The Infinite Fretboard
Every scale that matters to a bass player, on the whole neck, in any key — change key and watch the pattern slide. Degrees, not fingerings, and every note plays out loud.
G Major
Tap any note to hear it · ← → change key · the numbers are scale degrees, not fingerings.
How to use it
Pick a family, pick a key. The five scale families are the same five from Pete's map of bass scales — major, natural minor, the two pentatonics and the blues scale — joined by his two great riff patterns: the Bass Player's Friend (root–5th–octave) and the Other Friend, which adds the ♭7. The coral note is the tonic, home. The numbers are the degrees of the scale — how far each note sits from home — never fingerings: how you finger a line is your business, and half the fun.
Change key and watch it move. The pattern of a scale never changes — only where it sits. Step the key up one and the whole lattice slides one fret; that is the entire trick to playing in twelve keys. Notes to the left of the nut are the open strings. The dashed ring is the relative key — the same notes with a different home — which is why G major and E minor live on the same fretboard, a story Pete tells properly in the History of the Minor Scale.
Mind the ghosts. Choose a pentatonic and two ghosted degrees appear: the notes the pentatonic skips from its seven-note parent. That is what a pentatonic is — the tense degrees left at home — and seeing the gaps teaches more than hiding them. The blues scale then adds one note the key doesn't own: the blue note, in blue — tension to pass through, not to live on. The full story of both is in The Complete Pentatonic Scale.
Hear everything. Tap any note on the neck and it sounds at real bass pitch; press Play it and the whole pattern climbs from the tonic while the formula strip lights up note by note. When a pattern is under your fingers, put it to work against the metronome or a groove in the Groove Trainer — scales become music when they meet rhythm.
Practice tip
Take one family in one key and play it up a single string first, reading the strip at the bottom of the panel: a whole step is two frets, a half step is one. Then play the same notes across the strings in one position. Then move the key up a fret and do both again — the pattern never changed, and now you know it in two keys. Twelve is just ten more frets.
New to scales altogether? Start with Pete's Bass Scales — the five families and the complete map — every pattern in this tool comes from that lesson.
Keep it in your pocket
The Infinite Fretboard installs as an app: its own icon on your home screen, full-screen with no browser around it, and — once installed — it works with no signal at all. The whole neck in the practice room, at rehearsal, on the bus — the fretboard doesn't need the internet.
To install: look for “Install” or “Add to Home Screen” in your browser’s menu.
Installed — look for the Fretboard icon on your home screen. This tab is still the website.
You’re in the app
This is the installed Infinite Fretboard, not the website — it works even with no connection. Everything else, from the free lessons to Pete himself, lives at theinfinitebass.com.
Seen the pattern? Now make it music
A scale on a diagram is geography — a scale in a bassline is music. Turning one into the other is exactly what Pete's lessons are for.
Also in the free tools: the Fretboard Modemap — this tool's sibling, for the seven diatonic modes — plus the tuner, the metronome, the Groove Trainer and the Interval Ear Trainer.