Fretnook

Getting Started

Fretnook is a guitar practice rack and 8+ track home studio in one page, in your browser, with nothing to install (though you can install it — see "Installing as an App" below).

Give it your microphone

Press the Listen button in the top-right corner first, before anything else — almost everything in the app (Ear Trainer, Tuner, Recorder, Looper) needs live mic input to work. Your browser will ask permission the first time; allow it. The Default microphone dropdown next to Listen lets you pick a different input (an audio interface, a USB mic) if you have more than one connected — the meter beside it shows you're actually getting signal.

The main tabs

There are five main tabs: Ear Trainer, Tuner, DAW, Songs, and MIDI & Gear. Ear Trainer and Tuner are practice tools — point your guitar at the mic and play. DAW is the recording studio, and it has its own row of sub-tabs underneath: Recorder, Drums, Looper, Arranger, Timeline, Mixer, and Post-Production. Whichever sub-tab you were last on is the one that shows again the next time you click back into DAW.

The Ear Trainer and Tuner are open to everyone. The DAW, Songs (load a song to play along with, slow down, loop and analyze) and MIDI & Gear (USB pedals, audio interfaces and MIDI footswitches) unlock with a free email sign-up (see “Free sign-up” below). Each has its own section further down.

Headphones matter

Any time you're layering a new take over ones you've already recorded (overdubbing, or playing along with a drum pattern or loop), wear headphones. Otherwise the mic picks up the playback along with your guitar and it ends up baked into the new recording.

Ear Trainer

Listens to what you're playing and tells you what key/scale it's in, in real time. Three modes, picked with the rocker switch at the top of the tab:

Auto-detect

Just play — the app guesses the scale you're most likely playing in, ranked by how well your recent notes fit (a few different scales can share the same notes, so it shows the top few candidates rather than pretending there's only one right answer).

Target scale

Pick a Root and Scale yourself, and the badge tells you whether the note you're currently playing is in that scale or not. The fretboard diagram below lights up every occurrence of the root and scale tones across the whole neck (frets 0–12, standard tuning), and highlights wherever the note you're actually playing falls — useful for learning where a scale's shape lives on the neck.

Chord ID

Strum a full chord and let it ring (don't just play one note) — this mode reads the harmonic content across all six strings at once rather than tracking a single pitch, and names the chord it hears.

Tunings

The Tuning menu above the fretboard switches the whole trainer — fretboard, string names and Tuner targets — between Standard, Drop D, Whole Step Down (D G C F A D), Open G (D G D G B D), Open D (D A D F# A D) and Open E (E B E G# B E). The Tuner tab has the same menu plus a row of string buttons: tap one to hear its reference note, and the Tuner shows how far you are from that string. Your choice is remembered, and Save Song stores it with the song.

The big wheel in the middle always shows the current note, its frequency in Hz, and how many cents sharp/flat it is from perfectly in tune (handy even outside the Tuner tab). The strip underneath it is a short history of your last few notes played.

Tuner

A standard chromatic tuner. Press Listen, then hold a single note (not a chord) and let it ring. The needle swings left/right of center to show sharp/flat, and the readout below gives the exact frequency and cents offset. The needle turns green within about 6 cents of perfectly in tune, red outside that.

Using another tuning? Pick it from the Tuning menu on the Tuner tab (Drop D, Whole Step Down, Open G, Open D, Open E) and tap a string button to hear its reference note — the tuner then also shows which string you are closest to and how far off you are.

DAW › Recorder

The main multitrack recorder. Comes with 8 tracks to start; + Add Track grows that up to 24, and each track's × button removes it (with a confirmation, since that deletes its recording too). Import Audio drops in one or more outside audio files (a stem from another app, a friend's DI take) onto empty tracks, exactly like a recorded take — it needs Listen pressed first, and stereo files are automatically mixed down to mono to match every other track.

Basic recording

Click ARM on the track you want to record onto (only one track can be armed at a time — arming a new one disarms the last), then press the round red Record button. Any other tracks that already have audio play back while you record, so you can layer take after take. Stop ends recording (or playback); the play button plays back everything without recording. The armed/recording track is highlighted with a red border and glow so it's obvious at a glance which one is live, and its waveform pulses while it's actually capturing audio.

Metronome

Set a BPM (or tap it in with the Tap button) and a time signature. Click plays the metronome out loud while you're listening (headphones recommended so it doesn't bleed into the mic); Count-In (on by default) gives you one bar of clicks before recording actually starts, so you don't lose the first beat scrambling to get your hands in position. The click is monitoring-only — it's never captured onto a track.

Punch in/out

For fixing just one bad section of an existing take without re-recording the whole thing: arm the track that already has the take you want to fix, click Punch, then Mark In and Mark Out to set the window you want to replace (you can mark these live while it plays, or just click them). Recording then only overwrites that marked window and leaves the rest of the take untouched.

Editing a take (per track, on its waveform)

Drag across a track's waveform to select a range (or tap a clip to just select the whole thing), then use the row of buttons underneath it:

Trim to Selection — keeps only the dragged range, discards the rest of that clip.
Cut Selection — removes the dragged range out of the middle and joins what's left with no gap, like a tape splice.
Duplicate Clip — copies the whole selected clip to the end of the track (great for repeating a chorus or riff without re-recording it).
Fill to bar field + Repeat to Fill — tiles the selected clip forward, back-to-back, until the track reaches the bar number you type (at the current tempo). This is the fast way to turn a few recorded bars into a whole song-length part — lay down 4 bars, set "Fill to bar" to however long the song is, and it repeats automatically. Re-running it with a bigger number just extends the fill further; it never stacks duplicate tiles.
Start (s) field, and the «beat / beat» buttons — type an exact start time for the selected clip, or nudge it earlier/later by one beat at the current tempo.
Reset Edits — throws away every trim/cut/move/duplicate on that track and goes back to the original unedited take. These edits never touch your actual recorded audio, only which windows of it play back, so this always works.
Remove Pop — for an actual click, pop, or finger squeak: drag-select just that short moment and click this to smooth it out. Unlike everything else in this list, this one does permanently alter the underlying recording in that exact spot (there's no non-destructive way to erase a real glitch) — so if it doesn't sound right, Undo Repair right next to it puts back exactly what was there before, for the most recent repair on that track.

Fades

Each track has Fade In / Fade Out fields (in seconds) right on the Recorder tab, applied to that track's overall playback.

Per-track meter and level

The thin bar under each track's fader is a live level meter for that track while it's playing or recording — useful for spotting a track that's too hot or one that isn't actually making sound. The fader itself sets that track's volume; the dB readout next to it shows the exact value. Mute (M) and Solo (S) work as you'd expect — soloing any track silences every non-soloed one.

Undo / Redo

Ctrl+Z (or Cmd+Z on a Mac) undoes the last thing you did — recording a take, a clip edit, adding/removing/reordering a track, or any fader, dropdown, or mute/solo toggle across the Recorder, Mixer, and Drums tabs. Ctrl+Shift+Z (Cmd+Shift+Z, or Ctrl+Y) redoes. The Undo/Redo buttons next to Save Project do the same thing for a click instead of a shortcut, and grey out at either end of the history. A handful of rapid small tweaks (dragging one fader back and forth, say) count as a single undo step rather than one per pixel of motion, and doing something new after an Undo clears whatever was available to Redo — both standard undo behavior. This history resets whenever a different project is loaded (Load Project, or restoring an autosave) rather than reaching back into whatever was open before it, and it lives only in this browser tab — it isn't saved into the project file and doesn't survive a reload.

DAW › Drums

A 16-step drum machine with 6 voices: Kick, Snare, Closed Hat, Open Hat, Clap, and a Bass note (pick which note with the Bass Note dropdown — it defaults to matching whatever key the Ear Trainer last detected). Click steps in the grid to build a beat, Play to preview it (tempo always follows the Metronome's BPM on the Recorder tab, so set that first), and Bars to make the pattern longer than one bar (up to 16). Bounce to Track renders the pattern onto any empty or armed track, exactly like a recorded take — from there it's just another track you can mix, trim, etc. Clear Pattern wipes the grid. Your pattern is saved automatically in the browser and survives reloading the page.

DAW › Looper

4 independent live loop pedals, Boss RC-style. Each slot works the same way:

Tap Record to start capturing from the mic.
Tap the same button again (now labeled Stop & Loop) to close the loop at whatever length you just played — it immediately starts looping back.
While it's playing, tap Overdub to layer another pass on top — it doesn't start right away, it waits and starts exactly on the next loop boundary so there's no seam, then keeps looping with the new layer baked in.
Each slot has its own Mute and a Bounce to Track (with a repeat count) to make a loop a permanent part of the song on a Recorder track. Don't know how many repeats you need? Type a bar count into Fit Bars and hit Calc — it works out the repeat count for you from the loop's actual length and the current tempo.

Loop audio itself isn't saved in the project file — bounce anything you want to keep onto a track before you close the app.

DAW › Arranger

Builds a full song structure out of a handful of short takes. A section is a named span of bars (Intro, Verse, Chorus, ...) pointing at one Recorder track:

+ Add Section — adds a new section, cycling through common song-part names by default (rename it however you like).
Bars — how long that section lasts, at the current tempo.
Source Track — which Recorder track this section's music comes from.
Use Selected Clip — captures whatever clip is currently selected on that track's waveform (Recorder tab) as this section's source. The hint text next to the button confirms what got captured.
The ▲ / ▼ buttons reorder sections; × removes one.

The running total next to + Add Section shows the whole arrangement's length in bars and time. Apply Arrangement lays every section out back-to-back and tiles each one's captured clip across its bars, directly onto that section's track — the same tiling Repeat to Fill uses, just automated across the whole song at once. Sections on different tracks all play back together at their scheduled times, so a verse on Track 1 and a chorus on Track 2 combine into one song without ever colliding. A section with no source captured yet is simply skipped (not an error) when you apply, so you can build the arrangement up piece by piece. Applying again (after capturing more sections, or changing a bar count) safely re-tiles just the affected windows.

Sections themselves (names, bar lengths, which track) are saved in the project file — but not the captured source audio, same limitation as the Looper above. Recapture each section's clip with Use Selected Clip after loading a project.

DAW › Timeline

A read-only, synced overview of every track's clips on one shared, real-time scale, so you can see how parts across different tracks line up over the course of the whole song. This is different from each track's own waveform strip on the Recorder tab, which stretches to fill its strip regardless of how long that track actually is -- two tracks of very different lengths look the same width there, but here they're drawn to true relative scale, side by side. The Zoom slider controls how many pixels represent one second; the view scrolls horizontally past that. A thin red line tracks the playhead while anything is playing or recording. A muted (or solo'd-out) track's clips are dimmed here to match its silenced state. Nothing on this tab is clickable or draggable -- trimming, splitting, moving, and duplicating clips all still happen on the Recorder tab's per-track waveforms; this is purely a bird's-eye view of the results.

DAW › Mixer

Shapes and places whatever's already recorded on the Recorder tab. A Play/Stop transport lives right at the top of this tab too, so you can preview the mix without switching back to Recorder -- it's the same playback either tab starts, so pressing Play here (or there) lights up both, and Stop from either one stops it everywhere. Level, Mute, and Solo stay on the Recorder tab; everything else lives here, one column per control, one row per track:

Low / Mid / High — 3-band EQ, ±15 dB each.
Pan — hard left to hard right.
Verb / Delay — how much of that track feeds the shared reverb and delay buses (types/timing for both are set once, for the whole mix, in the master panel below the track list).
Comp — per-track compressor amount, 0–100%, evens out that track's dynamics.
Gate — per-track noise gate amount, 0–100%, cuts hiss/bleed between notes.
Dist — overdrive/distortion amount, 0–100%.
Chorus — chorus amount, 0–100%.
Pitch — whole-track transpose, −12 to +12 semitones (a full octave either way). 0 is always an exact, unmodified bypass.
De-ess — vocal-tools sibilance tamer, 0–100%. Ducks harsh "s"/"sh" bursts without touching sustained tone; it's a broad de-harsh rather than a scalpel-precise notch at one exact frequency.
P.Correct (Pitch Correct) — vocal-tools quantized pitch correction, 0–100%. Continuously nudges the track's detected pitch toward the nearest chromatic semitone (no key/scale choice -- it's chromatic only), using the same granular pitch-shift engine as the Pitch control above, so it shares that control's slight warble on sustained notes rather than being a transparent studio-grade corrector. Works best on a single, monophonic vocal line; at 0 it's a true, unmodified bypass.
P.EQ — opens a 5-band fully parametric EQ panel for that track, supplementing (not replacing) the Low/Mid/High above. Each band has its own Freq, Gain (±15dB), and Q, plus a live frequency-response curve so you can see the shape you're dialing in; Flatten All Bands zeroes every band's gain in one click without disturbing where you've set each frequency/Q. Every band defaults to 0dB, an exact bypass.
SC Src / SC Amt (Sidechain) — picks another track to duck this one off of (the classic "pump the bass off the kick" effect) and how hard, 0–100%. This track's volume dips whenever the chosen source track is loud; None (the default) is an exact bypass. A track can't sidechain off itself, and it automatically re-points (or clears) if the source track is later removed or reordered.
Group — routes this track's output through one of three shared buses (A/B/C) instead of straight to the master mix, so a whole drum kit or backing-vocal stack can be leveled, muted, or soloed together with one set of controls. None (the default) sends the track straight to the master bus, unaffected by any group's settings.
Amp — a tone-voicing preset modeled after specific instrument/amp pairings (Tele Clean, Tele Twang, Tweed Crunch, Modern Bright, 12-String, Bass Round, Bass Punch, Acoustic Bright, Acoustic Warm), reshaping body/presence/air and adding a touch of its own built-in drive on top of your Dist slider. 12-String is different from the rest: it also blends in a whole-track octave-up copy of your signal (a few cents sharp of a true octave on purpose, for natural shimmer) to emulate a 12-string's doubled courses, on top of the usual tone shaping. Bass Round/Bass Punch voice a track for bass guitar (fat low end vs. punchy pick/slap attack) and Acoustic Bright/Acoustic Warm voice one for acoustic guitar (airy sparkle vs. softer fingerstyle warmth) — handy for a DI'd or piezo-pickup take that needs shaping, not just a mic'd electric. Off (Clean) is the default and is an exact, unmodified bypass, same as the other controls at 0.

All of them read 0/center/Off as "off" — a track with everything at its default sounds exactly like the untouched recording.

Master bus

Below the track list: a master Comp(ressor) and brickwall Limiter (each with its own threshold/ratio or ceiling and an on/off toggle), a Peak readout and clip indicator, and the shared Reverb type (Room/Plate/Hall/Custom) plus Delay time (synced to note values like 1/8 or 1/4 dotted) and feedback amount that every track's Verb/Delay sends feed into. Room/Plate/Hall are synthesized; Import IR loads a real recorded impulse response (a WAV of an actual room, plate, or spring tank, or one downloaded from an IR library) and makes it available as the Custom reverb type — genuine convolution reverb rather than an approximation, and it's saved right into the project file (Save Project) so reopening it elsewhere doesn't need the IR re-imported. Selecting Custom before importing anything just falls back to Hall until you do.

Groups

Three shared buses (A/B/C), each with its own Level fader, Mute, and Solo, sitting between the track list and the master bus. Assign a track to one with its Group dropdown above; a grouped track then has to clear both its own Mute/Solo and its group's to be heard, and its level is the product of both faders. Soloing a group only restricts tracks assigned to a group — an ungrouped track keeps following its own Mute/Solo untouched, exactly as if no group were soloed at all.

Exporting

EXPORT WAV bounces the whole mix through this entire chain (including Post-Production, below) into one file, automatically normalized and limited toward -1 dB peak so it's ready to share. EXPORT STEMS instead renders each track separately (respecting current mute/solo, but skipping Post-Production and the master bus, since those are whole-mix processing a stem shouldn't carry) and zips them together — useful if you want to finish mixing in another program. EXPORT COMPACT renders that exact same mastered mix but hands it to the browser's own audio encoder instead of writing raw WAV, producing a much smaller file for texting or uploading -- AAC in an .m4a file on Safari, Opus in a .webm file everywhere else, whichever this browser supports. It's honestly labeled with its real format rather than called an MP3, since no browser actually has an MP3 encoder built in; if sharing needs a literal .mp3, run EXPORT WAV through any converter afterward. Downloads only work when the page is open directly in your own browser or installed as an app, not from a hosted preview link.

DAW › Post-Production

Final polish on the whole mix, applied after everything on the Mixer tab (master Comp/Limiter still happen last, right before the final output, so this can't push you into clipping).

Loudness

Integrated and Momentary LUFS readouts give an estimate of how loud your mix is by streaming/broadcast standards, alongside the same Peak reading from the Mixer tab. These are a practical estimate (a simplified K-weighting filter and a straightforward gate) rather than a certified broadcast meter, but they're accurate enough to get an export in the right ballpark. Reset Meter clears the running Integrated average, useful after changing something and wanting a fresh read. The Export Target dropdown (Peak Only / Streaming -14 LUFS / CD-Loud -9 LUFS) tells EXPORT WAV to solve for a gain that hits that loudness — it will never push you past the Mixer tab's peak ceiling to get there, so a track that's already loud and limited may simply not reach a quieter target.

Spectrum

A live frequency-content view of the master bus while anything is playing — low frequencies on the left, highs on the right. Handy for spotting a mix that's too boomy or too harsh at a glance.

Master Bus

Saturation adds subtle tape/analog-style warmth to the whole mix (0% is an exact bypass). Stereo Width narrows (toward 0%, mono) or widens (past 100%) the stereo image using mid/side processing; 100% is an exact, unmodified passthrough.

Noise / Hum

Hum Filter notches out mains hum and its first three harmonics (pick 60Hz for the US or 50Hz for most of the rest of the world) — useful for a recording with audible electrical buzz. Hiss Reduction is a gentle downward expander limited to the treble range (above 4kHz, well clear of a guitar's fundamentals) for taming background hiss; each side of the stereo image gets its own gate so turning this up doesn't collapse the highs to the center.

Compare

A/B instantly bypasses every Post-Production stage above (saturation, width, hum filter, hiss reduction) so you can compare against the untouched mix without losing any of your slider settings — click it again to bring them all back exactly as they were.

Free sign-up (unlocking the full suite)

Fretnook is free. The Ear Trainer and Tuner are open to everyone with no sign-up. To unlock the DAW (recorder, drums, looper, arranger, timeline, mixer, post-production, Vocal Editor), Songs and MIDI & Gear, press Subscribe free at the top (or tap any tab with a small lock), type your email, tick the privacy box and press Unlock for free. There is no password and no payment.

Your email is used to count how many people use the app, so the servers can be sized properly, and for the occasional update email. If you use the app with no internet, it still unlocks on that device and registers your sign-up next time it can reach the server.

The unlock is remembered on that browser or device. On a new device or browser, enter the same email again. Subscribed at the top lets you sign out of a device or delete your email and unsubscribe. Small labelled ad spaces may appear in the free tools; they help pay for running the app.

Vocal Editor (fix pitch, tune a voice, clean it up)

Record a vocal (or any single-note melody: a solo, a whistle, a bass line) onto a track, then press Vocal Editor in that track's second row. Nothing changes in your recording until you press Apply to Track, and Ctrl+Z undoes it afterwards. It works best on one voice or one instrument at a time.

Pitch — note by note

Press Analyze. Fretnook finds each sung note and draws it on a piano roll. Drag a note up or down to retune it (it snaps to whole semitones; hold Shift for fine control), or click a note and use the ±1 semitone / ±10 cent buttons or the arrow keys. Reset Note and Reset All put things back.

Snap to a key

Choose a Key and Scale, then Snap All to Key pulls every note to the nearest note in that scale. Strength sets how far each note is pulled (100% = fully on pitch, lower keeps some of the human wobble). Snap to Nearest Semitone ignores the scale and just fixes out-of-tune notes. Flatten Drift smooths the slow pitch wandering inside a held note.

Formant (voice colour)

Formants are what make a voice sound like that voice. With “Keep the voice’s colour when changing pitch” on, retuned notes keep their natural tone instead of going chipmunk or monster. The Formant slider moves the tone on its own — down for a deeper, bigger voice, up for a lighter, smaller one.

Use Preview to hear the result, Original to compare, then Apply to Track.

Live auto-tune

A real-time version that runs as the track plays (and in exports): set Amount, Key/Scale and Speed. Instant speed gives the hard “robot” effect; slower is more natural. It is quicker but rougher than the note editor.

Voice cleanup

Reduce Noise learns the background hiss from the quietest parts and takes it out. Reduce Breaths turns down the gaps between phrases where a breath is louder than it should be. The De-esser softens harsh “s” sounds. Apply Vocal Preset sets a sensible vocal starting point (low-cut, mud cut, presence lift, compression, de-esser and a touch of reverb) that you can fine-tune in the Mixer. Noise and breath reduction rewrite the recording (Ctrl+Z undoes them); the de-esser and preset are live mixer settings.

Songs (play along, slow down, loop, analyze)

Open the Songs tab and press Load song… (or drop a file on the waveform). MP3, WAV, M4A, OGG and FLAC work. The song stays on your device; nothing is uploaded, and it is not saved with your project (load it again next time).

Loop a section

Drag across the waveform to pick a section — it starts looping straight away. Drag either green edge to fine-tune. You can also press Set A / Set B while it plays (or [ and ]). Zoom to loop magnifies the section; Whole song zooms back out. Click anywhere on the waveform to jump there.

Slow it down

The Speed slider goes from 40% to 120% without changing the pitch. Turn on Speed trainer to have the loop speed up by 5% every time round until it reaches full speed — start at 60% and let it climb.

Change the key

Key shift moves the whole song up or down by up to 6 semitones (the chord names follow). Use it when your guitar is tuned differently from the record — a song recorded a whole step down plays along with a standard guitar at +2. Fine tune nudges by cents.

Key, tuning and chords

After loading, Fretnook listens to the whole song and shows its likely key, how sharp or flat it is compared with standard pitch (A = 440), the most-used chords, and a live chord now / next display with a colour-coded chord ribbon under the waveform and a chord chart you can tap to jump around. Match song to A = 440 uses Fine tune to line an off-pitch recording up with your guitar. It is an estimate: expect the odd wrong chord, and remember a key and its relative minor/major share notes (the card shows “also fits”).

Show on the Ear Trainer sends the key and a scale you pick (major, minor, pentatonic, blues…) to the Ear Trainer so the fretboard lights up the notes to solo with.

Record over it

Put on a track copies the song (at full speed, with your key shift) onto an empty DAW track. Then record your guitar on another track in the Recorder and export the mix. Wear headphones.

While the Songs tab is open: Space plays/pauses, ← → jump 5 seconds (Shift for 1), L toggles the loop, Home goes back to the start.

MIDI & Gear (USB pedals, interfaces, footswitches)

USB audio: interfaces and effects pedals

Anything that appears as a sound input on your computer works: an audio interface, or a pedal or amp modeller with a USB audio connection. Pick it in the Input menu at the top, then press Listen. The effects happen on the pedal; Fretnook records and monitors the processed sound. On the MIDI & Gear tab, Channel chooses Mix, Left (Input 1) or Right (Input 2), and Input trim raises or lowers the level by −12 to +24 dB. If you hear yourself twice, turn off “direct monitor” on the device.

MIDI footswitches and controllers

Plug in a USB MIDI footswitch, pedalboard or knob box and press Connect MIDI (Chrome or Edge; Safari does not support Web MIDI). Next to any action press Learn, then hit the pedal or turn the knob. Actions include the four Looper slots, record, play, drums, click, tap tempo, previous/next song, undo/redo, song play/loop/restart/slower/faster, and level knobs for the master and each track. Mappings are remembered on this computer. Footswitches that just type keys also work with the keyboard shortcuts.

Setlists & Keyboard Shortcuts

The Setlist bar above the tabs is for quick recall between songs at a practice session or gig. Save Song snapshots the current tempo/time signature/count-in, Ear Trainer key/scale, the whole drum pattern, and every mixer setting (EQ, pan, sends, comp, gate, dist, chorus, pitch, master bus) under a name — not your recorded audio itself, just the settings. Switching songs with the dropdown (or the arrow buttons) instantly recalls all of that.

Keyboard shortcuts

These work anywhere in the app as long as you're not typing in a text field:

`1`–`4`	Trigger Looper slots 1–4 (Record / Stop & Loop / Overdub, per slot's current state)
`Space`	Start/stop the drum machine
`←` / `→`	Previous / next song in the Setlist
`Space`, `←` `→`, `L`, `[` `]`	On the Songs tab these control the song instead: play/pause, jump 5 seconds, loop on/off, set loop start/end

Saving Your Work & Exporting

There are three different "save," and they're not interchangeable:

Save Project (Recorder tab) — the real save file. Give it a name in the field above the button and it saves everything: every track's actual recorded audio, every clip edit, every mixer setting, drum pattern, tempo. Load Project opens one back up exactly as you left it. This is the one to use before closing the app if you want to come back to a session later.
Save Song (Setlist bar) — settings only, no audio, for fast recall between songs in one sitting (see Setlists above).
Export WAV / Export Stems (Mixer tab) — a finished audio file to share or take elsewhere, not something you load back into the app.

All downloads (Save Project, Export WAV/Stems) need the page open directly in your own browser, or installed as an app — they don't work from a hosted preview link.

Autosave & Crash Recovery

None of the above is automatic — closing the tab without using one of them loses that work, same as any app. As a safety net, Fretnook quietly snapshots your whole project (audio included) into this browser's own local storage every few seconds while anything's changed, shown by the small "Autosaved HH:MM:SS" readout next to Save/Load Project. If the tab or browser ever closes or crashes before you got to Save Project, reopening the page offers to Restore that snapshot (or Discard it to start clean) — press Listen first if it asks, same as Load Project. This lives only in this browser on this device, isn't a substitute for actually saving a project file, and holds just one snapshot at a time (the most recent).

Installing as an App (Offline Use)

Fretnook can be installed like a real app on a phone, tablet, or computer, and once installed it keeps working with zero internet connection — handy at a venue with bad or no wifi. On desktop Chrome/Edge, look for an install icon in the address bar (or the browser menu › "Install Fretnook"). On iPhone/iPad Safari, use Share › Add to Home Screen. Once installed, it opens in its own window with no browser chrome, and downloads (Save Project, Export WAV/Stems) work normally. Trouble installing? Press Download at the top of the app for a one-click install button, step-by-step help, and a one-file offline copy.

Tips & Troubleshooting

Nothing's happening / no meter movement — press Listen first, and check your browser actually granted microphone permission (check the address bar for a blocked-mic icon).
Hearing an echo or the playback in a new take — wear headphones whenever you're overdubbing, playing to a drum pattern, or playing along with a loop, so the mic doesn't re-capture what's coming out of your speakers.
Downloads not working — that's expected from a hosted preview link; open the standalone file directly in a browser, or install it as an app.
A control at 0/center sounds like "off" — that's intentional across the whole Mixer (EQ, sends, comp, gate, dist, chorus, and pitch all bypass cleanly at their default value), so it's always safe to leave something at 0 if you're not sure you want it.
Made a mistake in a clip edit — Reset Edits on that track always gets back to the original take, since trim/cut/duplicate/move never touch the actual recording, only which parts of it play. The one exception is Remove Pop, which is a real edit to the recording — use Undo Repair right after it if it doesn't sound right.