Document window overview

Frettly is built around the macOS document model — similar to Pages. Rather than showing a single fretboard that resets each time the app is opened, Frettly lets you create documents and collect your chosen fretboards inside them.

These document files become your notebooks for learning, projects, and discovery: collect the blues scales you want to learn, the minor chords you want to practise, and so on. Because Frettly uses documents, they can be moved, duplicated, shared, and even reverted using Time Machine.

If you create two documents — one for guitar and the other for bass — you can switch between them and Frettly will play notes using each document’s configured instrument. Don’t forget to explore the macOS menu bar’s File menu.

• Document level controls

  The controls in the top-right of a document window affect Frettly’s behaviour and display for that document only, while fretboard controls are shown per fretboard.

  

  From left to right, the highlighted controls are described below.

• Play mode

  Frettly has three different ways of playing notes you click within fretboards:

  • Sustained play — each clicked note plays for a few seconds before fading. Multiple notes can be played in quick succession to get a feel for how they sound together, helping you hear the relationship between intervals.
  • Single play — click and hold to hear a note; on release, the note stops. This mode lets you train your ear to a single note or interval without other notes ringing.
  • Pattern play — click the root note of a pattern and Frettly plays the notes in that fretboard’s pattern along the string. For a scale, you will hear seven notes (assuming you have not hidden any — see the fretboard help for hiding notes). For a chord, Frettly plays the chord tones in sequence (again, assuming none are hidden), then finishes with a strum of all notes. The strum is not intended to represent a specific chord fingering: each note is played once, and all notes are in the same octave as the first clicked note.

• Jump to current fretboard

  When you click anywhere within a fretboard, it becomes the currently focused one. The Up and Down arrow keys move that focus up and down, one fretboard at a time. Focus is primarily a navigational aid: controls (and notes) across all fretboards remain usable, regardless of which one is currently focused.

  Focus can be especially useful in documents with many fretboards. For example, you might keep focus on a “primary” scale and quickly return to it from anywhere in the document. “Jump to focus” takes you straight back to the last fretboard you clicked within.

• Arrange panels

  The “Arrange panels” button opens a dialog where you can manage panel order and navigation.

  

  Reorder panels: you can rearrange the order of fretboard panels in one of two ways within the dialog (and a third way is to drag and drop panels in the main document window): either drag and drop the row representing a panel, or use the Up/Down chevron buttons. The order you choose becomes effective when you click “Apply”.

  Set focus: each row has a radio button selector. Choose one and, when you click “Apply”, that panel becomes the focused panel and is brought into view.

  Preview panels: you can also sample panels quickly using “Pattern play”, without needing to scroll to each one in the document.

• Add fretboard

  Mentioned in the “Getting started” section of this site, the “Add fretboard” button opens the dialog where you choose a content type (scale/mode/chord), a root note, and a pattern for a new fretboard panel.

  

• Help

  The Help button opens Frettly’s lightweight in-app help dialog. The macOS menu bar “Help” → “Frettly Help” opens the content you are reading right now in your browser.

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