In the Beginning...

Sounds made with vibrating strings or blown across reeds, sounds booming from stretched skins… Sounds of voices, giving life and spirit to the air… Every day our sounds are the sounds of being here. They are an intrinsic part of the collective experience.

Music seduces, tickles, and offends our ears freely and without apology. We feel its motion, anticipate the direction, in rapt attention follow the lead wherever it would take us. We revel when music goes where we expect and hesitate when it leads us astray.

The greatest reward of music comes when we listen to it most openly. What is this phenomenon that even the woodwinds and soundwaves obey it? What can explain its mysterious hold over us?

Music Theory

In order to communicate about music we need a language to reflect it. We give names to notes and the spaces between them. We observe relationships between notes and spaces and we name those. From this simple process of observation Music Theory is born.

The Western 12 Tone System was formalized long ago, originally under the auspices of the Christian church, to center the institution of music around the mystical number 12. Okay - maybe that's only a rumor…

Whatever the intent, it has been convenient to have a single standardized system for so long, because generations of Music Theorists have learned much about the language of music, and maybe a little more about Human nature.

A Tool For Exploration

Music is represented in many ways other than the obvious. It can be written down on a staff with familiar note shapes. We can look at music on an oscilloscope as it creates squiggly air vibrations. Music can appear in special notation for different instruments, like guitar tablature.

All of these systems of re-presenting music are great. Every different way we look at something tells us just a little more about it. With that in mind…

FretPet is an ongoing project to discover new and dynamic ways of representing music, in order to reveal its hidden relationships and to make those revelations available to students. The concentration on guitar is preliminary, but makes sense as the first choice. Why?

• More people own guitars than any other instrument
• Guitars are readily and cheaply available
• Guitar is easy to play while at the computer
• The author has a guitar

A Tool For Creation

FretPet does more than draw nifty pictures of dots on guitars. It supports a variety of applications. Among these:

• Find 12 different names for EVERY chord
• Find ALL playable versions of ALL chords ANYWHERE on the guitar neck
• Generate chord fingering for several different tunings
• Easily transpose chords to new keys
• Generate tonal and chordal movements between harmonies and keys
• Build chord progressions around keys and modes
• Keep a record of favorite picking patterns
• Obtain tablature and chord diagrams for any chord
• Analyze individual chords or sets of chords
• QuickTime™ playback of chord progressions
• MIDI support through Opcode Music System™

FretPet Is Fun

More than anything FretPet is meant to be enjoyable. I've skipped some of the typical Mac application interface to make FretPet look and feel more like an entertainment program. This is more than just a cosmetic choice.

FretPet is meant to be treated first and foremost as a toy. There is a good reason why making music is called PLAYING. If you find yourself becoming overwhelmed by the many options FretPet presents then please don't push yourself or struggle with it. Go take a hike, read a good book, jam on your guitar - and come back later.

Go nuts with the program. Randomly tweak the buttons and toss together notes out of chaos. Stick on a picking pattern, slide it around, twist things up. Build a pile of noise as ugly as you can make it. I guarantee you'll be glad you did. Because out of that chaos will come some of the best stuff you've ever made.