Backbeat

A practice companion for musicians, right in the side panel. No servers, local-only.

Practice tools for musicians in your browser's side panel. Metronome, tuner, chords, scales, harmony and drums in one place. Backbeat puts a complete practice toolkit right next to your tabs. Open it in the side panel and it stays there while you watch a lesson, read sheet music or look up a song, so you never have to switch windows to check a chord or start the click. The metronome runs on the browser's audio clock, so it never drifts, even with the window minimized. Set the time signature and subdivision, tap in your tempo or type it directly. When you want more, there are practice tools built in: a count-in, a speed trainer that raises the tempo every few bars, and a gap trainer that goes silent for a bar or two to test how well you hold time on your own. The tuner plays warm plucked string reference tones for guitar, bass, ukulele, violin and cello. Tap a string, tune by ear, tap again to stop. Concert pitch is selectable (432, 440 or 442 Hz) and no microphone is needed, so the extension asks for no access to anything. The chords tab shows 15 chord types on any root, drawn as a real guitar shape or on piano keys. Press play to hear exactly what the diagram shows, strummed on guitar or rolled on piano. The scales tab does the same for 20 scales with guitar tablature, played at your practice tempo, with a root drone for improvising. If you play with a second guitarist, the harmony tab shows which notes work over any chord, finds the key from a typed progression and lays out the classic harmony lines in 3rds and 6ths. And when you would rather practice to a groove than a click, the drum machine gives you a 16 step sequencer with six ready-made patterns and a swing control, locked to the same tempo as the metronome. Everything runs and stays on your device. Every sound is synthesized live in the browser, so there is nothing to download, no account to make and no tracking of any kind. Backbeat is free, forever. ## What's new in version 1.2.0 ## - Proper flat spellings — notes are no longer spelled sharps-only: chords, scales and keys now use the accidentals they're conventionally written with (Eb major reads Eb G Bb, F major's fourth is Bb, C#m stays C#m). The root pickers show both names, like "D#/Eb". - Appearance setting — pick System, Light, Dark, or Midnight from the gear menu, instead of only being able to force Midnight. - Smaller Ko-fi button — the support button is now sized and aligned to match the footer's permissions note instead of dwarfing it. - Alternate tunings — the Tuner tab now offers Drop D, DADGAD, Open G, Open D, half-step down, Drop C, and C Standard for guitar, and Drop D, Drop C, and C Standard for bass, alongside Standard. - 5-string bass — a new instrument option in the Tuner tab, with Standard and Drop A tunings. - No more clipped tabs — the tab bar now compresses its labels at narrow panel widths instead of cutting off the last tabs. - Clearer trainer state — the speed and gap-click trainer settings dim while their trainer is off, and editing a dimmed setting switches the trainer on instead of silently doing nothing. - Tidier Harmony tab — the diatonic-intervals table is now a collapsible section, closed by default; open it and it stays open across panel reopens. - Plainer wording — the drum rows now say Open, Hat, Snare, and Kick instead of OH/HH/SN/KD, the gear menu says "Keep header/footer visible" instead of "Pin", and the progression hint lost its awkward leading ellipsis. - Subdivisions that fit the meter — in 6/8 and 7/8 the subdivision menu now offers Eighth and Sixteenth (the eighth is the pulse) instead of the quarter-based names, and switching meters keeps the choice musical. - Friendlier empty setlist — the Saved tempos list now shows "Nothing saved yet" before the first save instead of nothing at all.