 Excel guitar fretboard creation. Get ready to rock, roll, and make a spreadsheet. This is my Christmas project gift, I guess. We're going to be building this Excel worksheet, which has a lot of Excel formatting, so it's great practice for the use of Excel. But instead of doing accounting stuff, we're going to be doing music theory stuff and more specifically guitar music theory stuff. And I really think this is a great tool if you are learning the fretboard, if you know anybody else that's learning the fretboard, or if you just want to learn kind of music theory in general in terms of what keys are on a scale, what's the relationship between a major scale and a pentatonic scale and the major scale and the minor scale, what are modes and all that kind of stuff. And of course this being Excel, we would like to map all that stuff out and be able to easily change it from one scale say C major to another scale like G, for example, and then see all the related information related to that scale, such as the relative minor, the pentatonic scale, and all that kind of stuff. And Excel is an excellent tool, which you often do not find from music courses who aren't typically using Excel worksheets. But I think they should because it's like the best tool I swear. So first of all, we're going to have the fretboard up top. So we'll map out the fretboard up top from, in essence, the musical alphabet that we'll create down below. And then just note when we make the fretboard, we're going to put the I'm going to put the thickest string, the string that's highest to the ceiling. When you play the guitar on top, the lowest pitched highest to the ceiling, and the high string closest to the floor, the skinny string highest pitched on the bottom because I think intuitively, that's how most people would envision the fretboard. Now, when you see the fretboard mapped out, they oftentimes reverse it, putting the skinny string on top. If you want to do that, you can you can just build it that way. But I think intuitively, it makes more sense the other ways. Otherwise, you have to rotate the guitar around in your mind. In other words, if you're looking at the guitar, you kind of have the small or skinny string on the bottom if you're looking towards it. But when you're playing it, you're behind the guitar. So I would think intuitively, at least to me, and I'm a little dyslexic. So maybe I'm just funny here, but I really don't think it's one of those things. I think it's, I think it's how most people see it. If you were to imprint the guitar this way, you would have then the low string on top, the heavy string on top. So that's how I'm going to build it here. And I think for a lot of beginners, at least that's that is the way that they would catch on to it most, I would think. And then we're going to construct that by first creating the musical alphabet. We've repeated it a couple times so I can easily copy and paste any root to any other root, such as for example, C to C right here. And then I'm going to copy that down to here so I have the notes from root to root. So if I'm in the key of C, I'm going to copy from C to C. If I want to switch that to G, I copy from G to G. I can just copy this, paste it right there and boom. The whole thing changes. All the related stuff changes. It really should work quite nicely. I'm going to undo that and stay in C because C is the easiest thing to first start out with. But that changeability, crucial. So then we've got the notes in the major scale which are being mapped from the notes that are between C and C and the musical alphabet using the equation of whole, whole, half, whole, whole, half equation. That's the major scale kind of equation. This half just gets us back to the root. And then from that, we'll actually look at the pentatonic scale which is kind of embedded within the major scale. We'll create this in a circle so now you've got the same notes in a circular format which is a great tool to be able to build the chords in a particular scale. And so we'll build the chords. Now notice that if it has a capital here on the Roman numbers, it's going to be a major and if it has the lower case, it's a minor. So the 1, 4, 5 of a major scale are going to be the normal triad chords meaning major versus the minor. And then we just mapped out the notes in each chord. All the notes are going to be within the scale. We just choose every other note in essence as we go around the circle. And then we'll do the same thing for the minor. So now we've got the relative minor which is A is the relative minor to C so we can see what the relative minors are. And then if we want to do the whole modes thing, we can look at the Dorian mode. D Dorians related to C major, all the same notes in C major. And then Phrygian, E Phrygian is related to C major. Everything starts from the major or that's how we think of it oftentimes in Western music. Phrygian will be F Lydian which is related to C and then Mixa Lydian and so on. So all of that put together and all of that should change relative to us just changing the major scale by just copying some other major. If I want to go from E to E and see all that stuff relative, I can just copy and paste that here and everything changes down here to have the formulas mapped out for us which is great. I'm going to undo that then on the fretboard up top, you've got the formatting. Now we're going to go 24 frets out even though most guitars, you know, don't go too much past 12, which is where it starts over again. But it's nice to see it kind of repeat itself a couple times. And you've got the conditional formatting up top. Let's see how this works. It's great. I'm going to, I'm going to take the conditional formatting off here. Rules clear the rules. I'm going to make this smaller and I'm just going to say, okay, what if I just want to see the notes in the major scale? So I could do that. I could say, let's say conditional formatting. I'm going to say make it equal to a C and make it red. Boom. There's all the C's. I can say conditional formatting equal to an E make it red. Boom. Conditional formatting equal to a G make it red. And then we've got all of the stuff that makes up basically a C. A C. So I can kind of try to try to map that out. So this is if I was to take my little thing here. I can, I could say, okay, there's the C. So I would put my finger here. Boom, boom, boom. And there's your C. And if I was to move it up, you can kind of map it out. Now, sometimes it's nice to see these three in a different color. So you might say, okay, I'm going to say, I got to grab three different colors. So I'm going to say, let's clear that rules, clear the rules. And I'm going to say, I want to see this one equal to a C and make that red. And then I want to see this one equal to a E, but I want to make that yellow. And then I want to say this one's going to be equal to a G, but I want to make that, let's say the green. And then I can, I can zoom in on it. Boom. And then I can take my, my little highlighter here and say, let's look at one position at a time. This is frets zero, the open fret. And there's, now I can see all the ways I can grab a C, basically. And this is the open chord. So I would be grabbing this, I would be grabbing this, this and this. And you can see you got the C's, E's and G's. That's how you make up a C chord, C, E and G. And then if I was to try to say, this is your caged system. If I was to say, what if I wanted to move up on the fret board and play those same notes? I just got to grab those colors. I can then say, okay, it's C, A should be the next, the next thing. So here it is, boom. And those three. So I could play just those three, but if I can grab that one, that's basically your A shape. And then I can say, okay, what's after A and the caged shaped? You've got G. So from here to here. So these are in A or G, you can call it. And then see, these are the G shape. Now you can't really hold a G bar chord, but just noting where those are means you got a lot of opportunities to still kind of make a G with just three chords, three notes. All you need is three notes. And then the caged after that G format, you've got a G, an E, which is right there. So that's the next shape. So that would be a C and an E because normally if this was barred off, you would just be holding those two down, which would be an E. And then you've got the D, right? Then you've got the D, which would be here, which most people visualize as these three notes, because that's where you put your fingers. But this one would be open if it was at the end, but you could just play those three notes. That would be a D. And then it would start over again at the C. So now you started over at the 12th fret. So that's quite, quite nice to be able to kind of map that out. And you can map out the caged system here. And then if you wanted to look at the pentatonic scale, for example, you could say, I want to look at the pentatonic scale. So I'm going to go here and clear the formatting, clear the cells. And the pentatonic scale is down here. Let's see how far down I can go. It's right there. So I can say, let's look at that. That should, and I'll just make them all the same color so it doesn't get too clouded. So I'm going to say rules equal the C, rules equal. It's a little tedious to do this, but it's way better than writing it down by hand. And then rules, and there might be a faster way to do this, I think too, but an E rules equal to a G and then rules equal to an A. So now we've got our pentatonic. So this will include everything that had a C, but now we've got the added two notes. So I can, I can then try to analyze that and say, all right, let's take a look at my positions here. So here's your, here's your pentatonic shape and you can start to connect these shapes. The familiar shape to most people in the key of C or the relative A minor is on the fifth right there. So that boom, boom, boom, boom. Most people oftentimes learn that as their first kind of rock and roll shape type of thing. But, you know, you can connect these together and then, and then again, you can connect these notes together. And if you play all these notes, you should be in the same key. You can make chords within there. You can see how the major notes fit in there. You can see how all the other notes or not all other notes because we're on the pentatonic scale, but most of these other notes kind of fit in there. If you wanted to make the major scale, again, you can just add the other two that we're missing from the major scale. So you could do the major scale up here. We're missing a B and an F. So if I just, if you took the whole thing, I'll just add a B and F and say, we want to say, boom, highlight. And I want to say equal to a B, but let's make that green because it's not part of the pentatonic or yellow. And then I'll say highlight and I want to equal to an F and we'll make that, we'll make that yellow too, because it's not part of the pentatonic and boom. So now you've got your pentatonic and then the yellow represents the added two notes to get you up to the major scale. So you can see how useful this can be. It's way easier than writing this stuff down. It's quite nice. All right, so let's see how we can build that in Excel, just for an Excel project. So I'm going to go and just open up an Excel worksheet. I'm going to make it a little bit larger scrolling in here. I'm going to hold control down and scroll in. So I'm at like 2220. It's going a little further. So I'm at 250. And then I'm just going to start to kind of build my fretboard. So the fretboard starts at zero and then one. I like to make the whole thing basically centered as my default for this particular project and boldened and boldened. So I'm going to select the triangle. I'm going to go up top and say I want it bolded and I want the whole thing centered on the alignment. Now I can then copy these two, put my cursor on the fill handle and drag it out. So notice that it goes up to 12 because now we're talking the notes. So I can go up to 12 right there. But I like to repeat the fretboard. Most of the time most guitars have a few frets over the 12th fret. But I'm going to make it go all the way out to 24 just so we can we can see the fretboard theoretically repeat all the way out to 24 because that could be useful just to see how everything rules around as we go. So I'm going to go up to 24. Then I'm going to select from Y all the way back over here and make these more skinny. So I'm going to put my cursor between the B and the A and the B and make them thinner. So I think that's all the room like right there that we might need. Let's make them actually let's make them a little wider than that little wider. I'm getting a little picky. Okay, so then let's go from the frets on the guitar. So the guitar I'm going to put a caps lock on to make everything capital. Have an E, an A, a D, a G, a B and an E. I'm not going to I'm making that a small E because the small E is on the bottom. I'm not going to get into why that is right now. It's you know, they're forced apart. There's they're all even apart except for the distance between these two and it works quite well. It's actually seems odd, but it's actually very, very good. So I'm going to then select all of these. I'm going to make them my header by going to the font group and making this black and white. And then I'm going to select all of these and make those black and white. So I'm going to say black and white on that one as well. So those are my my headers. All right, the next thing I'm going to do is construct my musical alphabet here. So it goes from from A to G. So I'm just going to start at A. So it's nice and familiar. And then I'm going to construct my musical out now. I'm going to skip the the the sharps and flats for now and then we'll add those in a second. So typically it would be ABC. I'm going to select those three and take that out to G. Look at those rhyme. It's not going. It won't see you can't see that pattern. Okay, whatever. I'll type it in. C D E F G. So there that is now the sharps and flats kind of are a bit confusing. So notice that between each of these notes, you have a sharp or a flat except between the E and the F. So I'm going to make that one like yellow so you can kind of know where those that is and the B and the C for some reason. There's not anything between those two, which is a little strange. But that's how it is. So you just got to know that. So then I'm going to pull these and there's going to be a note between A and B. So I'm going to pull this over here. Now the note could be called a sharp or B flat. Rather, whether you're going from left to right or right to left. And the part of the reason for that is when we start constructing our scales. We don't want to have a scale that has to we should have one note of each each letter of the alphabet up to G. We don't want to have an A and an A sharp. So if there's an A and an A sharp, in other words, we want to call it an A and a B flat. And that kind of is quite annoying. But at the same time, I kind of feel like it's like an internal control from the accountant's perspective so that you don't mess something up. So if you have two letters that are the same, something's messed up. And so maybe that's part of the reason. But whatever. So I'm going to call this, I'm going to call it just a lowercase AB. So and what you want to do is kind of emphasize the fact. Look at the look at the major notes or the whole notes and then picture the fact that that middle note is is the sharp or flat. It's a half step in between. That's how I would kind of visualize it. So so then otherwise it gets too crowded. I'm going to put it there because we need it there in order to do some Excel formatting stuff. But otherwise I would just kind of visualize that there's a half step between everything except be C and E and F. Okay, so then I'm going to go here. There's another half step here, which I'm just going to call lowercase CD, which stands for C sharp, you know, D flat. And then there's going to be one between here and here, which I'm going to call D E. And then there's going to be one from here to here, which is going to be, which is going to be FG. And then I'm going to take that and there's going to be another one from to GA. Now I'm going to take this whole thing and copy it again so that I have two rows of our musical alphabet because it repeats. So I'm going to copy this. I'm going to put it right there. Boom. Now we've got the musical alphabet from A to G sharp A flat. And then we're going to basically repeat that. And that allows us to basically go from C to C. For example, right here, I could just copy from here to here. It allows us to copy any starting point to any ending point, which will make it nice. Okay, so now I'm going to try to de-emphasize the sharps and flats so that you can kind of visualize them as being there. But they don't need to be, but you want to have your focus in my opinion on the non sharps and flats and just visualize the sharps and flats as the half step in between. So I'm going to make this a lighter color. So I'm going to go up top and say, I want to make this like, like, let's make it on the color. Let's make it like that lighter orange. Okay, so there is that. So that looks good. So before we start filling out the fretboard, let's first just think about the notes from C to C because those are the easiest notes to think about because they're the natural notes. So I'm going to take, I'm going to call this notes from, let's call it notes from root to root. Notes from root to root. I'm going to put this on. I'm going to left align this. So I'm going to left align this. There we have it. And so then I'm going to copy from C to C. So we're going to go from C to C. I'm going to copy from here to here. Those are all the notes from root to root. And I'm going to paste that here. So there we have it. I'm going to, let's make this just black and white as a header. So I'm going to go up top and make this black and white. So those are the, and then just to get an idea of how we would construct the, a major scale from that, we could say, okay, this is going to be the, we're going to call this notes in scale. And let's say major scale, major scale. And the first note will be the scale that it is in because we'll be able to copy and paste this. So we know it's in C because that's where it is starting on. So the notes in the major scale is going to be, now the formula for this is going to be, I'll put these in the middle. These are the distances between the notes. It's going to be whole, whole, half, whole, tab, tab, whole, tab, tab, whole, tab, tab, half. So that's kind of the formula. I'm going to make that this nice, nice softer color because I want to emphasize the notes, but I do want to see what these distances are between the notes. You can think of this as a mathematical distance, just like if you're measuring something tonally, these are how far or in between things are. So your ear can hear the distance from one thing to the other and it can see symmetry or dis-symmetry when there's kind of a difference between the distance of the pitch of one thing kind of to the others, my interpretation of it. So I'm going to hold control down. I'm going to highlight all of those and let's just make it the drop down. Let's make that, that orange here. And then I'm going to be picking this one up. So I'm going to say these are C right there. I'm going to say tab, tab, and then it's a whole step. So now from C, if you imagine that the a piano, that would be like the black note. And so this would be D. That would be the next whole step. So this is going to be D and then going from D, it's going to go over this note, which I should make that color again. That's the in-between note. Let's do it there and there. Did I do it over here? I think I got them all. Okay. And so then, so there's that. And then this is going to be another whole step. So from here, it skips this half step, the sharp or flat and we go to E. And then we've got the natural, the natural half step. That's why we don't have any sharps and flats and the key of C. That's why it's the easiest one to start off with. So this is going to be then F and then tab, tab. And then we're going to go from F whole step, skipping the sharp and flat to G, which is going to be G, tab, tab. And then we got from G whole step, the next one is going to be A. So that makes sense. It's going to be all the natural notes, of course. And then from A whole step to B looks good. And then from there we got the half step to get back home, back to the one again, in essence, is the C. So that's going to basically be our construction of the major scale. So let's make that one black and white, two fonts, black and white. And so then what we'll do here is we'll say that we're going to, let's number these as well. I can number this as number one. Number two, these are the notes in the scale. This is the third. This is the fourth. This is the fifth, sixth, seventh, and then back to one again. So, and then we can also see once you have that the chords that will be related to them, which are often represented with large or small numbers that are going to be Roman numerals. So this is the one chord which I could represent with an, I'm going to say a capital I. And that'll be representing that it is a major chord or triad that we'll look at shortly. This one will be a minor. So this is the two chord will be a minor D chord. The three chord will be a minor III chord. And then the four chord will be a major, which is an IV, capital IV Roman numerals. And then a capital V, a major chord. So notice the one, the four, the five will be major and the rest are minor except the seventh. It's diminished and weird, which I won't get into VI minor. And this is the weird one, which I'm going to say VII and diminished. So I'm not going to get into why right now. That's another topic for another time. And then the one is back to the one. You're back to the one here. Let's go ahead and put some brackets around this. I'm going to select all of these, go up top font group, drop down. Let's put some brackets around it. Let's put some brackets around this. Let's put some brackets around this whole thing possibly some borders. Okay. So there's that. Now let's start filling out our fretboard up top. So this is an E. So it's starting on the E. That's actually an open position right now. So if you, if you just play an open E, there it is. So I'm going to go from E, but I'm not going to include the E because I already have it. And I'm going to start at F and go from F to ending at the E right there. So I'm going to copy that. That's our musical alphabet starting after one note after the E. And I'm just going to paste that right here, paste it. And that takes us to E on the 12th fret. That makes sense. And then I'm just going to take that whole thing again. I'm going to go this time. I'm going to copy from E to E, which should take me all the way out to 24. And it should repeat. Let's go. Actually, I shall take it from let's let's copy the format of this E and put it right there. Boom. So there it is. And then let's go from F to E copy that and paste it right there. Boom. And so that should take me out to the 24th fret. So it repeats after 12. We usually don't go up 24 frets, but theoretically it'd be useful to have it possibly. Now I'm going to do the same thing from A. So I'm going to start the note after A right here and then go out to A, which should end at the 12th. So I'm going to copy that. I'm just building my fretboard now. So there we have it. And then I'm going to format this one the same format with that so I can see that it starts over right here. And then I'm going to go from here to here, copy that, paste it, and it should end at 24 at A again. Let's do the same thing for D. So I'm going to say D is right here. Let's start the note after D from here to here, copy, pasting right there. Boom. And then I'm going to make this one the same format. I'm going to copy from this to D and paste it out again. And we should end with another D at 24. Then we'll do the same thing for G. So I'm going to go from G the one after repeating to G right there. Copy that and paste. Boom. I'm going to format this one because it repeats at 12. Highlight this, copy that, and paste it here, and it should repeat at 24. So then we'll go from B. So I'll go to the note after B, which is a C. C to C, copy, pasting right here. Oh, hold on. Not C to C, the note after C to C. Actually, no. C to B. Sorry about that. All right, there we go. And then I'm going to put my cursor here and format paint it to make it black. And then go from C to B again, copy, paste, and we should end off at a B. And one more time, this time we're going from E to E again so I can really just copy these notes up top, except I have a small one down here just to show that it's the high E because it's the same string on the bottom of the guitar, just a higher pitch of it. So I'm just going to copy these down here and then I'll copy this one right there and then I'll copy these again right there and then copy this one. Boom, there's our fretboard fretboard constructed. I'm going to take away the yellow highlighting. So I'm going to select all of this and drop down and unfill it. I'm going to select all of this and unfill it. So there we go. Okay, so hopefully that mapped out okay. So we might go back up to that in a second. Now let's go back down here and let's think about our project down here. So I'm going to try to emphasize some of the notes as opposed to the distance between the notes. I'm going to select all of the notes and let's make them black and white to kind of make them stand out because those are going to be the main things we're going to want to look at. I'll make it black and white. I'm also going to make the 1, the 4 and 5 black and white. Just to note that when you look at the chords, it's often useful to be playing the 1, 4, 5 chord because they'll have similar shapes and you start to see the major shapes and the minor shapes so that whenever you're playing a major chord, you can think, okay, I'm looking for the major shapes versus the minor shapes. So you can play the 1, 4, 5. You can play the 2, 3 and 6 but you've got to realize that you're playing in the key of C which means you'd want to have a C in there somewhere if you're playing in the key of C which we'll talk more about in a second. Now you can also play the pentatonic scale which is a 5 scale which is good for soloing particularly because it's less likely, one reason it's less likely that you're going to hit a sour note whether someone's playing in a major or minor scale but pentatonic is a good scale to just guess with if you're picking around and it'll sound good. So we'll see the pentatonic here and with the related minor which is A. A minor is the related minor for C and then we'll change it. We'll flip everything around by just copying this stuff over. Notice that the way we've constructed this thus far, if I was to copy from say G to G right here and paste that right here then it should change everything down below properly. That's the goal that we're kind of going for so that you can have all this related information and be able to adjust it and map all this stuff out as quickly as possible. So I'm undoing that sticking with C because C is the easiest one to work with and we'll do our pentatonic. Now before I get to the pentatonic let's actually map out this same thing in a circle now. So this is going to be a little bit unusual possibly if you've never seen this before but I think it's quite useful. So I'm going to start it right here and let's start it right here. This is going to be equal to the root note which is going to be the C and I'm trying to construct a nice circle in Excel which is a little bit difficult so I'm trying to map this out. This is going to be right here in X14 and so the next note is going to be a D. So I'm just going to pick up the two note. Let's do it from here which is a D and then I'm going to go down. Let's go down like right there. This is going to be equal to the three note which is going to be the E and then this one is in let's say V, V18. This is going to be the four note which is an F and then let's say that this is going to be right there in T, T. Actually let's move this one down one. I'm going to say control X and put it right there in V19 and then this one is going to be in T19. I'm saying T19. It's going to be equal to a G and then I'm going to pick the five note up which is going to be an R16. It's going to be equal to the five note or this is the six note. It's going to be an A. Hopefully I've got this right and then I'm going to go up. We'll see shortly. Then in R13, R14, let's say this is going to be the seventh or a B and then it starts back over at the one. Hold on a second. Something looks a little off, doesn't it? Let's keep on building and see what it looks like. I'm going to then number these so I can say that this is going to be the one, two, three, four, five, six. I'm just going to hard code the numbers for now. I'm just going to say this is the one. Then we're going to go around in the right to the right. This is going to be number two. This is number three. This is number four. This is number five. This is number six. This is number seven and then back to one, eight or one. I'm going to make these all black. I'm holding down control to select all of these. I'm going to make them black and white to emphasize them. I'm going to make the C because that's what the scale we're in. I'm going to make that red and then I'm going to make all the numbers. I'm holding down control also red. I'll make those red. Do I want to make them red? Maybe I'll make them orange. Nah, I'll make them red. Now I'm going to put the distances between these. The distance between the one and the two is going to be, once again, our formula of the whole. It's a whole step to get there. Then between two and three, it's going to be equal to a whole. Then between three and four, it's going to be equal to a half. Between four and five, it's going to be equal to a whole. Between five and six, between five and six, it's going to be a whole. Between six and seven, it's going to be a half, I mean a whole, and then between seven and one or eight, it's a half to get back home. The reason it's nice to see this in a circular format is because now we can see this repeating indefinitely. When we construct our chords, this will be quite useful. I'm going to try to make these whole half steps yellow, so they're not going to stand out quite as much as my thought. I'm going to make this and make it yellow. Then I also want to put my numbers up top. This is the one. I'm going to say this is equal to the one. If you were to make a chord, then that would be a C major. That is what that's indicating. Then you can also play the two chord, which is a minor. You can play the three chord, which is a minor. Then the four is going to be a major. Then the five, I hope I got my Roman numerals right. I think that's how you say a four and a five. Then the six is a minor. The seventh is a diminished, which is kind of funny, which again I'm not going to get into at this point, but that's the general idea. It's useful to see. I really like this circle because you can see the one, four, five and the major scale are the major notes. In the one, four, five and a minor, and then the minors are going to be over here. The relative minors A, as we'll see shortly. We can see the one, if I was to make this one, two, three, four, five. The one, four, five and the relative minor of A are going to be all minor chords, which is kind of nice to be able to understand because then you're saying, okay, I'll just play the one, four, five in a major or a minor, and they'll all be either major or minor, depending on if I'm in a major or minor. Let's select these. I'm going to put some borders around all this stuff. So I'm just going to select everything. I'm holding down control, and I'm just selecting everything from here. I'll just put some borders, font group borders around the whole thing. So there it is. That looks pretty good. Okay, so from that, I'll pick up the pentatonic scale, and we're basically picking five of the seven notes for the pentatonic scale. So we'll just pull them from up here. It's for now. We might have to change this, but I'm going to say this is going to be one, the two, the three, and then we skip the four to get to the five, and then the sixth, and we don't have the seven, so then we're going to say the one is going to be the C, and then the two is the D, and then the three is the E, and then the five is the G, and the six is the A. So there that is. Let's make this black and white for the pentatonic, black and white. Let's just put a bracket around this top item. So what I'll do up here is I'll say, let's right-click and format this thing, and then I'll align it, center across the selection, and then I'll just make it a bracket around that, and then I'll just put some brackets around these. So I think that will work as we copy it forward, or if I was to change the root, all those should change automatically. So there we have this. So that looks good. Now just from this, again, now you can go up top and you can use your conditional formatting up here. I can hold control and scroll down, and I can then say, okay, if I just want my pentatonic shapes just to test this out to see if it mapping out correctly, I can say, let's say insert. And by the way, when I looked at the last example that I started with, I think my numbers were off down here, although the pentatonic notes were right. So I'm not sure what was going on with my worksheet, but I think we got it right now. So I'm going to go to the notes dropdown and say, if I wanted to pick, this is going to be equal to, and then I'm going to scroll down and say, I want this to be a C. We'll make it red. I'm going to scroll down a bit, and then let's do it again, and say we want this to be equal to a D and make it red, and then I'm going to conditional formatting equal to an E, make it red, and then conditional formatting, and we'll make this equal to a G and make it red, and then one more time in the tedious process equal to an A and make it red. And then if I scroll back up, and I focus in on this, I'm going to go all the way in so I can now look at a particular point of my fretboard. So, boom, super focused. And then I'm going to put a, I'm going to put insert, and then we'll put a shape in it. I'll put a shape here, and so it's a square, and then I'm going to remove the middle of it by having no fill in the middle, and then I'll put a border around it. Let's make it red, and let's see if I can change the width of the border not too much. Maybe like that's probably, let's make it like that thick. And so now I can take this and say, does it make sense? Does this look like a pentatonic, if you're familiar with the pentatonic shapes, that one might be the one that most people kind of learn first, and then I can kind of link that to another shape on the fretboard, so I can make another one of these. Let's just copy it, control C, and now I've got another one. So this would be like this, what I would call position number two. I would call this first one like a G shape, pentatonic scale, because it's got the G shape within it. In any case, whatever, I'm going to say that this is going to be a green border and now you can see position two and you can kind of maneuver around, and so it looks like it's populating the way it's supposed to, so if I'm missing anything, let me know. But then down here you can change it, of course. Now if I said I wanted to go from a C to a G, I can copy from G to G. I can paste that right here, and now I can construct my G major, my pentatonic should populate automatically, my circle should populate automatically, and then if I scroll up, now position one, that familiar shape is in the G position, because it's a G shape. Position number one that we often learn in a pentatonic scale, the G shape fits within it, but we have two extra chords in the pentatonic scale, or notes in the pentatonic scale, and then there's position two, so you can maneuver these around and just see, okay, how's the fretboard lining up now? So there's that, I'm going to hold control, scroll back down, so that's pretty neat. So the next thing we can do is say what if I want to just build out maybe the chords, and actually know the notes in the chords, so I know it's a G major chord and an A minor and a B minor that I can play in the key of this case G, let's take it back to the key of C. I'll copy the C's again, I'm going to put the C's in here, so now I know it's a C, I can play a C major, I can play a D minor, I can play an E minor, I can play an F major, I can play a G major, I can play an A minor that's going to be diminished, but what notes are in those chords? So let's actually build the chords so I can see the notes that are in them, and we'll build that from this little circle that we constructed, so hold control, I'm going to scroll in a bit, and so I'm going to make this one a little bit smaller and we'll start building this on A, A, so let's say we have A10, let's say, let's go to A, A9, and I'm going to call this major or Ionian, which is another way to say the major, for now I'm going to left align this, home tab, alignment, left align it, and then we're going to have the chords and I'm going to say this is going to be a C and I'm going to hit the space bar because I don't want to put chords there, and then over here I'm going to say major, but it already says major up top so it's a little bit redundant but we're in the C major I'm going to make this a little bit smaller right there, I'm going to left align the chords for now let's left align that, and then I'm going to put my notes over here, the notes in the chord, so within each chord we're going to basically have a 135 of the chord, not the 135 of the C scale, these are the notes within each chord so you've got to keep that a little bit, it gets a little confusing, but not too bad I think I hope, and so we're going to go down here and say okay let's let's say this is going to be the C major so let's bring this in a little bit, and let's left align this for now I'm going to make this smaller, I don't need to see the whole word because I basically have it up top in any case, and then I'm going to put the the numberings up top, so I'm going to say this is going to be equal to the 1, which that represents that it's going to be a chord, that's a major chord and then the 2 is going to be a minor, I'm not going to re-put the numbers 1, 2, 3, to 7 because I'll just, these are the numbers it's a bit redundant to do it so I'll just keep the Romans because it gives us an added piece of information which is minor, major, or diminished chords so I'm going to pick those up like so ok, and then we're going to put the notes, which are equal to C, and I'm going to do all this with relative formulas so that I can copy it over or it will change automatically if I change anything if I change the scale so this is going to be a G this is going to be that one ok, I got messed up here the 2 is that, the 3 is that this is an F this is a G this is an A this is a B boom alright, let's make this, I'm going to make this black and white black and white I'll make all of this black and white black and white I'll make this, I'm going to have these notes cover these 3 notes these are going to be the notes that we're going to build within a chord every chord has 3 notes within it I'm going to right click here and format this alignment and I'm going to say center across and I'm going to make it a different color I'll make it like dark blue let's make it like dark blue and then make the letters white and then this, I'll center this across right click, format and I'm going to alignment and center it across by the way, I don't like centering it by basically forcing it to merge because then it kind of messes up the columns or it has this big cell in there so I tend to use this method as opposed to merging if I can I'll put some brackets around that and then I'm going to make this black and white so I'm going to say let's make this black and white so there we have it and let's make this bordered font group bordered and then now I'm just going to go around my circle and start from C and all you have to do to build the notes is just skip every other note so we're making triads we don't want the notes too close to each other so in order to get that nice triad feel we're going to skip every other one now the distances between the notes are slightly different because you got a whole step, a whole step from from here to here but when I go from here to here for example I've got a half step and a whole step and so notice the distances are different even though I'm taking every other note because of that and that's why we end up basically with these majors and minors even though we're picking every other note in the scale in essence so if I think about that we're going to say we're going to start with the C and then I'm going to tab I'm going to skip the D and I'm going to go to E tab and then I'm going to go from E I'm going to skip the F and go to G enter now I'm going to do the same thing from the D to build the scale I'm going to go from the D tab this equals I'm going to skip the E and go to the F tab this equals and I'm going to skip the G and go to the A and enter now I'm going to start at E which is right there number 3 this is the E tab equals I'm going to skip the F go to the G tab this equals I'm going to skip the A go to the B and enter now hopefully I'm going to do this properly all the way through it's a bit tedious this is going to be the F tab now I'm starting on the F I'm going to skip the G and go to the A tab and then I'm going to go from the A I'm going to skip the B and go to the C enter now I'm on a G chord major chord I'm going to start with a G tab and then I'm going to skip the A and go to a B tab and then I'm going to skip the C and go to the D enter now I'm on the A 6 chord and so there's the A tab equals skipping the B and go to the C tab and then I'm going to skip the C and go to the then I'm going from C skipping the D and going to the E so hopefully I don't mess any of these up I'm going to say this is going to be the B tab and then I'm going to go from B skipping the C to the D tab and then I'm going to go from the D skipping the E to the F enter boom so there we have it now we've got the chords which are major minor major major minor diminished but then you've got to think well what notes are in the C major the D minor well now which you might memorize on the guitar by shapes right but you can find the notes then and now we've mapped out the notes in each of those so I'm going to select these three and make this a little bit thinner let's bring this down a bit see if we can get it as skinny as possible so there we have it I'm going to select these and then put some brackets around it so there we have that so that looks good what I'd like to do is just copy this whole thing over so that I can try to map out the minor the minor the relative minors and then go into the to the modes the other modes so to do that if I copy this whole thing over what I'd like to do is not have to copy like this whole side of things so what I'm going to do is I'm going to go into each of these cells here and change it to a a mixed reference now it's a little bit tricky but basically I'm going to say F4 in the keyboard that makes it absolute dollar sign before each of them but I don't want to make I want a dollar sign just before the A and not the 12 because if I copy it down I'd like it to be able I'd like to be able to copy it down hopefully I'll be able to demonstrate it to be the case later so I'm going to say dollar sign before the A but not the 12 and then I'm going to do that over here F4 and then I'm going to delete the dollar sign before the 15 I'm going to double click here and then F4 you could hit F4 a couple times until you get a dollar sign not before the number but before the letter to make that a mixed reference F4 I kind of like just deleting it before the 15 F4 and then delete before the 15 and then on the A F4 and then delete the dollar sign before the 15 and then double click here F4 delete the dollar sign before the 15 okay so now what I'd like to do is take this whole thing and copy it to the right so I'm going to make a skinny column right here I'm going to make this a skinny column and I could just copy the stuff down here this is all I want but it's a little bit easier to copy the whole column so I'm going to copy the whole column and then I'm going to delete some of the stuff up top that I don't need so I need to go from Q all the way over to AE so that's what I need let's go to let's copy the skinny too I'll copy that I don't need to copy the skinny so I'm going to say control C scroll up I got to put it at the top here on AG one or else if I put it on AG2 or something below it won't paste so I'm going to right click and paste it normal right there and then I don't need this stuff up top so I'm going to select all of this stuff and right click and delete it but I don't want stuff to move up I want to make sure I delete it so it doesn't move anything around so I'm going to delete and then I'm going to say shift cells left don't shift the cells up or it's going to move this stuff up I want to move this stuff to the left because there's nothing on the right so I'm going to say shift cells left and then I can also delete this I don't need this I'm just going to delete that I'm going to format paint above it home tab format painter and just click down right there so that looks good so now we want to look at the relative minor over here so I'm going to say that the sixth if I was looking at this is the one the sixth is the relative minor so I can just basically I'm not going to reorientate the whole circle I'm just going to say this is basically number one and I've got to rename everything so I'm going to say this is number one this is number two this is number three this is number four this is number five this is number six this is number seven so there we have that and the items with the whole whole half I should have basically hard coded these so I'm just going to hard code these now so when I copy it over I don't have to do that again this is H it's always just whole because I'm not going to change the rotation and then this is an H and this is a W this is a whole this is whole and that's half okay so there is that and then I've got to reorientate the numbering system I'm going to make this this isn't the focal point now so I'm going to unread that one I'm going to make that just white and I'm going to make this one red that's number one now let's make it red which is the letter and then I've got to do my numbering system so notice over here these have to be a minor so I'm just going to number this number one with a capital with a lowercase I this is two this is now two with an I I and then we have number three the ones at the top and the ones down below are always going to be the uppercase whatever the number is because the relative major C scale it's still the same right still the same notes which is starting we're focusing in on a now so I'm going to call this number three I I I capitals and then number four this is minor so I'm going to call it IV and then this is minor so I'll just call it V and then the major is going to be V I for the six and then a seven is going to be V I I so you still got the major major major and the tops and bottoms and the minors and the diminished on the sides and I should represent the fact that this is that we're diminished one with a dot I'm just going to put a period to show that because I'm not going to get fancy with the with the formatting in Excel so there we have it so now you can see that the minor is just the same notes and chords as the major it's just that when you're playing the minor you're going to be focusing in around the a so that's which is that's useful to know so now you could and now if I was just going to reorientate I'm just going to reorient my my chords same they're the same chords but I just want to make them so that that a is now number one so we can call this a minor scale a minor which is what we normally call it or aeolian which is the mode name because a minor is just another like a mode so this is going to be an a minor a minor is the relative minor to see therefore has all the notes and chords in it but they're they're just ordered differently so I'm going to reorder everything I'm going to delete this and just say that now we want this to be the well let's first put the notes in here it's going to be an a is our focal point enter and then a B and then C and then D and then E and then F and then G and then we'll put our our numbering this is going to be a small I from minor this is going to be the diminished is now number two it's which is important to note and then three is the minor and four is the minor five is now the minor six is now major and seven is major and now I can just construct the same notes again so it's the same thing we'll just consider it now I'm just starting at a but I'm still just going to take every other one so a tab this equals I'm skipping B to C tab I'm skipping D to E that's what that's what makes an A those three notes and then the B I'm just going to do the tryout right now I'm going to say this is a B and then I skip the C to D and then I skip the D and then I skip the E to F right it goes from D E F and then we're going to say we have a and then we have the C which is going to start at C skip the D to E skip the F to G and then we've got the D which is going to be a D tab skip the E to F skip the G to A and then the E skipping the F to G skipping the A to B and then the F is going to be F skipping the G to A skipping the A to C and then finally the G tab skipping the A to B skipping the C to D so there we have it now the pentatonic is going to be the same notes as well so I can also just say okay let's this is going to be equal to let's say the pentatonic but we're just going to reorder the notes again so I'm going to left align this for now left align and the notes here are going to be well the notes in it are going to be A C D E G same notes but instead of starting at the C you know we're starting at A for the pentatonic the relative pentatonic if I number those from the perspective of the A major it would be the the A minor scale I'm sorry the A minor scale would be the 1 it would be the 3 it would be the hold on a second my numbering system got messed up 1, 2, 3 this should be a 4 shouldn't it 4 and then the E should be the 5 and then the G should be the 7 so it would be hopefully I got that right so the same notes A C D E G which are C D E G A and then we've got the relative placements with relation to the minor being number 1 so it would be the 1 the 3 the 4 the 5 and the 7 I think that's good so let's go ahead and make this black and white black and white let's put some brackets around this let's center this right click I'm going to format and center it we're going to center it ok then I'll put some brackets around that so that's your major you know meat and potatoes of everything but you could do the same thing for the other modes now so if we got into like the modes we could just do the same thing and say ok let's just copy this whole thing again I can copy from here well let's just copy the whole thing I'm going to copy the skinny I'm going to go from the skinny on over here and copy from the top I got to be in cell in the first column control V and so there we have it so now I'm over here and the next one's going to ok that looks good ok so this one is going to be then Dorian so that's one of the other kind of core like modes now so how do the modes work so these are going to be in this is going to be in D this is D Dorian and now we're just going to do the same kind of thing but now I'm going to start from C it's relative D Dorian is right here it's relative to the C major so now I'm going to do the same thing we did with the minor but I'm just going to start at the D now it's kind of useful to think about these a Dorian mode kind of like the major and minor are basically our main two that we think about in western music at least and then you might think about like a D is it more similar to a normal D major scale or a D minor and then look at the differences it's kind of similar to a D minor scale if you mapped out a D minor and then you mapped out what's in a D but we won't get into that we'll just construct it right now we're going to say let's make this the D is now the one we're focused on so I'll make that red let's just delete all of this stuff on D Dorian and I'm going to say then let's just renumber it one two three four we don't have to change the whole whole half five six seven and then I'll change this this is going to be the lower case now I number one and then I I because those are always lower case over there minor and then this is going to be I I capital for the three and then IV for the four capital for major and this will be minor VI and this will be the diminished VI with a little dot we're going to say a period for us so there we have it let's construct the Dorian with a D so it's going to be this is going to be equal to this is our starting point now and then the E and then the F and then the G and then the A and then the B and then the C and we don't have I'm not going to do the pentatonic down here I'm just going to right click and delete that and shift up and so so we'll keep that as is if you're playing it if you're playing a Dorian which is related to the C you might be able to get away with the C pentatonic right there but usually we think of the pentatonic or at least I do as related to the major and minor but which would be C major and the related A minor in my mind but that's that so then we're going to say this is going to be equal to the one this will be the two this will be the three and this will be the four so these are the chords that will be constructing now and and there we have that and why is this one up top of three there should be a seven okay and then I'll just do this again I know this is getting tedious but we're going to say this is a D you know we might be able to say to copy this over because it's all relative so if I said well here's the D I'm just going to take those copy it and paste it right there it didn't do it it won't do it because it's not quite relative alright that won't work sorry about that D to F to A we want to have formulas because I want to be able to copy it copy it over so this is a bit tedious but I don't see a better way to do it right now maybe there is one maybe there is one and this is going to go from G to B skipping one this is an F then we're going to skip the G and go to the A then we're going to skip the B and go to the C this is a G and then we're going to skip the A and go to the B and we're going to skip the C and go to the D this is an A we're going to skip the B and go to a C we're going to skip the D and go to the E and we're gonna skip the C and go to a D, skip the E and go to an F, and then this is C, and we're gonna skip this D and go to the E, skip the F, and go to the G. Boom. So unless I did that fairly quickly, I hope I'm not missing up anything, but that would be the Dorian. And of course we could do this for the rest of them, so let's just keep rolling with the next one. Assuming I got everything right, I'm gonna copy the skinny all the way to BK, CTRL C, and then I'm gonna put that in the BL, CTRL V, boom. Okay, now the next one's gonna be, the next one is gonna be over here, and we're gonna call that, that's in DX for some reason, I'm a little bit different than my, I see what happened, we're good. Okay, so this is gonna be, I'm gonna say Phrygian, and this is gonna be E Phrygian, Phrygian. Weird names, I know. And then I'm gonna remove this, and that just means that it's, the E Phrygian is just the third note relative to the C, so all the notes are gonna be the same as C major, just like A minor is relative, it's a, it's a mode in essence, so I'm gonna make this the focal point, I'll un-redify this, making that white again, and then we'll just renumber one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, we'll renumber with these numbers, these are always gonna be minor chords, so this is, this is gonna be the number one right here with a small I, and then we've got a made with uppercase major, which is number two I I, I I capitalized, then back to lowercase on the sides, I V, this is that diminished five V's lowercase diminished, and then this is gonna be, gonna be V I I, right? No, it's V I for six, and then V I I lowercase for seven, hopefully I got that right, okay, I think that's good. Okay, so then we're gonna say the notes are gonna be the same notes as in to see all the naturals, C major, but now it's because it's the relative Phrygian mode, and so we're just gonna build this out, now focusing in on the E, so if you were playing this you'd just be focusing around the E instead of the C as your home base to make it sound Phrygian ishish, and so then we're gonna say the lettering is the one, the two, the three, the four, the five, the six, and the seven, and then we'll just construct these chords again, this is the E minor tab, skipping the F, going to the G tab, hold on a sec, this needs to be E, and then skipping the G or skipping the A, going to the B, hopefully I'm okay I'm gonna stop saying hopefully I did that right, I did it right, I know I did it right, skipping the G going to A, skipping the B going to C, and then the G down here is the next one, skipping the A going to B, skipping the C going to D, and then we've got the A, skipping the B going to C, skipping the D going to E, then we've got the B, skipping the C going to D, skipping the E going to F, then we've got the C, skipping the D going to E, skipping the F going to G. And then we've got the D, skipping the E going to F, skipping the G going to A. Boom. Phrygian. Okay, and then we can continue on with that process. The next one is Lydian. So I think that's good. Let's copy from the skinny over to C, A, copy, put that down and C, B, 1, control V. I'm going to save this as we go. I think it's saving as we go. And this is going to be Lydian. So I'm going to put my cursor in C, M, 9. This is going to be Lydian. I'm going to delete all of this. I'm going to put Lydian here again. Lydian. And this is going to be F. So now we're focused on this one. Let's make it red. Making it red. Not that one. Not that kind of red. That's too red. Maybe I should have done it that way. I don't know. And this one's going to be white. So now we're going to say this is going to be, let's number this out. This is now the number one, number two, number three, number four, number five, number six, number seven. And then if I number it this way, this is going to be capital for a major and then II, two, and then three lowercase II. And then this is going to be IV with a dot for four, number five, capital five major. This is minor again. Six VI and then seven VI. And then we'll put our notes. Let's start with the notes, which will be F, G, A, B, C, D, E. And then we'll put the relative numbers, which are going to be II, II, number two, number three, number four. Whoa, hey, what happened? K-Paw. So this is number three, number four, number five, number six, number seven. And then we'll make our notes again. So this is an F tab, skipping the G going to the A, skipping the B going to the C. This is a G skipping the A going to a B, skipping the C going to a D. This is an A skipping the B going to a C, skipping the D going to an E. This is a B skipping the C going to a D, skipping the E going to an F. This is a C skipping the D going to an E, skipping the F going to a G. This is a D skipping the E going to an F, skipping the G going to an A. This is a, what is this? This is, I don't know what this is. This is an E skipping the F going to a G, skipping the A going to a B. So there's that one. And we can continue on with this. And we can go to the next one. If I've made any errors, you know, I apologize, let me know. But we're going to go to the next one. And just to finish this out. So I'm going to copy from here to CQ, CTRL C, scroll up, put that in CR1, CTRL V. And then this is going to be Mixolydian. So I'm going to say this is Mixolydian, another mode. Let's put it here. It's going to be G Mixolydian. I'm going to delete this stuff. And I'm going to say that now we're here. That's our focal point. So I'm going to make that red, make this one white, renumber it. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. This is going to be an I capital. This is II lowercase II dot diminished. This is going to be IV or yeah, IV. And this is going to be V for number five. And I'm going to delete it's going to try to copy that. But then and then this is going to be this should be lowercase the delete. And then VI. And then this is going to be capital VI. And then this is going to be a G. That's our focal point. And then we have an A. We have a B. We have a C. We have a D. We have an E. And we have an F. The related numbers and chord is going to be a minor. Hold on a sec. That's not right. It's going to be a major G. And then a minor A. A minor A. And then a minor B. A major C. A minor D. A minor E. And a major F. Building the chords again. This should be not number one, but G. I'm going to undo that. It's going to be then G. Tab, skipping the A to B, skipping the C to D. A. Tab, skipping the B to C, skipping the D to E. And then B. Tab, skipping the C to D. Tab, skipping the E to F. Enter. C. Skipping the D to E. Skipping the F to G. Enter. And then we've got C D. Tab, skipping the E to F. Tab, skipping the G to A. Enter. Then we've got an E. Tab, skipping the F to G. Tab, skipping the A to B. Tab, enter. Then we've got an F. Tab, skipping the G to B. Tab, skipping the B to D. Enter. Okay, so we're almost there. So that was because we've already done the minor. So we're not going to do that one. So there's only one more, which is going to be the last and possibly one of the least used ones. That's going to be the Locian. So let's copy that one. So I'm going to go from here to here. Right Control C, scroll up, put my cursor down and Control V. One more time. Last time, last round. I didn't hear no bell. This is going to be Locian. And then we're going to put that here. And then this is going to be a B. So again, we're skipping the A because that's the minor. And we already looked at that because that's one of the two main ones. So we're going to go up here and say, let's make that our focal point from one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Remember here, I dot. And then this is going to be I I capital. This is going to be three lowercase, four lowercase, five capital and six capital and seven lowercase. I'm going to delete this stuff, repopulate. This is going to start at B and then C and then D and then E and then F and then she and then a then we'll put the relative numbers. This is going to be number one. This is going to be number two, number three, number four, number five, number six, number seven. And we'll go through this routine one more time. B tab, skipping C to D tab, skipping E to F, enter C tab, skipping D to E tab, skipping F to G writes E F G and then D tab, skipping E to F, skipping G to A and then E tab, skipping F to G tab, skipping A to B enter and then E tab, skipping G to A tab, skipping B to C enter G tab, skipping A to B tab, skipping C to D enter and A skipping B to C tab, skipping C to E right A A C E. So I think that's it. So I think that's it. So let's save this. So now we've got everything in place. So I believe now we have a nice fret board up top. We can we can highlight the fret board depending on what we want to be doing with it. We can map out any any notes that we want or any chord progression and from the major chord we can map out all the relative minors and you could do that up here meaning if I want to look at say a B I can go from B to B control C and paste that right here and then I should have the B major formula the relative pentatonic scale which hopefully that came out I think that and then we've got the the format in a circle which is quite helpful to then map out our items here now this should be equal to I should have this equal to this B right there let's do that all the way across this this one should not be hard coded this should be equal to this and this should be equal to this one and then this should be equal to that and then this should be equal to that and then this should be equal to that and then this should be equal to that and that should work so let's try another one just to see if that worked so let's go from let's go from D to D is that one let's go from D to D there's a lot of minors in B that's why that one looks a little funny so it's going to paste that one here so now we should have the the major scale mapped out the related pentatonic scale and then the circle maps out with D now on top which we used to map out our major our major chords as well as the notes in each of those chords and then I can look at the relative minor so it should have basically the same notes in it so this starts at D and then here's the D right and so D E and then the the sharp or flat G A and then B and then sharp or flat so I think that makes sense and then that should map out then to here which is now the E Dorian which is which is the related to the D major so we're now building the the related modes which does include the minor so I think that all maps out now now if I was to go over here I could also change it this way like if I copied it down if I wanted to not mess with this one up top and possibly keep this one at home base C and then I wanted to copy it down so I don't mess up my my original I could just copy this control C and move it all down here just so I can I can play with the one down here and keep the one on top so now I can move it down and I don't think that messes anything up the way we have our formula set up so this is still C still looks good all the relative references I think are pulling over properly and if I move over here because this is why we did those mixed references right here because now when I pull it over to this side I think we're still mapping out properly because it because it because of that mixed reference it moved down properly and so then if I change this to like like let's go let's change it to f this time and I changed the whole thing to f then this whole thing still maps out and there's the f major or the s at the top of the circle we've got the relative chord starting from f being built from the circle we've got the relative minor to f which is going to be a d I believe that's right and then we've got the pentatonics so so that so that's pretty nice so again I I think it's really handy thing to do to use because honestly like the tablature and stuff on this stuff is kind of confusing but it's also a good excel worksheet so now you've got and now you can use your formatting up top here I'm actually going to remove the formatting first I'm going to go up top and say let's say we want to remove the formatting just to test this out I'm going to say clear everything and then let's say that we want like the the chords here to be one color and then the other couple notes that are in the pentatonic another color and then the last couple notes that are in the major scale another color so we can see everything kind of how it lies on top of each other there's a bunch of different ways you can kind of use this to map out the fretboard right but you can use the modes and whatnot which notes that you want to be working with but let's just play with that for now so let's I'm going to choose like a G because I'm more familiar with it rather than an F so I'm going to go from G to G copy that paste it right here something different than a C and so that's got that sharp here so that's so that's where it's a little different than the C so then I'm going to select this and go up top and say let's say that we want this to be equal to I'm going to say this is going to be equal to and I'm going to pick the the chords in a G major so let's make it a G let's make that one red and then I'll make the other two chords in the major scale a different color so I'm going to say this is going to be equal to let's make this one yellow and then I'm going to say drop down and equal to let's make the D a yellow as well so now we've got the root which is hold on a sec let me undo that one I'm going to say condition I'm going to say equal to and then the D is going to be yellow so now we've got the root and red and the other two that make up the the major chord in yellow and then maybe I want the other two notes to make up the pentatonic scale in another color so let's select the whole thing again and say conditional formatting and say equal to so now I've got I've got a G I don't have an A yet so I'm going to be picking up the A and let's make it green I'm going to make it green and then okay and then conditional formatting and so I can say this is going to be equal to and I've got the A so now I've got a G I've got the B I've got an A and what do I need here I need an E right I need the E so those are the other two notes I'm going to say okay that makes sense right that makes sense so I'm going to say that needs to be I want that to be green so there we have that so now if I scroll in does that make sense is this working so now this is a G shape which I should see right here so I'm going to scroll all the way boom zoom in so now we've got our our G shape so that looks good because I can play the G within here here's our G shape and then the other couple notes to make our pentatonic scale around the G shape and if I was to move that up to here this is shape what I would call shape number two or the caged system you might call it a G would be an E shape right which would be right there and so boom which I mean if this was if you're borrowing this off and you could play those two right there and you would have a E or actually this would be an this one and those two and that would be yeah your E major shape so that makes sense and then the pentatonic would be adding the other couple notes and then you can continue to map this out and say okay shape number three would be would be right there right you go boom boom shape number three I think that's right right I'm getting a little tired here but I think I like that shape number three or you can call it from a caged system uh you've you've got the G E and then this would be the D shape which would be right there there's there's your your there's your D shape within the pentatonic and you can see kind of like that overlap obvious I mean it's a G chord with that D with a D shape that's why it gets a little confusing with naming it by that by the shape versus the chord but it actually works quite well if you can get that straight okay so I'm going to scroll back down and then you might want to put the added couple notes like in another color let's make them blue that add the last couple notes to make the the major scale so I'm going to go up top and say let's do one more conditional formatting or two more and say it's going to be equal to and what what do I need here I I need if I go down to the major scale I need this note I believe and so I'm going to say and let's make that conditional I'm going to fill it and just make it blue and then boom okay so there there is that one and then I also need I think I need that C right there so I'm going to say C I'm going to say rules and then equal to and then I think I'm missing the four which is the C right that's right right and then I'm going to make that boom and boom same color so now it looks a little messy here right when you get all these colors together but that's why you can come up with your own system so if I say okay let's scroll back all the way in and then and then we can say okay so now this is going to be a position one I could still see my G shape in it this is my G shape so my fingers would be here here here that I put in in those colors and then the added shapes to get to the pentatonic shape boom boom here here here here here that's right this is like position one on the pentatonic shape and then the added shapes to get from pentatonic the two other the two other notes to get to the major this would be the major shape so you can see how one lies on top of the other and then you can start working in terms of I mean if you're playing in the key of G you're going to be playing around the G and then the notes that lead into G are typically going to be the the notes within the G major major and then you can add on top of those the nice safe notes of the pentatonic that that are moving a little bit away away from home that you want to go away from and then come back home with you know creating tension and then coming back home and then and then these notes you can think of as maybe even further from home right and that you're going to create more tension with and come home with and then and then I can say okay position two including all the major scales notes would be right there I believe so there's the crossover so boom boom boom so if you played that as you know on your scale notes and you learned your five pentatonic kind of shapes across the keyboards and then you can kind of move that up so I think it's a really useful tool to play with way better than than most thing like just a piece of paper or something you know so anyway plus it's fun to build in excel so check it out