On-Screen Guitar Fretboard

Command Location: View Menu / Fretboard

The On-Screen Guitar Fretboard will highlight notes and chords from the current score. It can be used as an aid to reading and playing the score (especially solo guitar music) allowing you to quickly and easily visualize chord shapes and fingering.

In Edit Mode, notes can added directly to your score with Note Entry via the On-Screen Guitar Fretboard.

Moving and Sizing the Fretboard

The On Screen Guitar Fretboard works in a similar way to the other standard Windows toolbars found in MidiIllustrator, but unlike most toolbars it can also be sized dynamically even when it is ‘docked’.

The fretboard can be docked or floated.  When MidiIllustrator first starts the fretboard is docked at the bottom of the screen. As you resize the program's main window the fretboard width and height change by proportion to the main window size.  MidiIllustrator will always try to make the best use of space when displaying the fretboard and its proportions will always be managed automatically.

You can use the title bar (on the top of the fretboard) to drag the fretboard to the top or bottom of the program window.  When docked, MidiIllustrator will resize the fretboard in the context of the main window and other moveable windows such as the List Bar.

If the fretboard is floating on the page, it can be moved to any part of the screen with a simple click anywhere on the fretboard and by dragging it to the required location.  The fretboard can also be resized by clicking and dragging any edge of the fretboard.

String Highlighting

The guitar fretboard highlights strings under the following circumstances:

• In general, the notes from all visible staves will appear on the fretboard as they are sounded. Alternating staff notes are displayed in alternating colors. This is particularly useful in duet guitar scores.
  Selecting Staves will affect the notes which appear on the fretboard during playback. If any staves are selected, only the notes from those staves will appear on the fretboard. Remaining visible staves will be ignored. This allows you to display multiple staves on the screen, and a different selection of staff notes on the fretboard.
• When MIDI In is received from an external midi device, such as a MIDI Piano Keyboard.
  
• In Step by Step mode the next note or notes to be played. Colors are applied using the same rules as during playback (alternating staff colors).

Please note that unlike the piano keyboard the guitar fretboard offers more than one way to play a note of a given pitch and guitar fret information is not stored in MIDI files.  As such, MidiIllustrator will always highlight played pitches in their position closest to the head of the guitar, using open strings whenever possible.

Fretboard Highlighting Colors

You can edit the fretboard colors, including highlighting colors used to show which strings are being pressed during playback via the Fretboard Options tab in the Program Options dialog.

Menu Commands

You can access the fretboard’s menu of commands via the View Menu or by right clicking anywhere on the fretboard.

The Fretboard Menu commands allow you to:

• show/hide the On-Screen Guitar Fretboard (OSF)
  
• dock the fretboard in position
  
• toggle between the full size OSF and the cropped OSF
  
• show note names on the OSF strings
• edit the fretboard colors