Legal notice, privacy & affiliates

Legal notice

Lowforge (lowforge.app) is a free, independent website run by a private individual.

Operator

Pedro Cunha
Portugal
Email: hi@lowforge.app

Responsible for content

Pedro Cunha, contact via the email above.

Liability for content

The scale map, chord shapes and metronome are provided for practice and reference. I take care to keep them accurate, but I cannot guarantee that every piece of information is complete or error-free.

Liability for links

This site links to external websites (retailers and course platforms) whose content I do not control. Links were checked when they were added; if you find a problem, please let me know and I will remove or fix it.

Copyright

© 2026 Lowforge. The source code, texts, translations and design of this site are protected by copyright, all rights reserved, except for third-party material listed under Credits and licences. You are welcome to use the tool for free; copying or reusing the code, texts, translations or design requires my prior written permission. Musical concepts such as scales, chords and tunings are not claimed.

Trademarks

Product and brand names mentioned on this site belong to their respective owners. Mentioning them does not imply endorsement or partnership.

Fonts

Clarity City and Bebas Neue are used under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 and are served from this site.

Privacy

Controller

The person named in the legal notice above. Contact: hi@lowforge.app.

What Lowforge does not do

There are no accounts and no cookies. The scale map and metronome run entirely in your browser: sound is generated locally (notes are synthesised; the drum, bass and guitar sounds of the improvisation are small audio files served from this site, with no request to third parties) and nothing you play or select on the scale map or metronome is recorded or sent to me. There are two exceptions, both choices you make yourself. If you tap the star next to the tuning, your preferred tuning (tuning, root and scale, plus the strings if you customised them) is kept in your browser’s local storage on this device, so it is there next time; you can remove it at any time with “Forget”. And if you use the improvisation, its settings (style, progression, instruments, volumes, guide and count-in) are kept in the same place so the panel opens as you left it. None of this is ever sent to me or to anyone else, and clearing the site data in your browser removes it all. The only measurement is the anonymous visit statistics described below.

Visit statistics

Lowforge uses Umami Cloud (umami.is), a privacy-focused statistics service, to count visits and clicks on product links (only which product was clicked). Umami records the page viewed, the referring page, browser, operating system, device type, screen size, language and approximate country. According to the provider, it uses no cookies, collects no personally identifiable information, anonymises the data and never tracks you across websites; its servers are in the US and the EU. I use the figures only to understand how the site is used and to improve it. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, the legitimate interest in knowing which content is useful.

Server logs

When you load a page, the hosting provider (Hostinger International Ltd.) automatically processes the technical data your browser sends (IP address, date and time, page requested, browser and operating system, referring page) in order to deliver the site and keep it secure. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR, the legitimate interest in running a secure website. These logs are kept only for as long as the provider needs them to run and secure the service, under its own retention rules, and I do not use them to identify you.

Fonts

All fonts are served from this site. Viewing Lowforge makes no requests to Google or other font services.

Affiliate links

Clicking a product or course link takes you to the retailer's site (for example Thomann, Amazon, Sweetwater or TrueFire). From that point the retailer's privacy policy applies and the retailer may set its own cookies. I do not receive your personal data.

Contact form and email

If you use the contact form or write to me directly, I receive your name, email address and message. I use them only to reply to you. The form sends them as an email to hi@lowforge.app through the mail server of the hosting provider (Hostinger International Ltd.); the site does not store them in any database. To prevent abuse, the form keeps a one-way hash of your IP address (never the address itself) for one hour, to limit how many messages can be sent. I keep messages in my mailbox only for as long as I need them to deal with your request, and delete them at the latest 12 months after our last exchange. Legal basis: Art. 6(1)(b) and (f) GDPR. Giving your data is voluntary, but without an email address I cannot reply.

Music players (Spotify and Bandcamp)

Some blog articles include players from Spotify (Spotify AB, Sweden) and Bandcamp (USA). They are not loaded when you open the page: a player is only created when you click its button. From that moment your browser connects to that service, which receives your IP address and technical browser data and may set its own cookies under its own privacy policy. Legal basis: your consent, given by clicking (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR). If you do not click, nothing is loaded.

Your rights

You have the right to access, rectify and erase your data, to restrict or object to its processing, and to data portability. Write to hi@lowforge.app. You can also complain to a data protection authority; in Portugal this is the CNPD (www.cnpd.pt).

Affiliate disclosure

Lowforge is free and currently has no active affiliate programmes. The links under Gear for this tuning, Learn and Maintenance go to shops such as Thomann, Amazon, Sweetwater and TrueFire, but they are plain shop searches: I earn no commission, and no retailer, brand or network pays me anything to be listed here.

I plan to apply to affiliate programmes of some of these shops. If and when I am accepted, some links will become affiliate links (where buying through them earns me a small commission at no extra cost to you). This page and the on-site notice will be updated accordingly, with the name of each programme and network.

Suggestions are chosen to fit the tuning you select — string gauge, number of strings, bass or guitar — never by commission.

Credits and licences

Drum sounds

The drum sounds of the improvisation come from the MuldjordKit, a Tama Superstar drum kit recorded in 2010 by Lars Muldjord and made available through the DrumGizmo project. The SFZ version used here was mapped by kinwie and converted to FLAC.

Source: github.com/sfzinstruments/DrumGizmo.MuldjordKit. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Changes made

Lowforge modified the material: a small selection of single hits was taken from the multi-microphone recordings, mixed down to stereo (close microphone, overheads and ambience), trimmed, faded, level-adjusted and compressed to MP3. Lowforge’s own code then plays them at different volumes and in varying order. These adapted sound files are shared under the same CC BY 4.0 licence: if you reuse them, credit the creators as above and say that they were modified.

Disclaimer of warranties

As set out in section 5 of the licence, the licensed material is offered as-is and as-available, without representations or warranties of any kind, and the licensor’s liability is excluded to the extent possible.

No endorsement

The creators of the kit, kinwie and the DrumGizmo project have not reviewed, endorsed or sponsored Lowforge and are not responsible for it. Please do not contact them about Lowforge or about this sound: write to hi@lowforge.app instead.

Bass sounds

The bass sounds come from Picked Bass YR, samples of a Yamaha RBX electric bass recorded by Andrea Biasior and published by the FreePats project (version 2019-09-30). Source: github.com/freepats/electric-bass-YR. They are released under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 public domain dedication, which does not require attribution; Lowforge credits them anyway.

Lowforge cut the notes, normalised their level and compressed them to mono MP3 files. If the guitar sounds cannot be loaded, the guitar falls back to these same bass samples, raised in pitch and distorted in your browser. Andrea Biasior and FreePats have not reviewed, endorsed or sponsored Lowforge and are not responsible for it.

Guitar sounds

The guitar sounds come from Electric Guitar FSBS Distorted #2 (version 2022-09-11), published by the FreePats project: a Fender electric guitar (basic model) recorded directly through an audio interface and then run through an amplifier and an effects rack. Source: freepats.zenvoid.org. It is released under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 public domain dedication, which does not require attribution; Lowforge credits it anyway. The page does not name an individual recorder, so the credit goes to the FreePats project.

Lowforge took a few notes (C2 to B3, two takes each), cut them to 4 seconds with a fade-out, normalised their level and compressed them to mono MP3 files; short notes are filtered and cut in your browser to sound like palm muting. FreePats has not reviewed, endorsed or sponsored Lowforge and is not responsible for it.

Those same notes were later run, once, through a Neural Amp Modeler capture of an Orange Rockerverb mk3 amplifier ("Chug Norris", from the Headbangers Ball amp pack on tone3000.com, modeled by deathblossomaudio), to give the guitar a more authentic metal amp tone. Only the resulting audio is published, as that capture's licence allows; the amp model file itself is not redistributed.

MIDI files

The MIDI files you export from the improvisation contain notes only, with no audio. Lowforge makes no claim over them, so you can use them freely.