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Show HN: Teoria.js - Music theory for JavaScript

saebekassebil.github.com

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Re: Show HN: Teoria.js - Music theory for JavaScript

#11

Post by jtheory »

simmons wrote: post #7
lowboy wrote: post #3

This isn't really what I expected when I saw "music theory". It would be more aptly titled something like "frequency visualizer of chords".

I took a quick look at the Javascript code on saebekassebil's GitHub, and it does seem to be the start of some sort of music theory library. The waveform visualizer demo just doesn't seem to be very revealing of what the library is about.

The actual library does look like it does quite a bit more than waveforms -- it's mostly focused on relationships of notes (in scales, intervals, etc.), and perhaps only secondarily on frequencies. Interesting!

I have done similar work in Java -- built a library exploring note relationships, and also handling basic notation display -- but one of these days I'm going to need to migrate everything from Java applets (I know, I know) to HTML5, so I'm collecting these kinds of resources that may prove useful....

The name selection isn't great, BTW... there's been a well-known music theory website at teoria.com for more than a decade. It's a generic term (just "theory" in Spanish), so this likely isn't a legal issue, but that's going to make it quite hard to find this in Google.

Re: Show HN: Teoria.js - Music theory for JavaScript

#14

Post by stagas »

simmons wrote: post #6

Neat! I've been reading up and playing around with this stuff the past few weeks, from both the waveform synthesis side and the music theory side. I don't think I've quite wrapped my head around the basic concepts yet. (i.e.: Why have non-chromatic scales that skip semitones? Why do some sets of notes sound good and not others? What parts of sound quality derive from innate psychoacoustics, and what parts are my bias…

> It's strange how once you get interested in a topic, you start seeing stuff about it everywhere.

I've noticed this too. It's so strange and creepy at the same time. Whenever a topic interests me it seems to pop up in the news and everywhere, but I can't remember seeing it before at this frequency, also it never seems to appear again when I stop being interested in it.

Re: Show HN: Teoria.js - Music theory for JavaScript

#15

Post by submersible »

lowboy wrote: post #3

This isn't really what I expected when I saw "music theory". It would be more aptly titled something like "frequency visualizer of chords".

Teoria.js does have a music theory api for working with notes, chords and intervals. I'm actually using it for a site I'm working on: http://groktar.com/?m=kTD4PzaNwv (shameless plug)

Re: Show HN: Teoria.js - Music theory for JavaScript

#16

Post by gtani »

simmons wrote: post #6

Neat! I've been reading up and playing around with this stuff the past few weeks, from both the waveform synthesis side and the music theory side. I don't think I've quite wrapped my head around the basic concepts yet. (i.e.: Why have non-chromatic scales that skip semitones? Why do some sets of notes sound good and not others? What parts of sound quality derive from innate psychoacoustics, and what parts are my bias…

    Why do some note combinations sound good.
This is a discussion of equal temperament vs. just intonation ratios

http://irkenkitties.com/blog/2012/11/28/consonant-intervals-...

___________________

You can read a lot in the subreddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/16h5fk/how_do_y...

http://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/comments/16gl5h/a_questi...

_________________

Equal temperament instruments present all kinds of problems, wolf intervals in the extreme (Pianos have inharmonicity/octave stretching, flutes effectively have octave stretching, guitars have all kinds of funkiness

http://www.truetemperament.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_interval

Re: Show HN: Teoria.js - Music theory for JavaScript

#17

Post by SoftwareMaven »

acarabott wrote: post #13

I made a quick fork to add audio to this using the Web Audio API (webkit only, tested on Chrome and Safari). http://acarabott.github.com/teoria/

Had fun figuring out where mine and my wife's hearing fell off. Now I know where to put it when I want my kids to bugger off. :)

Re: Show HN: Teoria.js - Music theory for JavaScript

#20

Post by cosmikduster »

simmons wrote: post #6

Neat! I've been reading up and playing around with this stuff the past few weeks, from both the waveform synthesis side and the music theory side. I don't think I've quite wrapped my head around the basic concepts yet. (i.e.: Why have non-chromatic scales that skip semitones? Why do some sets of notes sound good and not others? What parts of sound quality derive from innate psychoacoustics, and what parts are my bias…

You might like to check out this music synthesis library in Javascript: http://mohayonao.github.com/timbre
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