What's new in Captrice - May 2025
Hello there,
This is the 2nd issue of the Captrice newsletter and I'd like to begin by sharing my own practice data for the month of May.
Captrice started as a personal project to help me practice more deliberately and consistently. Ironically, working towards launching it kept me busy and my own practice suffered in the last few months. But I’ve come to realize that I’ll always be busy with one thing or another, so “being busy” has to stop being the excuse. Especially now that I have the exact practice tool that I wanted!
I set a goal to practice for at least 30 minutes every day this month. While I didn’t really meet the target, I can see clear improvement in my playing and I’m motivated to do better in June. As a bonus, using the app helped me discover and fix several bugs as well as prioritize the most useful features. Personal motivation, product validation and feature testing rolled into one - I'll take that as a win!
Major revamp of the analytics page
The analytics page got a much needed overhaul. I added a summary section and fixed a couple of subtle bugs in existing charts, making them actually useful instead of just eye candy.
Learning mode
Captrice’s focus is more on practice than learning — there are plenty of learning resources on the internet already. But I thought it’d be good to have MIDI playback along with notation. Most new users start with readily available exercises from the library and it might be useful for them to hear what they sounds like.
So Captrice has two modes now: the default practice mode with metronome, and a learning mode with GuitarPro-like MIDI audio player. To switch to learning mode, you have to click on the “headphones” icon near the tablature/notation section.
Library versions alongside collection names
Earlier, there was no indication that a collection was imported from the library. Users also wouldn’t know if a new version of the collection was available. This is now addressed.
Recently added library collections are shown first
The newly published library collections get highlighted this way instead of getting buried down the list.
Non-empty collections can now be deleted
Previously, Captrice only let you delete empty collections — a restriction I had added after accidentally deleting a wrong collection myself. But this limitation doesn't guarantee protection from data loss (you can just delete all exercises first). So I've replaced it with an additional step where you have to complete a “challenge” by exactly typing the name of the collection to verify it’s the one you intend to delete.
Bug fixes
Some users had pointed out that the “bare” domain captrice.io didn’t work in browsers that enforced secure urls. It has been fixed.
Various minor bug fixes and quite a few internal/performance related improvements were released this month. You may have noticed better initial load time and memory utilization in the browser, if you care about those things.
Additions to the library
Only one new library collection was added this month:
Guthrie Govan's alternate picking exercises (the popular Lick Library video)
Some older collections were fixed/improved so remember to update them. Thanks to the MIDI playback feature for catching notation errors!
Tip of the month
Did you know that you can set the metronome tempo by clicking on the bpm column from a practice entry.
I find it pretty handy when working on speed building — begin each practice session at the second-lowest tempo from the previous session, then aim to beat the highest tempo from that session. Ensures that I am progressing steadily towards the target tempo.
What's next?
Some analytics improvements are still in the works to make the data even more actionable.
I'm considering adding journal/note-taking functionality based on my own needs. Would this be useful for you too?
You might have noticed there’s no way to share a direct link to a library collection. Shareable collection links have been on the roadmap for a while, and I want to prioritize it. It'll also make the library more SEO-friendly.
Work on “device sync” is in progress. Meanwhile, I'd also like to improve the experience on mobile and other smaller devices.
While I’m happy about Captrice's no-signup, no-tracking policy, it leaves me in the dark about who's using the app and how they're finding it. If you've tried Captrice, how has been your experience? Would you share it with other guitar players/musicians in your circle? Any suggestions for improvement? I’d love to hear from you at vineet@captrice.io or naikvin@gmail.com.
More updates next month. Thanks for reading!