Fretstart

Fretstart is a daily practice coach for intermediate blues and rock lead guitar. Open it and it tells you exactly what to practice today: a five-step session from a 32-week curriculum, with every scale, lick, and chord drawn on an interactive fretboard, a metronome and backing groove underneath, and a streak keeping you honest.

I built it for myself — one place for all the scales, voicings, and chords instead of five browser tabs, plus enough gamification to make twenty minutes a day actually happen.

What it does

• A 32-week path, blues and rock tracks, from owning box 1 through repertoire and playing with other people — each week's material repeating at rising tempos through the week
• Interactive fretboard diagrams for every scale, arpeggio, and chord: notes or degrees, whole neck or one box, with guitar-shaped audio playback
• Mic-checked bends: it listens to your attempts and tells you the pattern — "reliably 30 cents flat" is fixable, and no video course can hear you
• Recording checkpoints on day 1 and every fourth week, with a comparison player, so you can hear the progress that's invisible day to day
• Honest streaks, daily reminders, full guest mode — and the curriculum and library are readable without an account

Built solo in a week with AI-assisted development: Next.js, Supabase, and the Web Audio API. The engineering story — including what it takes to test music instead of code — is in the blog post.