Fret Days Reviews and Details

Questions & Answers

1. What makes Fret Days unique?

   It is a practice tracker, not a lesson site. You bring a song you already want to play, split it into parts you name yourself, and check each part off when you can play it.

   The tools sit in the same place as the record: a metronome, drum patterns, a looper that slows audio down without dropping the pitch, a speed trainer, chord practice and a YouTube play-along mode. Each one runs its own timer, so any session of a minute or more lands in your practice log without you typing anything.

   Two things that follow from that: audio you load into the looper stays on your device and is never uploaded, and there are no streaks, badges or notifications, so nothing is lost if you stop for a few weeks.

2. Why should a person choose Fret Days over its competitors?

   Most alternatives are either one tool on its own (a metronome, or a slow-downer) or a full lesson platform. Fret Days sits in between: the tools for working on one song, in one browser tab, with the time they run recorded for you.

   Practical reasons to pick it:

   • Nothing to install. It runs in the browser, including on a phone.
   • The free plan does not ask for a card. It covers the metronome with no time limit, YouTube playback, two drum patterns, up to 20 songs and the last 90 days of history.
   • The looper works on files you already own, and they never leave your device.
   • No streaks or reminders, so a break does not cost you anything.

   Reasons to pick something else: if you want lessons, courses or tab notation, this is the wrong tool - it assumes you already know what you want to play. PRO is US$4.99 a month (US$39.99 a year) with a 7-day free trial.

3. How would you describe the primary audience of Fret Days?

   Self-taught guitar and bass players who practise on their own and already have songs they want to learn - past the first chords, working on real material, without a teacher setting the agenda. Returning players picking the instrument back up after some years are a large part of it too.

   Bass players are included rather than an afterthought: nothing in the tools assumes six strings.

   It is not aimed at people looking for lessons, courses or tab notation, and it is not built around a teacher assigning work.

4. What's the story behind Fret Days?

   It started as a fix for my own practice. A metronome app on the phone, a video slowed down in another tab, and a notes file to remember where I had stopped - three things that never added up to a record of what I had actually done, so it was impossible to tell whether a month of practice had changed anything.

   Fret Days is that setup in one place, with the log written by the tools instead of by me.

   One decision worth naming: an early version had streaks and a contribution heatmap. They were taken out before launch. They push you to protect a number rather than to practise, and a gap of a few weeks should not feel like a loss. The product is meant to be a tool you pick up, not something that asks for your attendance.

   Built and run by one developer. It launched on 1 August 2026.

5. Which are the primary technologies used for building Fret Days?

   • Next.js (App Router) on Vercel
   • Supabase for authentication and the database, with row-level security so a row is only ever readable by the account that owns it
   • Stripe for subscriptions
   • Web Audio API for everything that makes a sound

   The audio side is worth a note. The metronome is scheduled with a look-ahead loop against the audio clock rather than timers, because a click that drifts is worse than no click at all. The looper time-stretches in the browser, so the files you load are read locally and never uploaded to a server.

   It is a PWA rather than a native app, and it is installable from the browser.