Fretboard Explorer — Banjo

An interactive map of this reader's fretboard in GDGBD: tap a note and it lights everywhere it occurs, so the 5 strings stop being 5 separate strings to memorise.

A number chart is unreadable at session speed until this map is automatic, because the chart names a degree and expects a position back inside one beat. Nobody gets that from a chord book; it comes from knowing where one pitch lives in three places.

A banjo player reads a number as somewhere to be when the roll comes back around — the right hand keeps going through the bar line, so a chart change is a destination the left hand has to reach without the pattern stopping. The picking hand is committed a beat before the change, so the digit has to be converted while the previous one is still sounding.