Your instruments live in Settings → Account → Instruments. It is a short list: one row per instrument you play, each with the tuning you play it in. Fretlist uses that list for the chord diagrams you see and for what new songs start as.
What the list changes
Chord diagrams. A guitar chord and a ukulele chord are different shapes with the same name. Fretlist draws the shapes for the instrument you are holding, not guitar ones transposed by wishful thinking. That is the first instrument in your list, on every song, unless you picked another instrument for that song. In a band, it is your Main in that band: see Your instruments in a band.
What a new song starts as. A new song takes its instrument and its tuning from the first row in your list, together. If your main is a ukulele in Standard, new songs start there. If it is a guitar in half step down, they start there. Amazing Grace, the starter song every new account gets, is charted for your main instrument too, so a ukulele player sees ukulele grips there.
Those two halves come from the same row deliberately. Taking the instrument from one place and the tuning from another is how a ukulele song ends up stamped with a guitar's tuning.
Adding an instrument
Pick from the list: guitar, bass, ukulele, mandolin, banjo, keys, drums, vocals, wind instrument.
Anything else, type it. A typed name that matches one of the above resolves to the real instrument rather than becoming a lookalike, so typing "Guitar" gives you a guitar, with its tunings and its chord library, not a text label that happens to say guitar.
For a stringed instrument that is not on the list, Fretlist asks how many strings it has and remembers it as, for example, Bouzouki (8). The string count travels with the instrument everywhere it is shown, shared songs included.
Chord libraries
Guitar and ukulele have full chord libraries, so Fretlist can draw any chord you name. Mandolin and banjo are recognized instruments with their own tunings and capo ranges, but their libraries are stubs: Fretlist will draw the shapes you write out yourself and tell you when it has none of its own to offer.
A typed stringed instrument starts with no library at all, but it has a fretboard, so you can build one. Open a song in Edit View with that instrument selected and tap a chord in the preview to define its shape; the song keeps it in a [Chords:Bouzouki (8)] block. In the normal song view the same tap saves a shape for you alone, like a transpose. See Getting the most out of Frets.
Keys, drums, vocals and wind instruments have no fret diagrams, for the obvious reason.
Tuning
Each row carries its own tuning. Pick a preset, or type your own: Open C, whatever you actually use.
Two kinds of tuning behave differently, and it is worth knowing which is which:
- Pitch shifts: half step down, whole step down. Every string moves by the same amount, so the shapes stay the same and only the sounding pitch changes. Fretlist can account for these, because the maths is a straight shift.
- Shape tunings: Drop D, Open G, DADGAD. These rearrange the strings, so the shapes themselves change. They are a voicing layout, not an offset, and Fretlist treats them as such rather than pretending they shift your key.
Imported songs and your tuning
A song you typed yourself is shown exactly as you typed it, whatever your tuning.
An imported song was written by someone else, for the tuning its source names: standard, unless an Ultimate Guitar page says otherwise. Fretlist keeps that tuning on the song and shows the chords for your own guitar. If your guitar is half a step down, you see the chords that sound like the record on it.
To read an imported song exactly as written, pick plain Guitar in the instrument menu on that song. It appears there when none of your guitars is in standard tuning.
Wind instruments
A trumpet, a sax or a clarinet reads its part in a different key from the band. Add Wind instrument and pick its key, and every chord is shown in the key you read in.
| Key | For example | |---|---| | C | flute, oboe, trombone, tuba | | Bb | trumpet, clarinet, tenor sax, soprano sax | | Eb | alto sax, baritone sax | | F | French horn | | D | D trumpet | | G | alto flute |
A new wind instrument starts in Bb. On a Bb instrument, a song in C shows D chords. The key badge still says C, because that is the key the band plays in, and the instrument badge beside it reads Winds · Bb (D): the key you read in, in brackets, the way a capo shows the shapes you play.
Type and import your songs the way the band's sheet reads them, in concert pitch. Fretlist does the moving, on screen, in Play Mode, in print and in exported files. Your own songs move too, since the key is about how you read, not about the song.
A line of note letters, like E B C for a sax riff, counts as a chord line and moves with the chords. Write the letters in capitals.
Play two horns? Add a second wind instrument in the other key and pick it on the songs you play it on.
Order matters
The first row is your primary. Drag to reorder.
Primary decides which chord diagrams you see and what new songs default to. Everything below it is still yours and still selectable on any song.
A primary without chord diagrams (vocals, keys, drums) means no chord diagrams: a drummer's songs show the chart without them.
This works offline too. Open Settings from the account menu, drag the instrument you are holding to the top and save: every song switches to it straight away, also in Play Mode. Fretlist sends the new list as soon as you are back online. If you changed the list on another device in the meantime, the device that syncs last wins.
Your instruments in a band
Each band keeps its own order of the same list. Switch to a band, open Settings → Instruments, and drag: the top one is your Main in that band. Play ukulele in one band and bass in another, and switching bands switches the chord diagrams with you. Until you reorder, a band follows your own order.
Adding, removing or retuning an instrument always changes your list everywhere. Only the order is per band. Reordering for a band works offline the same way as your own list.
You can also drag your instrument chips in the band's Band card on the dashboard. A band leader can put your instruments in order for their band the same way, but can't add, remove or change them.
One song on another instrument
Pick a different instrument for one song from the instrument menu on that song. That choice wins over everything above, for that song only.
An empty list is fine
A drummer or a singer has no chord instrument, and the list is allowed to be empty. Fretlist will not invent one: when a song does not say what it is for, it renders as guitar in standard tuning, which is a rendering fallback and not a claim about you.
Signing up pre-selects guitar to save the most common case a step. It is a row like any other. Remove it.