Interactive fretboards for guitar, bouzouki, bağlama and bass, with quarter tones
Note: a regular flat (like E♭) is a semitone, so it is blue. Only a half-flat (↓, e.g. E↓ or B↓) is a quarter tone, shown in yellow. Each quarter tone is drawn inside the fret box above it, and if that box also holds a regular note, both are shown side by side. Play it by bending the string or on a fretless guitar.
A maqam is a melodic mode in Middle Eastern and Arabic music: a scale together with rules of movement, emphasized notes and an emotional character. Some maqamat, such as Rast, Bayati and Saba, include quarter tones, notes that lie between two semitones.
A quarter tone is half of a semitone (50 cents), the smallest step in a 24-note octave. On a guitar with regular frets you get it by a slight string bend, and on this site's fretboard quarter tones are marked in yellow.
Rast, Bayati, Hijaz, Sikah, Saba, Nahawand, Ajam, Kurd, Nikriz, Suznak, Hijaz Kar and Nawa Athar, plus 22 Western scales and modes: major and minor scales, modes (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and more), pentatonic and symmetric scales.
A tetrachordo bouzouki has four pairs of strings tuned C F A D, and a trichordo has three pairs tuned D A D. The site shows the fretboard, scales and chords for both.
The bağlama is tuned by düzen (tuning). The site includes 19 common tunings, such as Bağlama düzeni, Bozuk and Kara düzen, lets you shift the tuning by semitones, and shows scales and chords for the tuning you chose.
The tuner listens through the microphone or a sound card and detects pitch in semitones or quarter tones. It is set up for guitar, bouzouki, bass and bağlama, and shows which string you play and how many cents it is off.
Choose "Positions" in the view and press play: the notes of each area of the neck flash and sound one after another at the metronome's tempo, in a recorded instrument sound. You can add a count-in, repeats and a tempo increase.
A drone is a sustained background tone on the root of the scale. With it you hear each note's relation to the tonic, which helps especially when learning quarter tones and intonation.
Yes, the site is free, needs no registration, and works in Hebrew, English and Arabic, including on a phone.
Instrument sounds are based on open-source recorded samples (Karoryfer Samples: Black And Green Guitars and Black And Blue Basses; University of Iowa Electronic Music Studios; tonejs-instruments).