The FATpick Blog

It's been a minute since our last release. Longer than usual. Longer than we hoped, frankly. But the good news is that the reason for this hyper-extended release cycle is that we've been hard at work a handful of major changes that represent massive - and in some cases long-anticipated - upgrades to fundamental aspects of the app.

We're not done with this effort, by any stretch. But we are quite close to wrapping up the first - and maybe most labor intensive - of these planned upgrades: a top-to-bottom redesign of the audio analysis engine, including radical improvements to the polyphonic (multi-note) pitch detection. The full engine redesign - polyphonic-specific enhancements included - should be available in the next few weeks, maybe before the end of the year.

But there's no reason to wait for that. Even though we're not quite ready to release all of audio-analysis changes, the components of the framework that are ready to ship already represent a major upgrade to the currently released functionality. So let's ship it.

We'll be releasing those changes in the next few days, and the full analysis engine redesign release should follow soon after that.

To learn more about the changes we've been working on, and preview some of the other topics we're looking at on the short-term product roadmap, read on.

Notes on the syntax used to specify custom instrument tunings to the fretboard-related reference tools.

The in-app reference tools like the scale explorer and note chart are quite versatile. They can render a fretboard for virtually any fretted string instrument: any number of strings, each tuned an arbitrary note, across any number of frets. But they're not, strictly speaking, universal in scope. Mostly out of academic interest, here's a little tangential discussion of some of the abstract limits of theses tools and the instrument types they exclude.

A handy reference chart listing information about the notes across the audible spectrum: the physical properties of their corresponding sound waves; mappings of the notes to MIDI note numbers and to positions on a piano keyboard, and to standard guitar, bass and ukulele fretboards; and some related meta-data.

Just making a note to say there's some older but still useful information about FATpick's settings and other configuration options to be found in the settings section of the user's guide.

A customizable metronome track is now automatically added to each song in FATpick.

Application logs may contain information that can help the FATpick Support Team diagnose and resolve any technical issues you might encounter. Here's how to enable the logs and share them with the FATpick team.

Common causes of distorted audio and jerky animation, and what you can do about them.

Instructions on installing FATpick on Microsoft Windows and related tips.

FATpick will soon drop support for the older (v1) generation of the desktop client application. Please upgrade to avoid disruption.

Historical archive of screen-shots and other documentation from FATpick v1.x.

Most played songs, most active users, and other facts about how people used FATpick to learn guitar in 2020.