A little help.
A lot of possibilities.

Start here

Your first five minutes

Green Guitarist Studio is a free local Windows desktop app by Jonathan A. Corona. You can start without a guitar LED device or an online account.

1. Install and open Green Guitarist Studio from the desktop or Start menu.
2. Try the included First light study. It is an original practice exercise with lead and rhythm guitar tracks.
3. Press Play or Space. Watch the tab and virtual fretboard follow the music.
4. Slow down the playback speed, then use Practice this bar to repeat a small section.
5. When ready, use Open tab or Ctrl+O to open a supported Guitar Pro file you have permission to use.

Your practice preferences and recent tabs save automatically. Playback and audio capture remain stopped when you launch the app.

Your music

Open a tab and choose a track

Use Open tab, press Ctrl+O, or drag a Guitar Pro file into the app. Then select the guitar track you want to practice.

The app checks the actual file format and embedded version. Supported extensions include .gp3, .gp4, .gp5, .gpx, and .gp; an extension alone does not establish compatibility. See the compatibility guide.

The last 20 opened files appear in Recent tabs. These are references to your files, so moving or deleting a file can make a saved entry unavailable. Removing an entry from the list does not delete your file.

The last available tab can reopen with its selected track, position, and loop. No commercial song library is included.

Practice

Slow it down. Loop it. Make it yours.

Playback speed ranges from 25% to 150%. Choose a comfortable speed where you can make the transitions cleanly.

1. Set the first and last measures for your loop, then enable Loop. For one measure, choose Practice this bar.
2. Enable Count-in to give yourself time to get ready.
3. Enable Click for the metronome during normal playback.
4. Click the tablature or use the transport slider to seek to a new position.

Try three comfortable repetitions before nudging the speed up. You can always bring it back down.

The tabs, fretboard, and outgoing LED updates follow normal playback, seeking, and tempo changes. Count-in, metronome, and speed apply to normal playback; Listen & wait is untimed.

Visual guidance

Ghost fingers and chord anticipation

Ghost fingers overlays translucent finger silhouettes at the suggested fretting positions. A long finger across several strings represents a barre.

The finger numbers are 1 index, 2 middle, 3 ring, 4 pinky, and T thumb. Open strings need no fretting finger. Written fingering in a score takes priority; otherwise the app suggests a chord shape or hand position.

Finger colors switches the legend from pitch colors to finger colors. Notes assigned to the same finger share a color, including a suggested barre.

Chord anticipation previews the target positions across the current bar. These positions form a sequence: you should not hold every highlighted fret at once. Beat cards help show the order and position changes.

Suggested fingerings can be imperfect, especially for unusual voicings. Choose a comfortable position. All these display switches save automatically.

Setup

Choose your microphone or guitar input

Open Audio inputs in the sidebar. Use Refresh & identify microphones to request microphone permission and show the available device names.

Select your built-in mic, USB mic, or guitar interface exposed as a Windows audio capture device. Tuner, Live mode, and Listen & wait all use this choice.

• Use a clean signal with modest gain. Heavy distortion and room noise make pitch detection harder.
• A passive guitar needs a suitable audio interface. A headphone output is not a guitar input.
• Check that Windows allows microphone access for desktop apps.
• Changing devices stops capture. Start the desired listening mode again afterward.

Version 0.5.1 uses Windows audio capture and does not include native ASIO or software input monitoring. Device choice is saved. No microphone audio is recorded or uploaded by the app.

Listening

Listen & wait, chords, and bends

Enable Listen & wait to hold each target until the app hears a stable matching pitch. Playback audio pauses, while the tab, fretboard, and LEDs stay on the target.

Under Practice & settings, try Sensitive if quieter notes are being missed. Balanced is the default; Strict requires stronger confirmation. Higher sensitivity can also react to more background noise.

Chord match (beta) checks the expected pitch classes across a short strum window. It cannot prove that every string or doubled octave is correct. If a chord is difficult to recognize, disable chord matching and pick each highlighted target pitch separately.

Bend-friendly matching accepts pitches within the bend or whammy range written in the score. It assists progression; it does not grade the full bend motion or timing.

Briefly mute between identical repeated notes or chords so the app can detect a new attack. Use Skip target for a difficult ornament. Recognition depends on your signal and remains experimental with real guitar audio.

Listening

Tune up and explore Live mode

Choose Guitar tuner → Start tuner. Pluck one string at a time. Auto mode finds the nearest chromatic note; the string buttons lock to the selected track’s tuning.

The tuner shows frequency, cents, and flat/sharp direction, with a green center within ±5 cents. Its reference is A4 = 440 Hz.

Live mode listens without following a tab, displaying estimated pitches and common chord names. The fretboard shows one possible position for what it hears.

Audio alone cannot identify your actual string, fret, hand position, or doubled chord voicing. Chord names are estimates. Close the tuner or turn off the listening mode to release the audio input.

Visual guidance

Song maps, white lights, and fret guides

Song map shows the positions used by the selected guitar track. In Light settings, choose the whole song, current bar only, or the current bar plus 1–20 bars ahead.

Choose note/finger colors or white, and dim or full brightness. With Current bar only + White LEDs, upcoming targets stay white until played. Current notes use their normal colors; completed targets disappear unless needed again. Looping or seeking back restores the preview.

Fret guides lights every string at frets used in the current bar. Choose minimum white, minimum green, or full white. Current notes appear above the background guides.

Clear overlays disables all four visual guidance layers. The 24-fret virtual view scrolls horizontally rather than shrinking its string spacing. Original Fret Zealot LEDs cover only frets 0–14.

Hardware

Connect the original Fret Zealot

1. Turn on the original Fret Zealot and disconnect it from other apps.
2. Make sure Windows has a working Bluetooth Low Energy adapter.
3. Click Connect Fret Zealot and select your device.
4. Start with the included study and compare its onscreen notes with the LEDs.

The integration targets six strings and frets 0–14 using the manufacturer SDK protocol. Out-of-range notes are omitted from LED output. Screen and LED colors are matched within the device’s supported color range, but physical appearance can differ.

Command generation and synchronization have software tests. Physical pairing, LED appearance, latency, and reliability still require verification on the actual device.

A hardware microphone is usable only if it appears as a Windows audio input. The app does not use an undocumented onboard microphone stream.

Reference

Files, hardware & compatibility

Release 0.5.1 was checked with Electron 44.7.0 and alphaTab 1.8.4. Representative file tests cover these families:

Unsupported: Guitar Pro 1/2, unknown or newer families, protected/encrypted formats, and unrecognized file headers. A future file ending in .gp is not automatically supported. Representative tests do not cover every notation feature or vendor revision.

Playback uses original synthetic practice tones. Proprietary RSE instruments and embedded backing audio are not used. Native ASIO is not included in this release.

The desktop installer is for Windows x64 and is currently unsigned. Hardware behavior and real-guitar recognition require practical testing.

Your setup

Recent files and saved settings

The app saves display choices, tempo, count-in, metronome, input device, listening preferences, window bounds, recent tabs, and per-file practice sessions to a local JSON file.

Use Practice & settings → Show settings.json to find it. Close the app before editing the JSON manually. If a configuration file is damaged, the app keeps a backup before restoring defaults.

Recent entries point to files in their original locations. The app does not upload or copy them into an online song library. Removing an entry erases its saved reference/session, not the underlying score.

Troubleshooting

When something isn’t working

The app doesn’t hear my guitar

Check the selected input and Windows microphone permissions. Try a clean signal, move the mic closer, reduce room noise, and choose Sensitive. Briefly mute between repeated identical targets. Chord recognition is experimental.

A tab won’t open

Check the actual file version against the compatibility guide. Renaming a file does not convert its format. If a recent entry is unavailable, use Open tab to find the file at its new location.

The LEDs don’t match the whole neck

The original device supports frets 0–14. Notes beyond that remain onscreen. Check the selected guitar track and turn off Song map or Fret guides if you only want current-note lights.

I need to stop the overlays

Use Clear overlays in the desktop app.