Calling Guitar makers.

[br d]

I have a wish.
With all the amazing tech we have available now why hasn't somebody made a guitar with a tiny LED behind each fret under each string on the neck?
Want to see the G flat melodic minor scale? Dial it in and it lights up on the neck. Want to see the positions of all the A6 chord inversions? Enter the chord and they all pop up.

This doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do with modern methods and it would provide so much info right where you need it.

Is this already a thing? I've looked and can't find anything like it. Crowd funding anyone?

[sjg]

https://www.fretzealot.com/

[Lotobear]

Mark King and other have had them for years.

...ah I see you what you are saying now, it must be possible, a bit like painting by numbers!

[Cankicker]

Hasn't the Fretlight Optek range been doing this very thing for twenty years?

[niallf]

Isn't part of the challenge here that you play a guitar with a side on view of the neck. I don't think its very natural to be turning the neck to have its face towards you to view the chords/fingering.

[thebraketester]

Pretty awkward to play the guitar and look at the fret board.

[br d]

thebraketester said:

Pretty awkward to play the guitar and look at the fret board.

You look at the fret board when you're learning chords and scales, can't see that much difference.

[thebraketester]

br d said:

thebraketester said:

Pretty awkward to play the guitar and look at the fret board.

You look at the fret board when you're learning chords and scales, can't see that much difference.

So ask yourself why its hasn't been done then..... because it is 100% possible.

[chemistry]

Fretlight guitars...

[br d]

I just watched a review of Fret Zealot, it's sort of on the way but too many issues to jump in right now. I think this will definitely come though, this tech is only going to improve and I think it will be invaluable for scales, soloing over chords and stuff like that. I'm thinking Line 6 will be the first to nail it!

[br d]

chemistry said:

Fretlight guitars...

That's it. That is exactly it. And it's been around for years already. Just watched some vids for that and it does everything I want and it's a decent instrument too.

Thank you chemistry.

[cherryowen]

chemistry said:

Fretlight guitars...

I remember ads for those in my guitar magazines back in the early 1990's!

br d

One of the many things I've learned in the last couple of years (mainly through completely changing my rig and, by association, playing style) is that if you know your major and minor pentatonic scales, then just adding two notes to each will give you a chosen scale / mode.

In your example, a Gb melodic minor is exactly the same as a Gb minor pentatonic with the notes Ab and E natural added to it. If I'm noodling a solo using that mode, what I tend to do is use the full melodic minor scale on the D to high E strings but just use minor pentatonic on the low E to D strings. For chord work, once you've nailed maj7 / m7 / dom7 with the root notes on the low E and A strings (if you can play barre chords, they aren't difficult) it opens a lot of doors.

Going back to the melodic minor scale, Carlos Santana uses it all the time mixing it up with minor pentatonic.