About GTDB

It started out in 2008 as a simple database for me to organise all of Nick Drake's tunings for each song. I decided to put it online in its simplest form at around 2010. Since then, with the help of user contributions it has become the only dedicated place on the internet to document and generate chords, scales and tabs for any alternate tunings.

Tunings 1,978

Tabs 405

Songs 2,221

Chords 587,466

Scales 12,817,440

Updates History

Mar 2021
  1. All chord sheets are now playable. You can select which frets will make up the chord and the play button will strum the chord.

Feb 2021
  1. Scales can be saved to favourites When on a single scale page you can save it to your favourites which can be found on your dashboard

    Dashboard
  2. Scales now playable You can now listen to scales when selecting a single scale in any tuning and any key.

    Speed and Release sliders for optimum listen needs.
  3. Tuning submission page overhaul Tunings can now be generated with a click and play application. The tuning map is now clickable which plays the corresponding note and selects the dropdowns ready for submission.

    Tunings can be loaded into the tuning map for creating variations. All tuning pages have a "Create Variation" button.

    You now must check your tuning doesnt exist in the database before submitting.
Jan 2021
  1. Access to 500+ scales on any tuning On any scales page there is a drop down with over 500 scales. Choose a scale by searching for intervals, names, modes, codes and text codes.
    the url for scales can be edited to find scales with intervals. the url goes /tuning/scales/key/intervals e.g /daefce/scales/g/221222 will give you " G Major scale tuned to DAEFCE

    12,817,440 million chords sheets have been released. 1700 tunings, 540 scales and 12 keys is 1978 * 540 * 12 = 12,817,440 possible scales on this website.

  2. Strum the tuning You can effectively strum the tuning enabling you to hear the tuning as a whole. 4 different speeds of strum available. Also added a loop button for strum; unpredictable results on the slow speeds.
March 2020
  1. Chord Sheets: Added ability to mark fret notes on chords and save positions.
  2. Search: Added Algolia search to main header and chord sheet generator.
July 2019
  1. Added three extra notes on the submit tuning page. You can now submit tunings with up to 9 strings but still a minimum of 6 for now.
  2. Updated all chord sheets and scales to accommodate the new 7 to 9 string tunings
  3. Added new mega menu to the nav bar with a few more links than was currently available. Top ten tunings, All producer link etc
  4. Added function to change the sound of the guitar tuner. They will all default to the Acoustic guitar. The user can now switch to distorted electric guitar and some experimental synth sounds to boot.
  5. Improved the way chord sheets are saved for logged in users.
  6. Various style and layouts fixes.
  7. Fixed direct traffic where user tried a tuning in the url that didn't exist. Now redirects to the correct place to submit missing content.
  8. Added Harmonic Major to scales and chord maps.
  9. Added Mixolydian, Mixolydian Ionian & Octatonic to scales and also included the intervals for each scale.
  10. Added history section to about page.
December 2017
  1. Site wide update caching all chord sheets drastically speeding up page load time. SQL queries reduced from sometimes 100s to less than 10.
November 2017
  1. Added ability to switch all tuners to 432htz.
  2. Integrated YouTube API to show related videos on tuning pages.
April 2017
  1. Create function for users to save favourite tunings which can be found on your dashboard

    Dashboard
May 2016
  1. Open registrations and create functions for users to create custom chord sheets. User Chord Sheets
July 2014
  1. Ported the site to Laravel from WordPress. Bon Voyage to years of point and click systems!
February 2012
  1. Finally added programmatically generated chord maps and scales for all tunings.
February 2010
  1. Register gtdb.org and create first WordPress iteration of Guitar Tunings Database.
January 2009
  1. Nick Drake database was born using PHP Runner. 
           _____
          q o o p
          q o!o p
          d o!o b
           \!!!/
           |===|
           |!!!|
           |!!!|
           |!!!|              ____    ______  ____    ____
           |!!!|             /\  _`\ /\__  _\/\  _`\ /\  _`\
           |!!!|             \ \ \L\_\/_/\ \/\ \ \/\ \ \ \L\ \
          _|!!!|__            \ \ \L_L  \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \  _ <'
        .+=|!!!|--.`.          \ \ \/, \ \ \ \ \ \ \_\ \ \ \L\ \
      .'   |!!!|   `.\          \ \____/  \ \_\ \ \____/\ \____/
     /     !===!     \\          \/___/    \/_/  \/___/  \/___/
     |    /|!!!|\    ||
      \   \!!!!!/   //
       )   `==='   ((
     .'    !!!!!    `..
    /      !!!!!      \\
   |       !!!!!       ||
   |       !!!!!       ||
   |       !!!!!       ||
    \     =======     //
hjw  `.    ooooo    .;'
       `-._______.-'