Build Log
Built in the open, one practice session at a time.
Tonecrafted is a set of free guitar tools built by one person, in small windows of time, over many weeks. This log is the running record — what shipped, why it makes practicing better, and the occasional look under the hood for the curious. No hype, no roadmap theater. If something isn't built yet, it says so.
July 11, 2026
A free 4-week practice plan (and this build log)
Took an honest look at the site this week and didn't love what I saw: every page asked you to "join the waitlist" without giving you anything first. That's backwards. So the ask is now an offer — a free 4-week beginner practice plan, visible immediately, no email required. Week 1 is timing with Pulse at a slow 60 BPM, week 2 is learning the fretboard, week 3 is your first scale, week 4 is training your ear. Each week links straight into the tool you need.
This build log launched the same week, for the same reason: if the tools are built in the open, the story should be too.
Under the hood
The trigger was data, not vibes: pulled live signup numbers and they were zero. Zero. The problem wasn't traffic — the site had no immediate-value offer, and nobody trades an email to a free hobby site for "future tools." The plan delivers its value on-page with no dependency on email infrastructure, which conveniently isn't finished yet — so the page deliberately doesn't promise weekly emails it can't send.
Also chased a phantom JavaScript error that an earlier audit blamed on our code. Full stack traces showed it originated in Cloudflare's own analytics script — not one matching call exists anywhere in this codebase. Added a filter so third-party noise stops polluting the error logs.
July 9, 2026
Path's map now explains itself
A screenshot of Path's Gravity Map surfaced two real problems. First: the map labels every note with a single letter for its role — H for Home, C for Color, D for Drive — but C, D, and E are also note names, so two dots labeled "C" could be completely different pitches. Confusing at best. There's now a proper legend under the map, and the subtitle spells it out: the letter is the note's role, not its pitch.
Second: "See the scale" looked like a button and did nothing. Now it does what it should — tap it and the map dims every note except the ones that share your selected note's role, so you can actually see the shape you're hearing.
Under the hood
The interval math underneath was correct the whole time — this was purely a missing-legend problem, which is almost worse, because right answers presented confusingly still read as bugs. Rule extracted from this one: any single-letter or abbreviated label needs an on-screen legend. Tooltips don't count — half the visits are on phones, and phones don't hover.
July 8, 2026
120 scale pages became real guides
Fretboard has a reference page for every root-and-scale combination — 120 in all. They used to be thin: a diagram, a note list, done. Every one of them is now a full teaching reference: what the scale actually is and why it's named that, a note-by-note table explaining each note's job (the blues scale's b5 gets "blue note — pass through it, don't sit on it"), a ▶ button to hear the scale, tap-any-note-to-hear-it, a 4-step practice plan, and an FAQ. They even print cleanly, so a page like A Blues can sit on a music stand.
Under the hood
One template, content written once per scale family, with root-specific note names computed at build time rather than hand-written 12 times — and the build fails loudly if a scale is missing its guide entry, so a new scale can't ship half-documented. All 120 pages are verified by an automated harness on every build: correct notes, correct audio pitches (A blues root is exactly 220 Hz), at least 3 FAQs each.
Each page also grew a tiny "Was this page helpful?" widget. That feedback lands in the same database as everything else — no analytics suite, just honest signals.
July 2, 2026
We dropped the "AI" from Fretboard
The fretboard trainer launched as "Fretboard AI." Problem: there are no AI features live in it. It's a really good interactive trainer — tap any fret and hear its real pitch, play the find-the-note game, light up chord tones inside a scale — but calling it AI before the AI exists is exactly the kind of overpromising this site is supposed to avoid. So it's just Fretboard now. The same week it gained audio on every fret, three new scales, and four full visual themes.
The rule that came out of this applies everywhere on the site: if it's not built, say so. Every 🔒 "coming soon" chip you see marks something actually coming — not something hidden behind a paywall.
Under the hood
Renaming public copy is cheap; renaming live infrastructure is risk with no user benefit — so the worker and domain kept their internal names while every visible reference changed. The audio needed no libraries: the Web Audio API, one triangle oscillator, and a decay envelope. Frequency at any fret is just the open-string frequency times 2^(fret/12) — the same math the scale pages now use.
Want to hear when new tools ship? The practice plan page has a keep-me-posted box — or just check back here. New entries land most weeks.