How It Works
FATpick is a game for guitartists, bass guitarists, ukuleleists — really any plucked string instrument.
Imagine those old console-based “rhythm games” like Rock Band or Guitar Hero except with real instruments. And you can play any song you want. And instead of a gaudy proprietary interface where brightly colored bars come flying at you in 3D you're learning to read music in a format that people actually use outside of the game.
FATpick is a smart guitar tablature viewer. It opens any song in an animated, interactive player that's designed for use while playing. Songs are synchronized with matching audio tracks, highlighting notes on the score as you hear them. And FATpick can listen as you play along with any guitar, giving instant feedback on the accuracy and timing of your performance.
Step One: Choose a Song
Search for songs that have been shared by other FATpick users. You can filter the catalog by instrument type and other features, and organize playlists by bookmarking your favorite songs or reviewing your play history.
Can’t find what you’re looking for? Add your own custom songs by importing any Guitar Pro file.
If you need inspriation, you can find thousands of songs in the Guitar Pro format at sites like Ultimate Guitar, GuitarProTabs.org, GProTab.net, or GuitarPro's own mySongBook.
Step Two: Choose a Track
Most songs in FATpick include the musical score for multiple instruments — or several different parts for the same instrument.
After selecting a song you may choose which specific part you want to play.
If you want, you can even configure the mix by changing the volume of or muting other tracks.
Step Three: Start Playing
FATpick displays the track you have selected in an enhanced tablature notation — a popular way for guitarists to read, write and share music.
Tabs are especially helpful for guitar and other fretted instruments because they show you exactly where to play each note. Tablature gives you the exact string and fret to use for each note.
Lines on the tab represent the strings on your guitar. Each note of the song is indicated by a number on one of the strings. That number tells you which fret to use when playing that note.
FATpick extends the standard tablature format to represent rhythm and timing in an intuitive way. Rather than just a number, FATpick shows each note as a “bubble” that indicates the duration of the note, and when it should be played. When the player is running, the notes of the song scroll from right-to-left. A line — the “playhead” — marks the current time in the song. Each note should be played when it hits the playhead, and for as long as the note is under the playhead.
Instant Feedback
FATpick listens as you play along with your guitar, scoring your performance and giving instant feedback on your timing and accuracy. There are three styles to choose from.
Plain
Hit/Miss
(default)
Early/Perfect/Late
By default FATpick marks each note as “hit” or “missed” as soon as you play it. Missed notes turn red. The notes you hit turn green.
For more detail, enable the early/perfect/late timing feedback. Now FATpick will report on the rhythm and timing of your performacne by tagging each note you hit on a scale of “very early” to “very late”. Hit notes are also color-coded on a red-green-blue spectrum to provide fine-grained timing feedback.
Or, disable the instant performance feedback by switching to “plain” mode. Now FATpick still tracks your performance and provides a summary at the end of the song, but without the distraction — or crutch — of real-time feedback.
You can switch between modes at any time — even in the middle of a song — from the Gameplay Settings menu.
Track Your Progress
FATpick reports a summary of your performance at the end of each song, helping you identify where you need to improve — and where you are doing well. An aggregate score — with leaderboards and personal records — helps you measure your improvement over time.
FATpick's personal stats dashboard shows you the “big picture” view of your guitar practice. Recognize how much you've accomplished with your total playtime and related stats. Track practice time — and stay motivated to keep the streak going — with stats and charts of recent activity. Heatmaps help you identify patterns in your practice schedule.
And So Much More…
FATpick has a bunch of advanced features for you to explore — and that will help you make the most of your practice time. And we're adding more all the time. For example:
- Use the count-in metronome to establish the tempo.
- Adjust the playback rate to slow a song down while you're still learning or practice playing faster than normal so that playing at the standard tempo feels leisurely.
- Control the app without taking your hands off of your guitar using voice commands.
- Drill in on specific parts of a song with repeat looping.
- Learn the fretboard for the current tuning with in-app fretboard charts.
- Tweak the pitch-detection algorithm and other setttings to work for your specific set-up and rig.
- Personalize the experience with skins and other customization settings.
User feedback and feature requests are a big part of our product roadmap. So if there are new features or other improvements you'd like to see please let us know. We love hearing from users. We've even collaborated with some to flesh out specific features in detail.
Best of all you can download FATpick for free right now and be up and running in minutes.
There are no time limits, no ads, and no features locked behind a premium paywall.
FATpick works with any guitar and your device's built-in microphone. No special cable or equipment is required.
FATpick also works with other input sources. You can use a built-in mic, an external mic, a direct input box, a guitar-to-aux or guitar-to-usb cable — pretty much any audio input device you can connect to your computer.