This website has always had one limitation I could not get around: the pictures do not move.
Since 2016 Fretboard Knowledge has been a collection of static diagrams. Useful, but a diagram only ever shows one key, one tuning, one position. The moment a student asked “and what does that look like in Eb”, I was back at the whiteboard.
That problem is now solved. Fretly went live on 13 July 2026.
Twenty years is a long time
The idea is older than this website. In 2005, during a couple of years working as a software developer, I built a first version: a desktop application, and I called it Fretboard Knowledge. It did a fraction of what I wanted.
From 2016 the name lived on here, as this site. Only now, more than twenty years after that first attempt, is it what it was always meant to be: a complete, interactive fretboard for the advancing guitarist, in the browser.
The picture above is the C major scale on the whole neck, the same view I use in lessons. On this site it is an image. In Fretly it is alive: change the key, change the tuning, switch to intervals, pick a fingering system, and the neck answers immediately.
What is in it
- Every scale, in a normal mode with the ones you actually use, and an advanced mode where every theoretical possibility lives.
- The most common scale fingerings, growing week by week.
- A large chord library, with voicings.
- Suites: chord charts with room for real rhythms, diagram sheets, tablature, and the Collection, a study book that ties it together and generates the arpeggios and scales that belong to your charts.
- The Fretboard Lab, where you can lay visual layers over scales and chords and experiment.
Anything you find can go into your own collections, and you can build collections from scratch.
Honest about where it stands
Think of it as a start-up. I am one person: a guitar teacher who writes his own software, not a company with a support department. A great deal of time and money has gone into Fretly, and it will keep growing, but it is not finished and you may meet a rough edge.
Dark mode, the mobile interface, deep chart and tablature work, diagram editing and alternate tunings are the parts still in development. The things I consider essential have had real care.
Coming next: better sound and deeper sound integration, and a phrase analyser that takes a phrase from tablature, tells you which scales fit it, and builds a study book from it.
Founding members
Founding members are the first group in, at 5 euro a month. That is the launch price, paid tiers come later, and founding members keep full access at the lowest price for a good while, with plenty of warning before anything changes.
Take a look at Fretly, or read the full release story.
Thanks for reading, and for playing.