frets

A terminal-based guitar fretboard trainer. Drills you on note positions across the neck with adaptive weighting (the notes you miss appear more often; the notes you get right appear less often).

npx @rnubel/frets

🎸 Frets — Fretboard Trainer
Type the note name (e.g. G#, Bb, F). Ctrl+C to quit.

 ‖   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   
 ‖   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | ▲ |   |   |   
-X-  |   | ▲ |   | ▲ |   | ▲ |   | ▲ |   |   | ▲ |   |   | ▲ 
 ‖   |   | ▼ |   | ▼ |   | ▼ |   | ▼ |   |   | ▼ |   |   | ▼ 
 ‖   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   | ▼ |   |   |   
 ‖   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   |   
> G
  ✓ Correct! (8.3s)
  Score: 1/1 (100%) | Avg: 8.3s

See #usage for more options and customizations.

Requirements

• Node.js 20+

Installation

You can run this directly with npx:

npx @rnubel/frets

Or, build from source and run:

git clone https://github.com/rnubel/frets.git
cd frets
npm install
npm run build

Then run it:

node dist/index.js

Or run without building (uses ts-node):

npm start

Usage

npx @rnubel/frets [options]
node dist/index.js [options]

| Option | Default | Description | |---|---|---| | --max-fret <n> | 15 | Highest fret to include (0–24) | | --strings <list> | E,A,D,G,B,E | Comma-separated list of strings to drill | | --fretboard | true | Show ASCII fretboard diagram instead of a text prompt | | --smart | true | Adaptively weight positions toward your weak spots | | --persist <file> | (none) | File path to load/save adaptive weights between sessions | | --debug | false | Print the full weight matrix after each answer |

Examples:

# Drill only the low strings up to fret 12
node dist/index.js --strings E,A,D --max-fret 12

# Text-only prompts, no fretboard diagram
node dist/index.js --no-fretboard

# Disable adaptive weighting
node dist/index.js --no-smart

# Save and resume adaptive weights across sessions
node dist/index.js --persist ~/.frets-weights.json

Press Ctrl+C at any time to end the session and see your summary.

How it works

In smart mode, each string/fret position has a weight that starts at 1×. An incorrect answer raises the weight up to 4×, making that position appear proportionally more often. A correct answer lowers the weight toward 0.5×, with the reduction scaled by response time — slow correct answers don't reduce the weight as aggressively as fast ones.

License

Free use.