Show HN: Soundslice – YouTube + synced guitar tabs + HTML5 • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Soundslice – YouTube + synced guitar tabs + HTML5

#121

Post by mcgwiz » Fri, Nov 16, 2012, 6:56 PM UTC

craigc wrote: post #81

wavesounds wrote: post #63

Dude this rules awesome job! Only issue for me is that even in 1/2 speed its moving to fast for my eyes to focus on the numbers. So what I need is to have the lines separated like musical notation so that I can look down and read ahead and see the next line coming, without the numbers moving, so my eyes can focus. Pretty much everyone that reads music/tabs reads ahead of where they are actually playing its probably s…

I was going to comment something very similar. I think perhaps the scrolling should default to "Paged" instead of "Autoscroll". It's hard to focus on a moving target and "Paged" feels more natural to me since that is how sheet music works. It allows you to look ahead without worrying about the upcoming notes moving.

Completely agree. My 2 cents:

Since an individual can only play one part at a time, rather than showing two scrolling parts, two pages of the same part should be shown. Initially, page 1 can be shown above page 2. The playhead is the only thing that moves, from the left of the screen to the right. Initially it moves across page 1. When it reaches the right side of the screen, it moves to the start of page 2, below and to the left. At that time, page 1 is replaced with page 3. This way the pages remain still, while allowing the user to progress through the song.

Re: Show HN: Soundslice – YouTube + synced guitar tabs + HTML5

#122

Post by owyn » Fri, Nov 16, 2012, 7:50 PM UTC

This is very cool!

Have you seen vextab? http://vexflow.com/vextab/

It's a javascript library for displaying tablature and musical notation. It uses its own text format for describing tablature, but it is pretty easy to work with. I noticed that your tab doesn't have any slide/bend information, which vextab does. It may not be as necessary because the audio is well synchronized.

Re: Show HN: Soundslice – YouTube + synced guitar tabs + HTML5

#123

Post by nollidge » Fri, Nov 16, 2012, 7:55 PM UTC

jdunck wrote: post #57

rprasad wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweat of the brow is not currently and never has been a defense to copyright. Otherwise, copyright on books could be evaded by simply copying a book word for word. The original composer owns the copyright on the arrangement itself. Your imperfect transcription is a separate derivative work but is still subject to the copyright of the original. So the question remains: how do you plan on dealing with the copyright iss…

I'm not the poster/site author, and we're saying the same thing. My claim is that since YouTube ultimately is responding to copyright complaints, SoundSlice is no worse than a tab-sharing site with regard to infringement. I don't see how they can be liable.

You're not saying the same thing at all. You're talking about Youtube performances, and rprasad is talking about tablature. Current tab-sharing sites are very much in a gray area at this point, and the SoundSlice founders have to deal with that somehow.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablature#Legal_issues

> The MPA had been pushing for websites offering free tablatures to be shut down. MPA president Lauren Keiser said that their goal is for owners of free tablature services to face fines and even imprisonment.

Re: Show HN: Soundslice – YouTube + synced guitar tabs + HTML5

#124

Post by tucson » Fri, Nov 16, 2012, 8:34 PM UTC

Great stuff. I just played 20 minutes of guitar in a row. That did not happen to me since years. Thank you very much for this tool.

The one thing I miss: if I search I don't get any video with already made soundslice tabs. Even a search on 'nirvana' returns no result with soundslice annotation even though there are some.

Re: Show HN: Soundslice – YouTube + synced guitar tabs + HTML5

#125

Post by stephenhandley » Sat, Nov 17, 2012, 3:30 AM UTC

great idea and approach.

might be worth adding way to have the community mark a tab as complete. the couple i checked other than the tutorial ones weren't finished.. made the experience frustrating. i know its early and coverage will only improve, but that might help smooth out that process.

Re: Show HN: Soundslice – YouTube + synced guitar tabs + HTML5

#126

Post by jtheory » Sun, Nov 18, 2012, 1:36 AM UTC

RobMcCullough wrote: post #74

abstractbill wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monophonic pitch estimation isn't too hard these days (see e.g. the YIN frequency estimator). Polyphonic pitch detection of even a single instrument is a hard problem. Real music, with multiple instruments, becomes a very challenging unsolved AI problem with current technology.

Translating pitch to a playable guitar tab would even more difficult than the pitch detection. Unlike the piano, the same note can be played in multiple places on the guitar neck. Auto-generating guitar tablature would require not only pitch detection, but some kind of logic that would pick the most appropriate string/fret depending on the surrounding notes/chords.

In the example Django Reinhardt song, there's a bit where he plays the same pitch a few times fretted, then a few times on the neighboring open string.

I can imagine software that would analyze fret noise, vibrato, timbre, hand positions, etc. to get a decent shot at reproducing a performance -- basically, what a real player listens for when transcribing -- but right, this is a really hard problem.