Frettly - the comprehensive fretboard explorer and notebook

Frettly is a macOS application dedicated to enabling players of fretted instruments to visualise, experiment, and explore scales, modes and chords using a document based canvas.

Frettly isn't just a scale and chord library - it's a persistent, document-based workspace designed by a player, for players. Whether you are composing a complex jazz piece, teaching a student, or exploring a new tuning on your banjo, Frettly organises your theory explorations into easily read, playable, shareable and saveable documents.

Supporting guitar, bass guitar, mandolin, banjo and ukulele, each document you create can show multiple scales/chords/modes for the document’s chosen instrument, and each instrument type supports multiple possible tunings.

Frettly is currently under active development. If you'd like to hear when it's ready — or are up for testing early builds — I’d be happy to hear from you:

Drop a line at: hello@frettly.app

Join the beta list What motivated the development of Frettly?

Built for: players who like to see the relationships between notes, intervals, and shapes laid out clearly.

A document-based fretboard explorer and notebook

Frettly documents are made of panels, each displaying a given scale, chord, or mode
Each document displays scales/modes/chords in the context of the document's instrument/tuning/handedness
Modify a document’s instrument/tuning/handedness at any time and all panels update to show that change
Scroll up/down in the document, set focus on a single panel, and return to that panel quickly
Frettly panels can be dragged within the document to rearrange them
Click any note or interval to hear the note singly, with sustain, or hear the panel's pattern from that note, pitch-perfect and instrument-specific
Scroll fretboards horizontally
Zoom in and out of fretboards
Arrange panels using a simple panel management dialog, or by drag-and-drop
Notes or intervals displayed can be selectively highlighted or hidden
Toggle the display of either notes or intervals
Mark notes/intervals on frets to highlight them
Toggle display of all notes or only those marked
Toggle display of a notepad per fretboard to record teaching notes or ideas
Save different documents for different learnings, projects or tunings

If you’re a fellow guitar theory tinkerer, your feedback on workflows and visualisation will be especially welcome.