A deliberate practice app for guitar players who want to level up

Thanks HN, for helping me force Vineet's hand into accepting that the app is worthy of being used by not-Vineet.

He demo'd Captrice last week, to a bunch of friends here in Bangalore. And I knew he was going straight to the "infinite bikeshed", based on his tepid answers to questions like "Wow this is cool! So... Launch, when?".

Plus, you made m'dude earn his "First Internet Dollar". To whomever did the "buy me a coffee" thing... you're awesome! There is a stark psychological "before/after" of earning your F.I.D. Now he can't ever go back.

As someone stuck in his own Infinite Bikeshed, I take heart from this event, and hope to follow in his footsteps sooner than later :)

This looks super cool, and very similar to a need I have, except I'm not learning the guitar.

I'm learning my first (serious) instrument and I've decided on the lyre, since it's similar to other string instruments (guitar, ukulele, traditional harp) but a bit easier.

Will you support other instruments for lessons, other than the guitar?

God tier app. Up the irons.

Looks like a great app.

For those who can't read sheet music, can I suggest a guitar tabs?

Captrice allows you to export an exercise collection. You get a json file that can be shared with others or copied to another device where it can be imported back into the app.

> AlphaTab is the star here

Absolutely! High quality stuff. I wasn't aware of the person behind the project. Thanks for mentioning it.

What do you need "scales" practice for on guitar? It's a totally relative instrument except when playing on empty strings, so there's only one "scale" pattern that you have to learn. It's nothing like a keyboard!

Brilliant! Literally my first thought when I saw the original submission was “I wish there was a banjo version”!

Definitely will be using your app.

This is so cool. Loved the UI, simple and to the point.

Thanks for the feedback. I know the UI is not as intuitive as I'd like it to be for first time users. Multiple early users have told me that they expected it to either listen to them play or play back some audio. I am planning to record a small videos soon to clarify this.

> IMO the app would be cooler if it was simply the metronome app on a page. And if you want to track which song you are working on, then just add the ability to label a session. Could have a different mode for people who want it over videos, but usually when I'm practicing, I know the tab and am not watching a video while I practice.

The tab is mainly for (1) future reference, specially if you are creating your own exercises (2) sharing them with others. Sometimes I come up with short exercises myself that cover a specific technique or some picking pattern I am struggling with. Overtime I tend to forget those. In an earlier version, you could either add a tab or embed a video. But then I thought why not both! Feedback taken though, it should be fairly easy to make the tab/video section collapsible. Ability to label sessions in also on the roadmap.

I never quite got the setup right, but Rocksmith seemed to live up to the promise of "guitar hero on a real guitar". It came out during a time when spending my free time tinkering with computers became much more important than tinkering with guitars.

> Firstly, the tab for that exercise is long enough to need a scroll bar, and so I don't understand how one is supposed to play along with that tab to a metronome.

I agree, this app is not great for learning a piece of music but it works well for practicing an already learnt piece. This is how I have been using it for myself.

As I mentioned in another comment, the tab and the video are mainly for reference i.e. to answer the question what to practice. Earlier, it only allowed either a tab or a video. At some point I added support for both (because why not!) Looks like that's causing some confusion.

I like your idea of playing along with a synthesized sound in the learning phase, although I haven't tried it myself. I believe alphatab (the lib used for tablature) does support midi playback which could make it function like guitar pro. Need to see how much complexity it introduces (mainly related to getting both the metronome and the midi to play together, never tried it). Perhaps there could be two separate modes to keep things simple - a learning mode without metronome and a practice mode (same as current). Won't promise anything but will at least do a POC.

Thanks for the detailed feedback.

PS: The link you shared wouldn't work for anyone else, as it only exists on your device thanks to the local-only-ness. Have some thinking to do to make this more intuitive.

Thanks! Much credit goes to the Bulma[1] css framework, I guess. I am mostly a backend dev. I've just used bulma for the most part and tried to avoid anything fancy.

[1]: https://bulma.io/

Agreed. For me it is the ample whitespace and the controlled use of color.

What worked for me was to pick up the guitar every day, and play it for 5 minutes (or more, obviously). No exceptions to the minimum 5 minutes every day rule. I'm pretty good at cowboy chords, barre chords and a bit of blues after around 10 months of this.

One thing I started doing the last time I picked up guitar again, which was about two months ago, was wearing disposable nitrile gloves on my left hand. They're extremely thin and durable, and have minimal impact on dexterity, but allowed me to practice for over an hour a day with no residual pain the next day. It was always possible to practice through the pain on one day, but where I would slip up is skipping a day because my fingers still hurt. (And skipping a day turns into two...) I've still developed calluses, too, but I'm not quite ready to give them up. I'm much happier with my progress than I was any previous time, probably because I never skip a day of practice anymore.

It's not the most eco-friendly thing I've ever done, but I figure it's a pretty small amount of plastic in the grand scheme of things (especially in my line of work).

> when I practice for more than an hour every day

> this creates horrible calluses on my fingers

I think both are good problems to have :-). Consistently practicing for more than an hour every day is quite difficult unless you are professionally into it. If you are able to manage it then that's commendable. And once the calluses are formed, it doesn't hurt as much. A downside of skipping practice for a week, besides the practice itself, is that the calluses go away.

Oh they're not horrible, you need those calluses. I so badly wish I still had mine. It'd make picking back up my guitar so much easier. Now my fingertips are soft and useless.

One of the best pieces of advice I got when I started ages ago was to just put electric strings on the acoustic. If you're just practicing in your bedroom it will be much easier to play than on stiff acoustic strings. Give it a shot.

When you're ready to record then you can put acoustic strings on it, heh :-)

On acoustic with light or medium strings - it's OK. I used to flatten them with nail file from time to time. But it might be much easier on your finger tips just to start with electric and then progress towards acoustic.

Yes unfortunately, I've grown to be used to it over time though. Sometimes will press my fingers into random objects to make sure I keep them up.

Playing electric guitar also helps immensely due to the thinner strings and lower action.

If any one's looking for the answer to why it's not recommended to edit library imports - when you import collections from the library, you can receive updates whenever the collection author publishes a new version. These updates might include new exercises or improvements to existing ones. However, if you've made your own modifications to the collection, these personal changes will be overwritten when you update to the newer version.

It's mentioned on the faqs page - https://www.captrice.io/user-guide/faqs.html. Missed updating the link. Will push a fix shortly.

Thanks for reporting. I’ll check this.

No, it doesn't play the tabs. The primary use case to help with practicing something you've already learnt.

Import from Guitar Pro sounds like a good idea and the format doesn't seem to be proprietary based on a quick google search. Will explore further. Thanks!

I've tried playing guitar on and off my whole life over last 40 years and I can't believe that it took me until this year to try, on a whim, a classical guitar. Suddenly my fat fingers can fit next to each other making an A or B chord, and they don't hurt and blister after a short session of play. Seriously make sure to not overlook non-steel guitars if you're having trouble.

Thanks for the kind words.

> people try and give up a lot. If this can help some folks stick with it and become better understanding and practiced with their instrument, I hope that happens again and again and again

This resonates so much.