Gitar

A command-line tool for programmer-guitarists.

Gitar? Do you git it?

Download and installation

Note: you will need Rust on your machine in order to use this tool. If you don't, you can visit https://rustup.rs/ to install it.

$ git clone https://github.com/thfm/gitar.git
$ cd gitar
$ cargo install --path . --force

A note regarding note input

Functionality for note input is common between commands; thus, it is covered here once for convenience.

You only need to supply a name when inputting notes, but can optionally specify an octave number as well (for situations where it matters):

• note names must be one of the following (case-sensitive): C, Db, D, Eb, E, F, Gb, G, Ab, A, Bb, B

• and octave numbers are simply any positive whole number

Examples of valid note inputs are C, F, Ab0, and B10.

Examples of invalid note inputs are D#3 and A-10.

Command usages

find

The find command is for finding the different fretboard locations of a note. For example,

$ gitar find E4

produces a fretboard diagram that looks like this:

5 occurences:
-----∗ 0
││││││ 1
││││││ 2
││││││ 3
││││││ 4
││││∗│ 5
││││││ 6
││││││ 7
││││││ 8
│││∗││ 9
││││││ 10
││││││ 11
││││││ 12
││││││ 13
││∗│││ 14
││││││ 15
││││││ 16
││││││ 17
││││││ 18
│∗││││ 19

Each fretboard location is shown as a ∗, with the numbers on the side indicating the fret number.

If there are no occurences of the given note, the output will say as such:

$ gitar find Bb20
No occurences.

Adjusting the tuning

What if you want to find the locations of a certain note in a non-standard tuning? Simply specify open string note values for the tuning option:

$ gitar find D2 --tuning D2 A2 D3 G3 B3 E4
1 occurence:
∗----- 0

You don't actually have to put in six values; in fact, you can type any number of notes, and the program will construct a guitar with that many strings. This means that you can use find for bass guitars as well, as is demonstrated below:

$ gitar find Gb1 --tuning E1 A1 D2 G2
1 occurence:
∗│││ 2

Adding a capo

You can add a capo by specifying the fret that you want it to be placed on after the capo option:

$ gitar find F2 --capo 1
∗----- 0

Note that the fret numbering will change to treat the capo as if it were the nut.

Changing the number of frets

Finally, you may encounter a scenario where the output of find is different from what you expect. Take the following, for example:

$ gitar find E6

This outputs No occurences, which is true for most guitars, except for those with 24 or more frets (or a different tuning). You can use the frets option if this exception applies:

$ gitar find E6 --frets 24
1 occurence:
│││││∗ 24

This option is also useful for when you want to simulate a guitar with less than the default number of frets (which, in this program, is 21):

$ gitar find F4 -f 18
4 occurences:
│││││∗ 1
││││││ 2
││││││ 3
││││││ 4
││││││ 5
││││∗│ 6
││││││ 7
││││││ 8
││││││ 9
│││∗││ 10
││││││ 11
││││││ 12
││││││ 13
││││││ 14
││∗│││ 15