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, and you don’t need an account to play. If you’d like your progress and songs on every device you play on, sign in with Google or your email (players 13 and older). On a computer you can also install it as an app if you like.

Yes. Sign in on each one (Settings → Account) and your Tour, level, achievements, songs and settings follow you. Your guitar setup stays with each device, since it depends on its gear.

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 your guitar plays through Melodic’s built-in amp sim: each song’s own tone, or one of 20 preset tones or your own, with five pedals. If you’d rather use your own amp or pedals, the setup lets you.

Yes. Open Amp from the main menu and play: your guitar goes through Melodic’s amp sim, with 10 amps for guitar and bass, speaker cabinets, five pedals and 20 preset tones, and you can save tones of your own. See and hear the amp.

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. The Get songs screen in the game lists places to find tab files online, including a recommended source of free tabs. 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 exactly the notes you pick on the tab, any section or run of sections, or your own A to B loop, at its own speed. You choose a count-in of 3 to 10 seconds and a break of up to 10 seconds between passes (or none), and it 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.

Yes. Training has 16 technique drills: picking accuracy, melodies, a finger gym, chord changes, strumming, power chords and palm muting, riffs and the blues shuffle, hammer-ons and pull-offs, slides, bends, vibrato, alternate picking, string skipping, scale runs, arpeggios and tapping, each with a band playing along. Each one listens to your guitar and adapts its level after every rep.

After every rep of five to ten seconds the level moves by how well you played: up when you hit 85% or more of the notes, down when you struggle. It keeps you hitting about 85% of the notes, the point where practice teaches the most. You can also set the level by hand.

Your level is saved after every rep. When you come back, the drill starts with a short warm-up a few levels lower and climbs back to your level over the first few reps: deeper and longer the longer you’ve been away.

No. Each drill is a ladder of 4–11 stages, each a lesson plan of steps that bring something new every couple of levels. Past the last stage its steps come round mixed and the tempo keeps rising by 3% a level, for as long as you can keep up.

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.

Eight venues and 67 songs, about three and a half hours of music. The rehearsal 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. If you sign in, they’re also kept in your account so you can play them on your other devices, where only you can get at them. They’re never shared.

Very little. There are no ads or cookies of ours (songs you play along with their music video use YouTube’s player), accounts are optional, your songs and progress stay on your device unless you sign in, and the sound of your guitar is never recorded or sent. The game sends anonymous play stats, such as how long you play, which you can turn off in Settings. The privacy policy has the details.

Use the contact form, or in the game go to Settings → Privacy & help → Write to us. Questions, feedback, bug reports and ideas all go straight to the developer.