Apple has released Big Sur 11, the next-generation of the macOS operating system, and you may be considering upgrading your system.

This macOS release includes major changes under the hood – we’ll be keeping this post updated with our progress..

Big Sur compatible ND 2.2 has been released

We’re extremely happy to announce that ND 2.2 has exited beta and is now available for all Macs running Big Sur and any version as far back as and including 10.10 Yosemite, & also Windows systems for 10 as far back as 7!

If you were previously running the ND 2.2 Big Sur beta then please do download the newest build as it contains many changes since the beta release.

The 2.2 release is available from the Download page.

Changes

There’s a lot of changes since the previous release (2.1.4).

The full details are available on the Release Notes page.

Does the old Neck Diagrams 1 run on Big Sur?

Unfortunately not due to the considerable changes under the hood in Big Sur. ND1 is no longer supported – all our efforts are going into ND2!

If you’re running ND1 and plan to upgrade to Big Sur you’ll need to upgrade to ND2.

Frank Gambale’s Online Guitar School

Frank Gambale is hands down one of the best guitar players out there, and has been providing lesson content for several years. These days, Frank operates an online guitar school, and he posted a sweet video on how to practice scales in fun and creative ways.

Thanks Frank for sharing your mad skills, and those snazzy fretboards!!

Be sure to like Frank’s Facebook Page, and also checkout his Online Guitar School website.

Improving Your Workflow

The aim for the upcoming series of tutorials is to help users get the most out ND by understanding features in greater detail, improving workflow and enhancing productivity.

Here’s a short list of the kind of topics that can be expected:

• Preferences Configuration
• Instrument Library & Tunings
• Custom Templates
• Shortcut Commands
• Page Layout & Design Tips
• and much more…

If there’s a particular topic you would like to see covered by all means forward your suggestion to our Support Team.

Left Handed Diagrams

“Can ND create left handed fretboards?”

A question we often receive from both left handed guitarists and tutors with left handed students. For those who’re unsure, the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

With Neck Diagrams, users can now quickly draw up left handed versions of standard diagrams. Whether this is their own creations or simply making left handed versions of diagrams they find in magazines, books, DVD’s etc.

So, our first tutorial puts the (often forgotten about) Hendrixians top of the list for a change. But we’d still recommend the right handed majority spare two and a half minutes to watch the video, as there are some other tips they may pick up on.

So without further ado here’s the VIDEO we hope enjoy and get something out of it. Please subscribe to our Youtube channel to ensure you’re notified when new tutorials are published.

Yes, it’s true, Neck Diagrams is five already. The thing we’re not so sure of is where the time has gone?!?! Perhaps a look through the many updates since the first public release will shed some light on the 5 years since we released v1.0

Happy Birthday to…um… us!?!?

After an intense 18 months of relationship stressing development, March 2009 saw Justin (owner, designer, developer, support agent and bill payer) push the magic button that released Neck Diagrams to the public.

Since then it’s been full shred ahead. Many updates, even more tweaks and enhancements, a few language translations and some excellent reviews. All of which has led to Neck Diagrams being used around the globe by a variety of different user types, including top instructors, hobbyists, guitar magazines and authors.

Hopefully you’ve seen our new Tesimonials page which boasts some very kind words from our users. With this kind of support we’re confident that ND can become even more Rocktastic, especially considering what we’ve got planned for Version 2 which should hopefully be available end of 2014.

So it’s a big THANK YOU to our users, translators, beta testers, collaborators…. and a Happy Birthday to Neck Diagrams.

Best wishes

The Neck Diagrams Support Team

Soloing Over Chord Changes

Levi, a Neck Diagrams user, has created and shared a set of 5 videos plus a PDF booklet, all FOR FREE!

In the videos he demonstrates a series of ideas, and the booklet goes into more detail, complete with diagrams explaining concepts and theory. If you’ve not come across Levi before then bookmark his website like NOW!

Here’s the booklet and the first video, hit up Levi’s page for more!

Download Booklet

Check out the full lesson over at Levi’s site Playing Over Changes!

And be sure to take a good look around his website – you’ll find tons of great stuff there and on his YouTube channel!

How to Memorize Note Names on Guitar

If you, or indeed any of your students, are finding it tough to learn the names of the notes across the fretboard then make sure you check out this video.

There’s a whole host of ideas here, to help imprint those note names and locations into the grey cells. Doug has also provided all 13 exercises in a PDF file, which you can download by clicking the image to the right.

Oh hey, and don’t those fretboards look kinda familiar..

Check out the lesson on the Metal Method website.

Oh, and if you want a quick reference to the note names on the fretboard then see our handy diagram!

Neck Diagrams generated a lot of interest with the attendees (Rightfully so!, Ed) and we were rushed off our feet talking and demoing to everyone who stopped by our stand…A warm Thank You goes out to our newest customers, who were lucky enough to score copies of the v1.7 release before everyone else!“And what about everyone else then?”, I hear you ask… Fear not Neck Diagrams fans! v1.7 goes public very soon; at the weekend if not sooner.

Oh yeah – can you see the funky DVD cases in the bottom left of the pic? We’re hoping to have those available on the online store soon, for anyone that wants a physical copy or maybe would like to buy the software as a present for someone.

Ok, enough chit-chat, time to get back to getting the latest and greatest release ready for everyone… Watch this space! Or just sign up to the Newsletter already

We call this new upcoming feature Fretboard Legends. Sorry if you were expecting something about Hendrix, Paul Gilbert, Pat Martino, or Birelli Lagrene etc!The next release of Neck Diagrams, v1.5, will have a Legend tab which will allow you to show additional note info at the end of the fretboard, where the strings end. Here’s an example on a chord box type of fretboard, already showing fingerings:

Here you can see the Legend Type drop down. If we select Notes from the list, this is what happens:

We’ve now got note names for each string! What’s even cooler and not so obvious from the pics above is that the fretboard itself hasn’t resized – we’ve kept it the same size and have extended the overall size to include the legend area! We’re planning on adding this little piece of ‘automagic’ to the other fretboard “decorations”, i.e. the fretboard title and the fret numberings.

And what about horizontal fretboards? And what if there’s more than one note on a string? You got it!

Hopefully you’ll find this useful!

If you have any cool ideas then let us know! You never know, your idea might make it into a release!

Here’s a simple example diagram showing you the names of all notes up to the 12 fret.

If you don’t know these yet then yes, memorizing it all this can be quite boring but it is really really important.

You could use Joe Satriani’s Note Finding Exercise (scroll through to the bottom of page 5, “November ’87: Finding the Note”) to make it more interactive!

Here we’ve broken the neck down into three areas, each of 4 notes (for each of the fretting hand fingers).

Neck Diagrams allows you to show three different types of text labels on the note markers:

• note names
• intervals
• fingerings

You can even control what type of marker is show on every individual note – so if you only want to highlight the root interval, or just the 5ths, well you got it!

Here we’ll take it further so you can master the Dorian mode in all 5 positions…

Get slick, nail the change

One thing to focus on is the chord change. If you nail this you’ll sound like a pro! To make the transition really smooth you should aim to move to a scale note in the new target scale that’s only a semitone (one fret) away from the note you’re on, at the moment of the chord change.

The change will sound even stronger if you move via a note that isn’t in the scale you’re coming from. Want to sound super sophisticated? Put in a passing tone during the change – this is simply like “filling the gap”, creating a small chromatic run 3 or 4 notes long by adding a note where there isn’t one in the scale (i.e. where there’s an interval of a tone between notes. An example would be during the change from Cm7 to Am7 you could come from the root C, 8th fret high E string playing all semitones along the way down to the A, 5th fret high E string, creating a cool chromatic run: C-B-Bb-A.

Two shapes down, what now?

Now you should do exactly the same thing for the remaining positions! Next up is A Dorian position 2 (D shape) and C Dorian position 1 (E shape). Create diagrams for the new positions and again improvise staying in that position. You can be methodical and jam starting at A Dorian position 1 and work your way through the position shifts until you’ve played through every combination – trust me, that’s quite a workout!

Yeah! I’m a Dorian Master

OK not so fast! Well done on getting this far – now if you really want to push it and make sure you know this stuff totally inside out then taking this to its logical conclusion involves playing through ALL 5 SHAPES IN EACH POSITION. So for example you could create a backing track such as: Am7 / Cm7 / Dm7 / Fm7 / Gm7 (& repeat).

For the first pass through the chords we’ll start with A Dorian position 1 (E shape) and stay in position until we get through the chords and then play A Dorian position 2 (D shape). So what shapes do play for the other chords? We’ve just done Cm7 so that’s position 5 (G shape)…

• Dm7 : D Dorian position 4 (A shape)
• Fm7 : F Dorian position 3 (C shape)
• Gm7 : G Dorian position 2 (D shape)
• back to the Am7, now shifting up to A Dorian position 2 (D shape)
• etc…

Warning! Danger!

There’s enough stuff to practice here for weeks, if not months. This exercise can be very mentally demanding – you’ll find yourself having to think hard about the next scale shape coming whilst you’re still playing another one! Don’t expect to be shifting through all the chord changes in position after a few days practice (unless of course you know the Dorian scale REALLY well already!). Take your time with each section and keep coming back to it.

GOOD LUCK!