Show HN: I created a game to memorize the fretboard

Hey I personally think there's at least a 90%+ transfer rate. Whether thats extreme or not is left to your judgement. When I navigate the fretboard, a LOT of my navigation is done visually (based on the dot inlays, notes from other strings etc). If you want to know how much of your fretboard navigation is visual, try playing a guitar with no inlays and you can quickly find out.

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.

Try the practice area, it has no timer and you can select strings and notes to focus on. And stay tuned and sign up for updates if you can, I'll build a kinder, gentler learning module to go with the game

This is actually a bug of tabs that you don't even care what notes are being played.

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.

interesting game. I like the old Rocksmith 2014 remastered game a lot to learn guitar. It also has some mini games inside, e.g. scale racer and other stuff. The main drawback of that one is that the note names are not really shown so you don't memorize it and have to actively do it yourself.

anyway, maybe you find some inspiration from that game...

Well it is fretless, but really a cellist has a mental image of it and that is a “fret board”. The only difference is there’s no tactile feedback - you just get a feel for spacial placement and have to make millisecond corrections based on auditory feedback of pitch.

This fret fly app would be super helpful to a beginning cellist. This goes for those other, lesser stringed instruments as well btw.