August 2026
- new501 6-string guitar lessons and 250 bass guitar lessons. Both catalogs grew this month: 62 new guitar lessons, and 67 more on bass
- newThe first chords in the game. Not one lesson in the catalog had asked you to strike a chord, which is most of what playing a guitar actually is. Crafting gains 33: the open shapes one at a time, a lesson that strikes a shape and then picks each string so you can hear which one your finger is deadening, changes on a slow count, power chords, the E and A barre families, triads and both inversions, voice leading, CAGED, drop-two voicings and a ii-V-I. Attack gains 29 on rhythm: strumming built up a piece at a time instead of handed over whole, subdivision, rests and damping as something you play rather than something missing, syncopation, and the first lessons in 3/4, 6/8 and 5/4
- new91 bass lessons are now written for bass by hand rather than converted from a guitar chart, including the whole of Wisdom tier 9, which had been empty since bass shipped
- newStory mode remembers which lessons you have actually learned. Battle, Crafting, Magic and Wisdom keep a record per lesson now: your best run, your most recent one, how many attempts it took and the tempo you reached. The difficulty you pick is still the tempo you play at, on every lesson
- newThe Chronicle. A new page under Today's Path answers the question every practice app ducks: are you actually improving, or have you plateaued? Your arcade runs go through a Mann-Kendall trend test, so a plateau means the trend genuinely cannot be told apart from session-to-session noise, not that a line looked flat
- newThe Chronicle now reads itself back to you. Above the charts it names the two or three things your history actually says — which lessons are slipping away from you, which one has taken far more than it has given back, how long since you last beat yourself — with the plain numbers and the test that produced them on the line underneath
- newIt also prices the next rank instead of guessing at a date. Consistency is worth 40 divided by your window in index points per day of practice, breadth three quarters of a point per new key, so "Ascendant is eleven days of practice away, not a better player" is arithmetic rather than a forecast
- newPlayer Stats and the Chronicle are one page. The guild-hall tile opens your character sheet — levels, lifetime totals, the gigging economy, your recent lessons — with the trend charts directly below it, and the hub row now shows the Chronicle's latest finding instead of the same sentence forever
- newThe victory screen says how you played, not just what you earned: your clean finish for the run and whether it beat your previous best on that lesson
- newAn Improvement Index, 0-100, that fills like an XP bar and ranks you from Slumbering to Legendary. It is a weighted sum of five things you can see individually — trend, tempo ceiling, consistency, breadth and how recently you set a personal best — so it is never a number you cannot argue with
- newA repertoire map plotting every lesson by time spent against how much of it you have retained. A big bubble far right and low is a lesson you have poured hours into and are not holding onto, which is the plateau made visible. Alongside it: which keys you actually live in, which techniques you have been drilling, and where each of the nine arcade skills stood 90 days ago against today
- newPlay Along. Battle, Crafting, Magic and Wisdom can demonstrate a lesson before asking you to play it: a count-in, then the first pass through your speakers against the metronome while the playhead sweeps the tab green, then "YOUR TURN!" and the usual count-in. Off by default and skippable, with a Listen button in the arena and the lesson browser for when you only want to hear it
- newBass guitar. The whole game now plays on a 4-string bass in standard tuning: Battle, Crafting, Magic, Wisdom, Gigging and the Arcade. Flip the Guitar / Bass switch in the header on the game hub, or the Bass toggle in Game Settings on any mode page
- newYour bass is a separate character. Its own levels, XP, gold, story progress and Arcade leaderboards, so switching instruments never touches your guitar run and you can carry both at once
- newBass launched with 183 bass lessons, remapped to bass fingerings rather than squeezed onto four strings. Lessons that live on the B and high e strings are left out instead of shipped with notes missing, and hand-written bass lessons have been arriving since
- newNote detection was rebuilt per instrument. Bass reaches down to a low E1 at 41.20 Hz, roughly an octave below where the guitar detector stopped listening, and tab charts redraw on four lanes
- newThe tuner knows which instrument it is listening to. There is an instrument switch on the tuner page, and it shows the right open strings for a bass instead of guitar names
- newFour of the nine Arcade trainers run on bass: string skipping, scale runs, rhythm dodge and fretboard memory. The other five drill plectrum technique or guitar chord shapes, so they stay on guitar until there is a bass trainer worth putting in their place
- newThe battle intro can be replayed. A "?" in the battle header restarts the onboarding wizard and the guided tour, so skipping it the first time no longer locks you out forever
- newEvery header control now sits on the same line at the same height, and every help button looks like the same button on every page
- fixThe fastest lessons no longer fail you for notes the microphone cannot hear. The engine will not report two picks less than 60 milliseconds apart, so a sextuplet run played above 160bpm has notes that cannot be detected however cleanly you play them — 33 lessons, all of them only when you choose a tempo faster than the one they were written at. Those notes still count as missed, but they no longer cost you a heart, so the run is yours to finish instead of ending on physics
- fixPlaying the wrong note no longer counts as a hit. The game was accepting any pitch within three semitones of what the chart asked for, so in Scale Run Survival the note either side of the one under the playhead scored clean. The window is under a semitone now, tight enough that a wrong fret cannot pass and still six times wider than the worst reading the detector produces on a note you played right. Bends, slides and whammy keep the old wide window, because those are written at one pitch and played at another on purpose
- fixEvery note turns red or green once the playhead crosses it. Arcade notes were being stamped "not missed" the moment they were generated, which switched off the rule that paints a blown note red, so any note the scoring engine did not colour itself sat grey for the rest of the run. Two verdicts arriving at the same moment could also overwrite each other, which is where most of the missing ones went
- fixOne string no longer passes a whole chord in Chord Sniper. The chord scorer is the only part of the game listening to all six strings at once, so it has a veto now: a chord it never heard is not credited, however close one of its notes happens to land. Story mode got this in an earlier release and the Arcade had been left behind
- fixChords you strummed cleanly that never registered now count. Note detection waits for a rise in volume, and a re-strum over a still-ringing chord does not always give it one, so the Arcade could go seconds without scoring anything while the chord scorer was reporting a clean six of six. The scorer can speak for itself now, once per chord and only inside the window a normal strum would have had to land in
- fixFretboard Memory Blitz responds immediately again at the top of its curriculum. From stage 14 it shows you the same note in several places at once so you can play whichever you spot first, and the game was reading that as a chord and pausing a tenth of a second on every prompt to wait for a chord verdict that was never coming
- fixEvery lesson was audited note by note, by turning string and fret into real pitch instead of trusting the title. Ten of them could not be completed by a player performing perfectly: a sustain marker on a repeated note produces no new pick for the game to hear, so it timed the note out as a miss, and one lesson forced fifteen of those against a five-heart limit. Named shapes that did not contain their own notes are corrected too, including a pentatonic lesson that taught Box 1 while telling you to connect it to Box 1, and the level-1 melody that played a semitone where the tune has a whole step
- fixLessons arrive in the order they build on each other. 392 of them had no order set and fell back to alphabetical, so Crafting tier 1 opened on a lesson whose own text assumed the open-string lesson you had not been given yet
- fixBass charts are playable again where the lesson checker had deformed them. It was reading every bass lesson in guitar tuning, judging string 1 as E when a bass sounds G there, and the only shapes that satisfied it were ones nobody could play: thirteen of the twenty bass Wisdom lessons held a jump of seven frets or more inside half a beat, the worst asking for twelve frets in an eighth note at 75bpm. The checker knows which instrument it is looking at now, and those charts are rewritten
- fixFailed attempts are recorded now. Nothing was written when you lost a lesson, so a lesson you failed nine times and then cleared looked flawless in your history — and the Chronicle had no way to tell you which lessons are actually costing you
- fixClicking a lesson in the repertoire map opens that lesson. It was sending you to whatever your story position happened to be, and sending Wisdom and Magic lessons to Battle either way
- fixCrafting and Magic lessons now record a completion, the way Battle and Wisdom always have. Roughly half the lesson catalog was finishing without leaving any history at all, which nothing noticed until the Chronicle went looking for it
- fixPractice jam admin offers every mode in the Key Mode picker instead of a short list
- fixThe captions on the game page showcase no longer stack on top of each other as you scroll
- fixThe homepage hero animation settles instead of drifting forever
July 2026
- newThe screen stays awake while you play. Lessons go minutes without a click or a keypress, so phones and laptops used to dim out on you mid song
- newThe practice page was rebuilt. Album art on the songs you're learning, a stats panel with your hours, streak, and the last 12 weeks as a bar strip, and a practice log you can filter by week
- newA practice planner that decides what to work on for you. Every day you get a fresh 30-minute plan of timed blocks. Check them off as you play and the minutes land in your log when you stop the timer. Save a plan as a routine, star the one you use most, and it becomes your daily card
- newSet a weekly practice goal and watch the bar fill, and group songs into setlists you can drop straight into a routine
- newForgot to start the timer? Log a past session by hand with the date, the minutes, and the songs you played. If you left the timer running overnight, you can correct the time when you stop it
- newGuitar Modes, a free 12-chapter interactive book. Tonal center, relative versus parallel modes, all seven modes on the fretboard, plus audio comparisons, games, and quizzes. It remembers your place on your device
- newFree Lead Guitar Lessons, a 12-lesson sequel to the beginner course: alternate picking, legato, bends, the five pentatonic boxes, speed building, tapping, sweep picking, and a shred solo to finish. Every lesson has playable tab
- newA guitar speed workout you play inside the article. The dial is the 30-second round timer, the metronome is built in, and it keeps a record of the fastest tempo you played cleanly
- new22 difficulty tiers across the game and arcade instead of 8, from 30 BPM up to 240. Old leaderboard runs keep the tier they were set on, and 60 BPM is still the default
- newNote names in the interactive tab are on by default, and every story mode and arcade trainer shows a legend of the tab symbols (P.M., hammer-on, pull-off, slide, bend, muted X) before the chart starts moving
- newThe Studio tuner widget got a real Enable Microphone button and an input picker, so you can point it at your audio interface without leaving the workspace
- newThe metronome widget puts its controls on the face of the widget: tempo slider, click sound, and volume, with no settings modal to open
- newThe Learn hub browses in category rows now instead of one long grid of every article
- newLearn guides are playable. Thirteen articles now have tab, chord diagrams, and interactive fretboards on the page instead of describing shapes in words
- newNew guides in Learn: Rocksmith alternatives, what StringTheory is, how to stream guitar on Twitch and whether you can stream Rocksmith, a practice tracker roundup, and fee[dB]ack's new home
- newNine more guides on the tools guitarists actually ask about: managing a gear inventory, tracking progress, practice analytics, gamified apps, gamifying your own practice, learning through games, collaboration platforms, interactive lessons, and the tool worth using for each weak spot
- newLeaving an arcade run no longer wipes your score — any exit asks whether to save it to the leaderboard, discard it, or keep playing, and runs are saved automatically if you refresh, close the tab, or hit browser back
- newCan't find your pickups, tuners, bridge, nut, or strings in the list when adding a guitar? Pick “Other” at the bottom of the dropdown and type your own — it shows on your guitar like any other part
- newFree Guitar Lessons for Beginners — a 12-lesson course that starts with reading tab and ends with playing your first solo. Every lesson comes with tab and chord charts you can follow
- newA new home page when you're signed in — pick up right where you left off and see your playing stats at a glance
- newPages now sketch out their layout while loading instead of showing a spinner
- newTwo new Learn guides: whether Patreon guitar lessons are worth it, and the best free lessons on YouTube
- newIf your browser is too old to run OpenFret properly, you'll see a warning instead of things quietly breaking
- fixChord Sniper counted every string of a chord as a separate note, so two shaky chords could end a run before the warm-up was over. A chord is one thing you either landed or missed
- fixChord Sniper gives you a chord that is close enough. A single muted string used to refuse the whole shape even when the rest of it rang out clean, and strings that were clearly sounding got marked missed for sitting slightly off pitch under a strum
- fixTwo more Chord Sniper problems: for most of a beat after a phrase loaded you were judged against the previous chord, and a chord left ringing registered as extra strums you never played
- fixThe game stopped loading an 8 MB second pitch model. Its answers always arrived too late to be used, and running it cost you a stutter on every note, worst on Firefox and Windows
- fixFirefox played nothing through the count-in metronome and nothing when you monitored your own guitar. No error, no sound. Firefox hands back audio that is asleep and the app now wakes it
- fixA session's progress bar sat frozen at the start while the track played and only snapped to the right spot when you paused
- fixChange your display name and it now updates everywhere without a re-login: the name in the corner, and your comments on other people's guitars
- fixHearting a guitar, paging away, and coming back showed the count reset to zero until you reloaded. It keeps your heart now
- fixSession pages with a fork tree crashed on load for some people. Fixed
- fixIf a sign-in email fails to send, the page tells you instead of leaving you waiting on a link that never arrives
- fixPage controls stopped running off the edge on phones and inside the narrow practice columns
- fixThe difficulty picker opens inside the screen on phones instead of shoving the page sideways
- fixPages pick up your edits sooner, and the site does more of its work from cache so it stays quick when a lot of people are on it
- fixThe arcade accuracy leaderboard now only counts runs of 30+ judged notes, so ending a short perfect run can't top the board
- fixGuitars plugged in through an audio interface (like a Focusrite Scarlett) sometimes weren't heard at all. The game and tuner now lock onto whichever input actually has signal
- fixThe home page, Learn, and the chord and scale libraries all load faster, especially on phones
- fixThe mobile menu opens as a proper overlay now, and the home page tab demo is centered on small screens
- fixBetter contrast and screen reader support across the site
June 2026
- newChord library — browse every common chord in every key, each with multiple voicings and fingerings on a fretboard diagram
- newScale library — major, minor, pentatonic, blues, and harmonic minor scales in every key, with diagrams and theory
- newMode library — all seven modes (Ionian through Locrian) in every key, framed against their parent scale
- newToday's Path — a fresh three-quest daily plan on the game hub that mixes story lessons and arcade trainers, with a streak for keeping it up day to day
- newRedesigned game hub — RPG-style menus with video quest cards and your character sheet and daily path together in one panel
- newScale Run now has a full scale curriculum plus an endless run mode
- newSpace bar pauses and resumes the interactive tab right where you are
- newSeven new gear guides in Learn — audio interfaces, cables, amp modelers, picks, and PA systems
- newLearn articles now link out to the matching chord, scale, and mode library pages
- fixFaster, more accurate chord and note detection while you play
- fixFixed crashes in Battle mode and when the browser auto-translates the page
- fixArcade trainer cards preview their video on hover even before the mic is on
- fixCaptcha now recovers gracefully in multi-step forms instead of dead-ending you
- fixFaster page loads across profiles and guitar pages
May 2026
- newStory mode now remembers your place — refresh or come back later and you pick up at the next lesson instead of starting over. Works in Battle, Crafting, Magic, and Wisdom, whether or not you're signed in
- new15 new Battle lessons — rhythm fundamentals (whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes), pentatonic legato runs, hammer-ons and pull-offs, slides, bends, and a trill workout
- newRebalanced leveling — every mode (Battle, Crafting, Magic, Wisdom) now has a fair, achievable path to max level, and Wisdom XP is more rewarding. Your current level is unchanged
- newArcade — a new game mode with nine challenges: Scale Run Survival, Chord Sniper, Ear Training, Fretboard Memory Blitz, Alternate Picking Speed Run, String Skipping Trainer, Position Shift Climber, Rhythm Dodge, and Sweep Picking Path
- newHearts and difficulty tiers in Arcade — from Beginner up to Immortal
- newLow Latency mode — an experimental audio engine that cuts input lag for fast playing on Hard difficulty and above
- newDemo now includes the full Battle mode instead of stopping at level 10
- newProfile settings page to manage your email and analytics preferences
- newOne-click unsubscribe from emails
- newPractice Studio widgets stay in sync when you switch scales
- newSubtle icon animations in the navigation bar
- fixLoading screens look consistent across the whole app
April 2026
- newMore scales in Practice Jams, including Phrygian Dominant
- newGigging mode now has sortable upgrades and a gig history log
- newPick a fretboard color theme that works for you
- newNew backing tracks and articles in the Learn section
- fixAudio playback on iOS was cutting out in Practice Jams
- fixSwiping through guitar photos works better now
March 2026
- newPractice Jams — play along with backing tracks using MIDI or isolated stems
- newLinks shared on social media now show a proper preview card
- newSign in with Apple
- newSupport page with FAQs and help info
- newCircle of Fifths tool in the Studio workspace
- newBacking tracks loop without gaps now
- newMore scale and riff exercises added to Guitar Quest
- newFresh color scheme — switched from purple to blue
- fixMic calibration picks up notes more reliably
- fixLayouts look better on smaller screens
- fixClearer mic permission prompts so you know what to tap
February 2026
- newNew logo and branding across the site
- newSession audio player replaced with a proper multi-track mixer
- newLesson Browser — go back and replay any exercise you've finished
- newNew Wisdom exercises and progress tracking
- newGigging mode got earnings, upgrades, and enchantment effects
- newLeaderboard shows top 10 across multiple categories
- newHelp button on Guitar Quest and Demo pages
- newClick to zoom on guitar photos and game screenshots
- newChoose which microphone to use in the game and tuner
- newAdjust the voice narration volume and it remembers your setting
- newSearch and select multiple songs when creating a session
- newGrid view option for your inventory
- fixDark mode is now the only mode — no more flash of white
- fixCommunity search finds results by brand or model name
- fixBetter spam and bot protection across the site
- fixUpload size limits now tell you what went wrong
- fixNote detection responds faster during gameplay
January 2026
- newRedesigned footer with reporting and better navigation links
- fixGuitar tuner accuracy improvements
December 2025
- newMore Magic mode lessons
- newYou'll see a message now if your browser can't run the game
- newPreview session audio right from the card without opening it
- newEmoji reactions on comments
- fixPages load faster — images converted to smaller formats
- fixSmoother issue reporting flow
- fixSeveral game level and progress tracking bugs squashed
November 2025
- newGuitar Quest launched — learn guitar through an RPG with five modes: Attack, Crafting, Magic, Luthier, and Gigging
- newInteractive tab display so you can read and play along with exercises
- newFree demo mode to try Guitar Quest before buying
- newBuy Guitar Quest with a card — payments powered by Stripe
- newIn-game store for items and upgrades
- newYour lesson progress saves automatically
- newBattle animations and victory screens
- newPromo codes work at checkout
- newPrivacy Policy and Terms of Service
October 2025
- newMore guitar brands and models in the database
- fixShared profile and session links now show proper previews on social media
September 2025
- newGuitar templates — save a setup and reuse it for quick entry
- newGet Discord notifications when something happens in the community
- newGuitar detail page got a full redesign
- fixFixed some broken comments and session loading issues
August 2025
- newPracticed songs list now paginates instead of one long scroll
- newGuitar details open on their own page instead of a popup
- fixPractice page layout cleaned up
July 2025
- newNotifications so you know when someone interacts with your stuff
- newTrack when you last changed your guitar strings
- newInteractive fretboard you can poke around on
- newTab notation viewer with vibrato and bend support
- newHome page redesign
- fixBunch of mobile layout fixes
June 2025
- newLog your practice sessions and see stats over time
- newShare your guitars and sessions with a link
- newLike and comment on community posts
- newCollaboration sessions — jam with others
- newBuilt-in metronome, tempo tools, and tuning fork
- newFilter and search the community page
- newSign in with an email magic link (no password needed)
- newUser profiles with an activity feed
- newStandard tuning reference chart
- newInvite friends with a referral link
- newPractice contribution calendar (think GitHub-style grid)
- newSession templates so you don't start from scratch every time
- newGuitar tuner
- newReport an issue button
- fixYou can now upload multiple images per guitar
- fixGuitar tuner works in Firefox now, plus radius shows in mm
- fixCAPTCHA was confusing — made it friendlier
May 2025
- newOpenFret launched — catalog your guitars with photos
- newCommunity page where you can browse guitars by brand
- newUser profiles
- newSpam protection
- newWorks on phones and tablets