Questions about learning guitar with Melodic

Melodic is a guitar and bass game that teaches you to play with real songs. It listens to your real instrument while notes fly down a 3D fretboard, and it runs free in your browser.

Yes. The Tour starts on open strings and teaches one technique at a time, at slow tempos of about a note a second. Every new technique gets a lesson and a drill that waits for you, and no song asks for anything the Tour hasn’t taught yet.

Notes travel down a 3D neck to the string and fret you play them on. You play them on your guitar as they land, and Melodic hears each one, scores it and tells you what to work on, while lessons, loops, slow-downs and difficulty levels take you from your first note to whole songs.

No. The highway shows which string to play by its colour and which fret by the number on each note. Here’s how to read it.

Yes. Melodic plays free in your browser.

No. Melodic runs in your browser with no account. On a computer you can also install it as an app if you like.

A guitar or bass and a way in: a USB audio interface, a guitar-to-USB cable, or the microphone in your computer, tablet or phone. Headphones help when you use a microphone. More about setting up.

Yes. Play it into your computer’s or phone’s microphone, or plug in an acoustic that has a pickup.

Yes. Every song has a bass part, bass players get bass parts first and a bass amp, and the tuner has bass tunings including 5-string.

No. With a cable or interface you can hear your guitar through Melodic’s modelled amps, the same ones the song uses. If you’d rather use your own amp or pedals, the setup lets you.

They work, but Bluetooth adds a delay you can hear. The setup measures it so notes are still judged fairly, and warns you when it’s large. Wired headphones are best.

Yes. Import the song’s tab file (.gp, .gp3, .gp4, .gp5, .gpx, .gp6, .gp7 or MusicXML) and Melodic builds a guitar part, a bass part and every difficulty level for it. How it works.

Use tab files you’ve bought, downloaded or written yourself. Melodic doesn’t host or share tabs; your songs stay on your device.

Yes. Play any song at 25% to 150% speed, and the notes keep their pitch at every speed.

Yes. Section Loop plays any section or run of sections, or your own A to B loop, at its own speed, and can speed up a little after every clean pass.

Pick a lower level. Every song can be played at any level from 5% to 100% of its notes, and adaptive difficulty adds notes to each section as you nail it.

It listens to every pick: which notes your pick brought in and when, compared with the song. Chords are checked note by note, and the setup measures your system’s delay so notes played on time are judged on time.

You hear it straight away, your streak resets and the stage cools down. A gig passes if you hit enough of its notes, and you can always practise it slower first.

Seven venues and 37 songs, about two hours of music. The Garage songs are short, about two minutes each, and later songs run three to five minutes.

Yes. It runs in the browser with layouts made for phones and tablets, and listens through the microphone. Wear headphones and turn the phone sideways for songs.

Modern browsers on computers, tablets and phones. Keep your browser up to date for the best sound and timing.

Yes. Songs you import are stored on your device and never uploaded.