“Uhh…Where’s the C# here?”
“Where’s the flat-3rd of this root on the 4th string?”
“Sure would be nice to know the closest min7 triad shape to play over here..”
I tried memorizing the fretboard the obvious way but it extreeemly boring for me. Being a developer, I decided to turn it into a game. I'd love for you guys to try it out and let me know what you think: It's at [www.fretboardfly.com](https://www.fretboardfly.com)
I've only built the first module right now which is for note memorization but there's been enough interest that I'm planning on building more modules. Please let me know if you like it, what you'd change about it and what other modules you'd like to see in future.
The stack is Vue 3/Nuxt 3/Firebase/Firestore/Tailwind deployed on Vercel. Happy to field questions on the tech side of things as well
(and before I give my feedback, I should say, I spent a year or two working on a solo indie Zelda/Diablo mishmash focused on teaching guitar fretboards and music theory back in 2006-2009. A video of that incomplete game is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6O32PFGZCE . It relied on players playing intervals and chords to cast spells, for both fighting and puzzle solving, in an ARPG real-time context. I had to pause development due to life, but I'm desperately hoping to find a way to finish and ship it.)
Anyway, I think that your game is... well, really, really hard. More specifically, it feels like it gives a lot of negative feedback right from the get go.
If it were me, I would probably add substantially more scaffolding early on - pull from a smaller section of the fretboard at first for the player to master and get more positive feedback, then expand from there in much more incremental steps. I also feel like the timer feels pretty harsh and negative at the beginning. I've played guitar for many years but have, myself, not really memorized all the higher notes on all the higher strings, so I'm actually receptive for what this tool is doing. But running out of time and then losing a life while I'm trying to count off notes feels frustrating, like it's actively interrupting me doing the learning activity I'm there to do.
Hope that helps! As I say, I like the general idea and would love to see a more fleshed out version.
Regarding your feedback...yeah, I've gotten that feedback a lot. Thats part of the reason why I built the practice mode. Did you get a chance to try it? It doesnt have the timer and you can take your time counting notes to get better. And my favorite part: You can pick and choose what frets and strings you want to focus on.
But your point still stands: There is a need for a gentler introduction and I do have that in mind: A Duolingo style Spaced repetition approach that starts off with 5-7 notes a day and builds up from there. Once you're done with the course, you can play the game to reinforce and test the concepts. What do you think?
I actually had added a comment that I ended up deleting about Duolingo (and Dragonbox, another educational game that I think structures learning pretty nicely). I was going to add the reference specifically because of their spaced repetition and incremental addition of skills, but then I deleted the comment because, well, those games are pretty elaborate, too, and I was mindful of the scope you looked like you were aiming for.
I really wish they would come out with an updated version for the PS5.
The Tenuto app has some similar exercises (also available here: https://www.musictheory.net/exercises) you might take inspiration from, or others might find useful:
- fretboard interval identification. shows two dots on the fretboard, you are supposed to indicate the interval between them. this is useful for bridging the gap between audio interval recognition and actually playing by ear. since you already have the functionality for selecting notes - which the Tenuto app does not - a useful extension would be to have it where the app presents a note and an interval, and you select the note that is that interval distance from that note on the fretboard.
- fretboard chord indentification. shows multiple dots on the fretboard, you are supposed to indicate what chord it is. the tenuto app doesnt have the functionality for you to indicate what the inversion is. you could also do a similar extension where the fretboard has some notes selected and a chord display, and you select the rest of the notes needed to complete the chord.
Playing this game is forcing you to use those immediate visual cues to memorize the notes and that part transfers really well. The bit thats missing is
1) The game's perspective is artifical. Noone looks at their guitar like that. Thankfully our brains our fully capable of maintaining spatial orientation while handling perspective shift. You can stand in the middle of Manhattan , look at google maps and translate a squiggly blue line to a 3 dimensional navigation path that looks nothing like it. Fretboard navigation isnt that much different from Manhattan navigation if you think about it.
2) There's a lot that I know about my guitars from just the sense of touch. 4th string 2nd fret (E) feels very comfortable under my fingers. 3rd string 2nd fret (A) does not. The string cuts into my finger because its still thick but its not coiled. The same string on the 12th fret feels very different because of the tension and the raised action. All that sensory data associated with each note is lost when you use a poor facsimile like a computer game to substitute a real world concept. Which is why I view this as a supplement and not a substitution
Microphones...yeah...more work..more complexity for fewer gains IMHO. I view this as app as great for squeezing guitar time when you're without a guitar: Eating lunch at office desk, commuting by train/bus etc. That part gets lost with the microphone business
Anyways, long rant. Let me know what you think
Sorry that was a long rant.
Musically speaking, I never really understood the point of knowing the notes on the fretboard. Scales, intervals and chords are waaaaay more useful to know. But I‘m self taught, so what do I know?
To me, it's easier to learn a song this way than by reading guitar tabs or notes.
I think it is why so often I hear people play and the strings aren't even tuned. "Who cares, it is just numbers on a finger board game." mindset.
No one on any other instrument ever would say musically, who cares what the notes are.
I see fretboard orientation as relying on multiple techniques: 1. Notes 2. Intervals 3. Scale patterns
Notes are not the only way to orient but they're a start. I'm planning on adding more modules about intervals pretty soon
What would you change about this? If you replace the "correct answer" sound with the sound of the note, the positive reinforcement sound gets weakened. Because you hear a different sound every time you hit the correct answer. Its like training Pavlov's dog for different bell sounds instead of the same bell sound.
> The stack is Vue 3/Nuxt 3/Firebase/Firestore/Tailwind deployed on Vercel.
Legit disappointed that you missed the opportunity to write this in C#
https://awhitty.me/fretcards/
Thank you for appreciating the app, its sweeter coming from someone who's built something similar. Also, btw, dont forget to sign up for updates to stay up to date on when new modules are released. Cheers
The way the game is presented is as a kind of flash card app: Guess and check. That can work - spaced repetition has been demonstrated to work for symbolic knowledge.
However...the way in which we learn this kind of skill - which is also a muscle memory skill - is not in consciously making a guess "I think it's E here" as we play, it's in "monkey see, monkey do" - associating motion with an idea, and generalizing on that. We know how to "walk to the left" without guessing. That's why musicians play so many scales and arpeggios.
So when the game presents a randomized grabbag of question-answer knowledge demonstration, there's no preparatory step that would contextualize it in a relationship to a motion like "travel through all positions of E". You just grind through punishment until you figure it out. That's always been a problem with educational software because it's often difficult to successfully isolate a concept into a motion - if presented with lots of information we'll pick up on the most obvious cues and ignore the other parts that we might need to rely upon for a full memory.
Find a way of presenting an isolated pattern followed by the current knowledge demonstration, and the software will probably be 10x as effective.