Pattern composer for fingerboard instrument instruction

An apparatus for composing patterns of allowable locations for fingering a musical stringed fingerboard instrument to sound musical tones, comprising:

• a plurality of first bases, a plurality of substantially parallel and substantially adjacent first series of at least one type of first indicia on said first bases, each said first series extending in substantially a single dimension representing the direction of extension of the strings of said stringed fingerboard instrument, each said series representing at least one course of said stringed fingerboard instrument and having a single course coordinate, string stop coordinates along said single dimension representing string stops along said course characteristic of musical intervals used in fingering said stringed fingerboard instrument, the direction of increasing said string stop coordinates representing the direction of increasing musical pitch on the stringed fingerboard instrument, said first indicia of each said first series being located at coordinates of said single dimension, said coordinates in said single dimension of said first indicia forming a mapping image of allowable locations for fingering said course of said stringed fingerboard instrument to sound certain musical tones within the chromatic scale, said first series being repositionable with respect to each other in a direction substantially along said single dimension, string stop coordinates of said single dimension of each of said substantially adjacent series having such spacings as to substantially align in said various repositionings with string stop coordinates of remaining said series of said plurality of first series;
• whereby patterns for a plurality of courses may be composed by aligning said string stop coordinates of said plurality of series in accordance with the desired tuning.