Let’s Frets! Assisting Guitar Students During Practice via Capacitive Sensing

Abstract

Learning a musical instrument requires regular exercise. However, students are often on their own during their practice sessions due to the limited time with their teachers, which increases the likelihood of mislearning playing techniques. To address this issue, we present Let’s Frets - a modular guitar learning system that provides visual indicators and capturing of finger positions on a 3D-printed capacitive guitar fretboard. We based the design of Let’s Frets on requirements collected through in-depth interviews with professional guitarists and teachers. In a user study (N=24), we evaluated the feedback modules of Let’s Frets against fretboard charts. Our results show that visual indicators require the least time to realize new finger positions while a combination of visual indicators and position capturing yielded the highest playing accuracy. We conclude how Let’s Frets enables independent practice sessions that can be translated to other musical instruments.