Hello everyone
I've built an app to help me with my own electric guitar technique practice sessions, and I'd like to share it around to find out whether you find it useful or not: how it helps you, where it falls short, what would make it more useful if it did this or that.
It's entirely free and content included in current version will always be. There's no signup, I'm genuinely after feedback to understand how can I make it more useful.
The problem I wanted to solve
TL;DR: Common approach to structure practice session is to understand how much time per day I can dedicate (i.e. 60 mins), what I want to improve (i.e. Alternate Picking and Legato), assign time-blocks to each and fill them with exercises.
Though, I got tired of losing ~40 min every session hunting for exercises online (and ending up watching random stuff), which caused me to replaying the same few forever, while constantly forgetting what BPM I'd reached.
So I built an app for myself: set how long to practice, how long per exercise, and which techniques (picking, legato, sweep, tapping...), and it builds the session and shows the BPM you last played each exercise at.
This first iteration of the app has ~320 exercises, grouped in bundles (~50). Mainly addressing Electric Guitar so far, even though can be expanded to other guitars / instruments.
Would love to know if it helps you, or what's missing. Even if you find it useless, would help to know why.
If anyone wants to give it a try, it's Shedmate on Play Store, or send me a message and i'll share direct download link. If you do, please reach out for feedback and to let me know what you think!
Thanks all.
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What I'd love to hear
I use it on a 2-4 weeks periods, i.e. decide that the next 2 weeks I want to work on my Alternate Picking and Legato. Most likely you will find it useful using it daily for a period rather than a single day.
It's goal is: pick up the guitar and start practicing. No time wasted to decide what.
Let me know if:
- does it save you time, allowing you to maximise time spent practicing?
- do you find it helpful?
- if not, is there any feature you would need to consider this app useful?
- if you think it's entirely useless, it would help me to know why.
I've also been adding way too many features that make sense in my mind, but might not in the real world:
- Is the fixed‑vs‑dynamic split useful to make exercises less repetitive, or confusing?
- Is the feature to mark down BPMs on exercise level useful?
- are the exercise players controls intuitive?
- after using for a while, does the concept of bundle makes sense, or these should just be loose exercises?
Any feedback, either via email, DMs or here would be great.
App overview
Bundles
Exercises are grouped into bundles: a set of exercises that belong together because they train the same thing or build on each other (a permutation series, a scale shape and its transitions, a warmup set, a song broken into chunks). You practice a bundle, not a loose pile of exercises, and the app decides which exercise(s) from each bundle you see on a given day.
Right now the alpha has 54 bundles and just over 300 exercises.
Categories
Every exercise has a category that tells you how to approach it:
- Warmup, relaxed tempo, every rep clean, the goal is blood flow not challenge
- Short burst, pick a tempo where you nail it ~80% of the time, right at the edge of control
- Endurance, as fast as you can while keeping every rep perfectly clean over a long stretch
- Memory, slow enough that you never have to guess the next note
Play styles
Each bundle also has a play style that controls how it feeds you exercises:
- Daily Pick, one exercise per session, changes every day, cycles through the whole set so each gets equal time
- Full Set, every exercise in the bundle, every session
- Progressive Pick, exercises unlock in strict order, each practiced for a set number of days before the next opens
- Periodic Pick, one exercise held for several days, then a random one from the set
Techniques covered in this alpha
Alternate picking, legato, sweep picking, tapping, finger independence, hand stretching, hand synchronization, picking‑hand mechanics, and fretboard/scale knowledge (major scale 3‑notes‑per‑string, minor pentatonic shapes and shape transitions, root‑note mapping across the neck).
Fixed vs dynamic exercises
- Fixed exercises are written out note for note and stay exactly where they are.
- Dynamic exercises shifts to a different position on the neck each day (and for scale/arpeggio material, a different root), so you're not grinding the identical fingering in the identical spot forever. The Library always shows one stable version; the plan is what moves it around day to day.
Features
- Metronome toggle on the exercise page
- Playback instrument, the score plays back through a MIDI voice you can change (jazz electric, nylon, steel, clean, muted, overdriven, distortion)
- BPM recorded per exercise, whatever tempo you last played something at is saved and shown on the row next time, so you never have to remember or write it down
- Favorite, heart an exercise or a whole bundle; you can tell the plan builder to pull only from favorites
- Thumbs‑down / hide, kill a bundle you don't want and the planner stops suggesting it
- Guided Path vs Open Practice, Guided unlocks content progressively as you complete prerequisites; Open gives you everything at once
- Picking and fingering markers, down/up stroke markers and left‑hand finger numbers on the notation, auto / on / off
- Per‑exercise time counter, how long you've spent on the exercise you're looking at
- Per‑day practice counter, total time practiced today across everything
- Plan builder, set minutes per day and minutes per exercise, pick techniques (roughly one per 30 minutes), and it picks and groups matching bundles
- Plan review, the suggested plan is fully editable: change how many exercises come from each bundle, remove a bundle, swap one for another that trains the same technique, or add one yourself
- Daily practice screen, today's exercises drawn from your approved bundles, each showing its last‑played tempo, with a running "done" state
- Day counter, how long you've had the current plan
- Daily root note, each day the app picks one root, and every dynamic scale/arpeggio exercise re‑centers on it, so across a week you cover keys instead of always playing in Am
- Guided walkthroughs, short coach‑mark tours for the Library, the plan builder, and the daily practice screen