Catloaf Software Blog

A few days ago, we released the latest version of Fretuoso for iOS.

Among the usual set of bug fixes and minor improvements, we also included a brand new feature giving you yet another option to focus your fretboard training: a time limit for guessing each note.

This new option can be enabled by going to the training options, within the settings menu or from the wheel icon that appears in training modes.

The new training option

This option basically allows you to set a time limit within which you need to guess the note prompted to you. Being a training option, this only applies to the fretboard training and staff training modes, not the game mode which is independent of these settings.

The maximum value is 10 seconds; the option is turned off by default.

In effect, this allows you to make your training more challenging, and adds a time element which was previously mostly relegated to the game mode.

Any guess not made in the allotted time will effectively count as a miss, though you will get a nice TOO LATE sign to tell you you were too slow to answer! We suggest you start with a higher value and progressively lower it as you get more comfortable.

You should have answered faster!

We would like to publicly acknowledge our user Andrew Owen who suggested this new feature a few weeks ago. We are proud to be listening to our users, so feel free to shoot us an email with your feedback and suggestions. We just might turn your idea into a new feature...

Have fun with this and keep practicing daily!

Before there was the new Fretuoso app for iOS, came its venerable grand-daddy just a few years back.

Guitar Trainer was a Java app for feature phones and BlackBerry; the first version came out in 2007 before the iPhone even made its mark on the mobile industry. It was regularly updated up till version 1.2 released back in 2011, when further development pretty much stopped in favor of Trainer HD (now known as Fretuoso).

Up till now, the original Guitar Trainer app was still available for sale on a number of legacy app stores, including directly from our mobiletutor.org website. The cost was about $5 per copy on average, which for such an old app was rather high. Looking at recent usage for the app, it appears that it is still in use mostly by people in developing countries stuck with legacy feature phones.

To celebrate the new year and the recent release of Fretuoso, we have decided in turn to make the original Java Guitar Trainer completely free! The app will no longer see any new updates, but you will be able to enjoy it as it is for as long as it works on your old phone without having to spend any money. We hope it will still be a useful tool for users of legacy phones around the world.

To get your copy, you can now head to our product page and request a free download code. Further instructions will then be provided to help you complete the download and installation. For BlackBerry users, the app can also be downloaded on the BlackBerry App World store directly.

We still have a demo version of the app available, but at this point it should be considered deprecated. Feel free to upgrade to the full version right now if you were still using it.

If you have been using our Trainer HD educational games, the app has been rebranded!

Trainer HD is now Fretuoso. We also have a new logo!

• Adds full support for new devices, including the new iPhone 6S and the large iPad Pro.
• Also supports the latest iOS 9 system. We had to drop support for iOS 6, and you'll now need at least iOS 7.1 to use Fretuoso on your device.
• 3D Touch shortcuts on the new iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. Force-press the app icon and you'll be able to quickly start or resume training, game, or free play.

• See more of the instruments on the large screen of the iPad Pro.
• We also fixed a bunch of nasty bugs!

We are proud to announce that the newest version of our Texts From apps (including the popular Texts From Jesus, Texts From Oscar Wilde and Texts From Founding Fathers) is out.

All of those apps now include built-in support for Apple Watch. This simple app allows you to quickly access the quote of the day from your wrist, as well as share it with your friends over Facebook. A Glance is even available for quick access to the daily quote simply by swiping up from the watch face.

In addition, Texts From Jesus now includes a lot of new verses (by popular request), mostly drawn from the Gospel of Thomas.

Texts From Founding Fathers also includes quotes from four new Fathers: James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams and John Jay.

Finally, we have redesigned the websites for each of these apps. Check them out!

If like us you are passionate about building audio-oriented apps for iOS, you might be interested in checking out the latest version of the new AudioKit open-source library.



Version 2.1 was just released, and it is the first version to include significant contributions from Catloaf Software's own lead engineer, Stéphane Peter.

AudioKit is a powerful audio library based on the popular Csound library, providing an easy-to-use API in Objective-C and Swift with powerful features for audio synthesis, processing and analysis.

Development is very active and new features are being added all the time, and we are proud of being a part of the core team behind this effort.

We plan to use AudioKit as the audio engine behind the next major version of our popular Trainer HD apps, and more. We're sure our users will be equally excited about the new features we'll be able to add to our apps thanks to AudioKit!

We are proud to announce the release of the latest version of our Trainer HD series of educational apps for iOS. Version 5.7 is a major update to the apps, and besides a slew of bug fixes it contains a few nice new features!

• The staff display has been greatly improved to make it more readable and intuitive. It now scrolls from right to left, which should feel more natural. It also now supports the common 8va/8vb notation to make it easier to read notes on the far sides of the fretboard. You won't have to count lines on the staff anymore!

• Introducing scale focus! You will now find over 40 types of scales in the training options, allowing to focus your training on any one of them in the key of your choice. When picking a scale, only notes from that scale will be used for training.

New "Focus on a scale" training option

• Free Play mode can now apply training options to restrict which notes are shown on the fretboard, making it easy to visualize the scale of your choice on the fretboard map.

You can now apply training options to the fretboard map in Free Play.

• A new wheel icon is now present in training, staff and free play modes, allowing quick access to the training options screen to change the settings without interrupting your session.

Just in time for the holidays, we are proud to announce the release of the latest version of our Trainer HD series of educational apps for musicians.

Version 5.6 brings full support for the latest Apple devices, the bigger iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Of course, we still support all previous devices, as well as the iPad.


This is also the first release to bring full support for the new iOS 8, on all devices. As a side note, we have had to drop support for iOS 5 in this release, and a minimum version of iOS 6 is required to install this update. If you still have an old device running iOS 5 (mostly the first generation iPad), we urge you to update it to a newer version of the system if you can, or ask Santa to bring you a new iPad.

We have also fixed a whole lot of bugs, and managed to make the application significantly lighter, making it faster to download.

All editions of Trainer HD have been updated and are now immediately available to install from the App Store.

• Free Edition (with in-app purchases)
• Guitar Edition
• Bass Edition
• Ukulele Edition
• Mandolin Edition
• Banjo Edition
• Complete Edition (no IAPs!)

Happy Holidays!

To commemorate the American holiday and the start of the shopping season, we are having a big sale on our Trainer HD educational apps from Thanksgiving Day (November 27th) all the way till the end of the weekend. All apps and instruments are now deeply discounted!

The various editions of Trainer HD are the following :

• Free Edition: select individual instruments now just $0.99 (down from $2.99), or $2.99 for the complete bundle with all instruments.
• Instrument Editions: now just $0.99 (down from $2.99) - this includes :
• Guitar Edition
• Bass Edition
• Ukulele Edition
• Banjo Edition
• Mandolin Edition
• Complete Edition: now just $2.99 (down from $6.99)