fee[dB]ack Is Live at got-feedback.org: The New Slopsmith

July 6, 2026by OpenFret Team

The little open-source music game that keeps changing its name finally has a real address. Slopsmith became Feedback, styled fee[dB]ack (the [dB] is a nod to decibels), and this week it went up at got-feedback.org with a downloadable v0.3.0-alpha.1. If you have been typing “got feedback” or “got-feedback.org” into Google wondering where Slopsmith went, that is the new home.

We have followed this one for a while: a fair look at what Slopsmith is, then the Ubisoft DMCA that pulled it offline, then the rename to fee[dB]ack and the 0.3 rebuild. The website is the next step, and it shows the project has quietly turned into something bigger than a Rocksmith clone.

What fee[dB]ack is now

The old pitch was “play Rocksmith songs outside Rocksmith.” The new one is broader: an open-source platform for rhythm gaming and music education, and not just for guitarists. You can play guitar, bass, drums, or keys on a 3D note highway built for that specific instrument, with vocals listed as still in development. It listens through any audio interface, microphone, or MIDI device and scores you in real time. There is a split-screen mode so a whole band can play at once, which fits the line the site keeps repeating: every musician should get to join in, not only the guitar players.

The parts worth noticing

A few things stood out browsing the new site. There is a practice studio called Virtuoso with a skill ladder and drill controls, an arrangement editor that imports Guitar Pro and MusicXML files, stems you can isolate and loop, theory training tied to lessons, and a Studio for building amp and pedal rigs with in-browser neural amp modeling. The bet underneath all of it is that every single feature is a plugin. Note detection, the theory lab, the amp engine, a “step mode” that freezes the highway until you nail each note, a practice journal that tracks your time and speed: each one is its own piece you can swap or configure. The GitHub organization is already sitting at dozens of repositories. If you can write a little JavaScript and Python, you can add your own.

feedpak, the open file format

The piece that keeps the project alive is its file format. Songs live in a .feedpak, a hand-editable package (a YAML manifest indexing plain JSON files) that holds the tab, standard notation, drum tabs, lyrics, vocal pitch, beats, sections, and audio stems for one song. The spec is public and versioned, its prose is dedicated to the public domain, and the schemas are MIT licensed. This is the format that replaced Rocksmith's encrypted archives, and it is why a single legal letter can no longer take the whole project down. We got into that backstory in the rename write-up.

How to get it

The current build is v0.3.0-alpha.1, so treat it like the early software it is. There are desktop installers for Windows, macOS on Apple silicon, and Linux, plus a Docker image if you would rather self-host the web app on your own machine. The core app is licensed AGPL-3.0, and everything lives under the got-feedback organization on GitHub alongside the desktop builds and the whole family of plugins. The developer says fee[dB]ack is free and staying that way, funded through Patreon and Ko-fi.

Where OpenFret fits (yes, I am biased)

Here is the honest part, since I work on the other thing. fee[dB]ack and OpenFret are chasing different jobs. fee[dB]ack is a desktop app you install, or a web app you self-host with Docker, and it is built to be a sprawling, plugin-everything platform for every instrument. OpenFret runs in the browser with nothing to install, and it is narrower on purpose: free reference tools like the tuner, chord and scale libraries, and a Studio, plus Guitar Quest, an RPG that teaches the fretboard and theory in an order that makes sense instead of just scrolling you a song.

So pick by what you want. If you like to tinker, self-host, chart your own songs, and treat drums or keys as first-class instruments, fee[dB]ack is genuinely worth a look. If you want to open a tab and be practicing in a minute, with a game that tells you what to work on next, that is us. On price, fee[dB]ack is free and open-source and runs on donations, and Guitar Quest is $30 once, paid once, with no subscription. Nothing stops you from keeping both on the same laptop.

Try it

If you want to play something right now while fee[dB]ack's alpha settles down, the Guitar Quest demo runs in the browser and asks for no signup. Plug in, or let the mic pick up an acoustic, and you are playing in about a minute. Here is what it looks like:

The reference side of OpenFret is free too: chords, scales, modes, and a Studio that puts a tuner, metronome, and fretboard in one tab. Weighing the bigger paid names instead? We wrote an honest comparison of Yousician, Rocksmith, and OpenFret.