to hear that sound.

[Dm7

|G7

|Cmaj7

|Cmaj7

If you check out some jazz standards, youll be surprised how often youll see chords separated by intervals of 4ths.

Spelling

Musical Spelling in maths but cooler than calculus!

This is C major. The Major scale is the fundamental scale that we measure all other scales and chords against.
The major scale gets then given numbers
As you can see, there are no sharps or flats.
The spelling for a major scale is:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7.
It doesnt just stop at one we could think of a 1 as an 8
And continue
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (2), 10 (3), 11 (4), 12 (5), 13 (6)

The spelling for a Natural minor scale (Aeolian) is 1, 2, b 3, 4, 5, b6, b 7, 1

Chords are generally made of odd numbers.

Check out the table on the following page

Chord Spellings

Keep in mind a 9 is the same notes as a 2, 11 as a 4 and 13 as a 6.

Major Family

Minor Family

Dominant Family

3 and 7
C
(1,3,5)
Csus2
(1,2,5)
Csus4
(1,4,5)
C6
(1,3,5,6)
C6/9
(1,3,5,6,9)
Cadd9
(1,3,5,9)
Caug (C+) (1,3, #5)

b3 and b7
Cm
(1,b3,5)
Cmadd9 (1,b3,5,9)
Cm6
(1,b3,5,6)
Cm7
(1,b3,5,b7)
Cm9
(1,b3,5,b7,9)
Cm11
(1,b3,5,b7,9,11)
Cm13
(1,b3,5,b7,9,11,13)
Cmmaj7 (1,b3,5,7)

3 and b7
C7
(1,3,5,b7)
C9
(1,3,5,b7,9)
C11
(1,3,5,b7,9,11)
C13
(1,3,5,b7,9,11,13)
C7b5
(1,3,b5,b7)
C7#5
(1,3,#5,b7)
C7b9
(1,3,5,b7,b9)
C7#9
(1,3,5,b7,#9)
C9#11 (1,3,5,b7,9,#11)

Cmaj7
Cmaj9
Cmaj11
Cmaj13
Cma7#5

(1,3,5,7)
(1,3,5,7,9)
(1,3,5,7,9,11)
(1,3,5,7,9,11,13)
(1,3, #5,7)

(see this chord above it was explicitly told

to have a normal 7)

Cm7 b5 (1,b3,b5,b7)
Cdim
(1,b3,b5)
Cdim7
(1,b3,b5,bb7)

(The following chords are called altered

th
chords as they have and alter 5 and an
th
altered 9 . Sometimes C7alt maybe written
in that situation you can choose any
below))

C7b5b9 (1, 3,b5,b7,b9)

C7#5b9 (1, 3,#5,b7,b9)
C7b5#9 (1, 3,b5,b7,#9)
C7#5#9 (1, 3,#5,b7,#9)

Chord Shorthand

Often called Nomenclature, this style of shorthand is quick way of writing chords.
The most commonly used symbols are:

Chord Symbols
C, C, C7, CM, CM7, Cma(7)
C6, CM6, Cma6
C9, CM9, Cma9, C7+9th

Explanations
Major, Maj7
C6 chord C E G A
Cmaj9

C11
C13
C+
C+5, C#5, CM+5, CM#5, Cma+5,
Cma#5, C+5
CCmi7, C-7
C7, C

C9+11th but without a 3rd (same as Gm7/C)

C9 with a 6th (do NOT play an 11th in this chord)
C with a #5 (C, E, G#)
Cmaj7#5

Co , Cdim

Co7, Cdim7

(Note that the , M or ma needs to be present for

a major 9th chord. If you see C9, it means a dominant
7th chord with an added 9th.)

C minor
Cm7
Cm7b5
C with a b3 and b5 (C, Eb, Gb)
Cdim7 (Cb, Eb, Gb, Bbb)

Final tips

Whenever you are entering text in descriptions, notes and general text, anytime you want to get an accidental in
your text, use % for a flat (%) and the hash key for a sharp (#).
For tempos, we use the comma and full stop key for going up in intervals of 10. In the Transcriber it speeds and
slows it down by 5%. Why do we use these keys?

Because they have the left and right arrows above them (greater and lesser signs
to be exact)

In recording tools, we use:

R to record
S to stop recording and playback
H to hear