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Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#111

Post by microcolonel »

cscheid wrote: post #43
jacquesm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are working very hard on solving this in a very interesting and beautiful way. Stay tuned.

I’m super curious, if you don’t mind my prodding. I looked into doing this for my own version of a JavaScript midi teacher a while back. Any chance you’re doing it via the neural nets sequence to sequence translation algorithms that are super popular in NLP right now? I think that’s a practical way to do it, except for needing a training corpus. I was going to reverse engineer synthesia’s data to try it out, for what…

I think it could be done with a constraint solver, with a lot fewer cycles.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#113

Post by jacquesm »

agumonkey wrote: post #109
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #38

This will not teach you to play piano. It will teach you how to play beginner piano badly, and then will create intense confusion if you try to learn harder pieces because you will not have learned basic finger techniques - which include counter-intuitive finger-over/under moves and unexpected hand position changes that anticipate what you need to play next. Piano sheet music includes these finger position hints. Unf…

but this might teach to have some kind of fun too often lessons are sadistic chores ps: I also beg to differ about finger pattern, I've seen some seasoned piano players doing just whatever worked, the kinetics of playing allow for more than one pattern most of the time

Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PyYcnXQZJY&list=RDzWmz5-NoF... for some very interesting fingering techniques.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#114

Post by jacquesm »

emmanueloga_ wrote: post #104
murbard2 wrote: post #6

It's funny, I've had almost the same experience: decided to start playing again during Covid, and wanted to use the midi port to gamify things a bit. I've been using Synthesia[1] on an iPad, which also lets you take an arbitrary MIDI file and practice it. On the off-chance that this will inspire the article's author for their development, or simply for the curious, this has been my experience with it: The primary mod…

I think what's missing on most "piano-games" is that it doesn't really mirror the way I learn a piece. The way I learn is by bars, repeatedly re-playing bars say, 1 to 4, until I get them, them 3 to 7, until I get them, etc.. But most piano apps want you to start playing from start to end slow, then faster, etc. So: piano apps should allow breaking a piece into bars, allow you to repeat those bars again and again unt…

This one actually does exactly that, so please give it a try. It also has an auto mode where it measures how well you play and then sends you to practice those bars where you are still weak.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#115

Post by RobinL »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #38

This will not teach you to play piano. It will teach you how to play beginner piano badly, and then will create intense confusion if you try to learn harder pieces because you will not have learned basic finger techniques - which include counter-intuitive finger-over/under moves and unexpected hand position changes that anticipate what you need to play next. Piano sheet music includes these finger position hints. Unf…

As a beginner who wants to improve, I'd like to understanding your finger technique point better.

I saw a video recently [1] which claims to use AI to predict finger technique for an arbitrary MIDI file. This was always an issue for me in using Synthesia [2] - a piece of software that 'gamifies' leaning a piece. Synthesia is capable of displaying fingering information, but only if someone has manually input it - and without the fingering it's almost impossible for a beginner to learn difficult passages.

If MIDI files contained accurate fingering (by which I mean which finger of which hand...although maybe there's more to it?), and then could be input into a game - is this useful education tool?

[1] https://twitter.com/fayezsalka/status/1314613736511016961?s=... [2] https://synthesiagame.com/

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#116

Post by jacquesm »

microcolonel wrote: post #111
cscheid wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m super curious, if you don’t mind my prodding. I looked into doing this for my own version of a JavaScript midi teacher a while back. Any chance you’re doing it via the neural nets sequence to sequence translation algorithms that are super popular in NLP right now? I think that’s a practical way to do it, except for needing a training corpus. I was going to reverse engineer synthesia’s data to try it out, for what…

I think it could be done with a constraint solver, with a lot fewer cycles.

This is the route we are looking at, with some twists.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#117

Post by jacquesm »

bromley wrote: post #94
jacquesm wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the grading compared to a 'top performer' is about as silly as grading people that jog for an hour after dinner versus Usain Bolt. Music is something you to do enjoy, not because it is top sport! Obviously there are going to be incredible performers at the high end but there is plenty of fun to be had in the middle and even on the low end. I have a few pieces that are so beautiful compared to evertyhing else…

Good points! The beauty of a piece doesn't depend on its technical difficulty. Back when I used to play classical music more I loved playing a few of Chopin's Nocturnes repeatedly - they were about the right level for me so it was fun, and I could play them pretty well, I think. But I also spent a lot of time learning a few harder pieces (like Fantaisie Impromptu), and I remember getting frustrated that it took me ag…

So, you are a much better player than I will likely ever be. For me what mattered is that the software would guide me to improve on a piece as fast as possible. To do this it measures your performance very precisely and then judges where you are still weak, and then it starts to bring you up by focusing on the weakest parts first until they are no longer the weakest parts. Like that you improve quite rapidly.

Give it a try if you have an opportunity, I'm curious what you make of it given that you are roughly on the same path but clearly very much ahead of me.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#118

Post by jacquesm »

kej wrote: post #95

I understand the issue with Firefox not supporting WebMIDI, but it would be nice if instead of redirecting to a separate page you could show the same message as a warning on the main page. Let me see the app and see that it's worth coming back in Chrome.

Good point, thank you, I will add this to the todo list.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#119

Post by jacquesm »

apankrat wrote: post #96
jacquesm wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I know about the auto correlation trick, especially on the low end of the spectrum. I wrote an MP3->midi convertor that is very fast and does not use the GPU or any kind of deep learning, it also gives results that a year ago were SOTA but in the meantime have been passed by deep learning based techniques. I will definitely use your software. What would be great is to have a 'virtual midi device'. If it works we…

Re: a virtual midi device - I don't know the specifics of WebMIDI, but I'd think it should be rather trivial to code on top of any pitch detector, including mine. In terms of licensing - the code is already BSD-2. Re: the another note - yes, indeed. I too realized this, because mis-detected notes are usually off by a full octave. As a side note, after going reading through various papers on the subject, it would seem…

I've done that, and this is roughly how magenta works, which is pretty good, on random input it has about 92.5% accuracy which I think is very impressive.

Re: Pianojacq, an easy way to learn to play the piano

#120

Post by emmanueloga_ »

jacquesm wrote: post #114
emmanueloga_ wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what's missing on most "piano-games" is that it doesn't really mirror the way I learn a piece. The way I learn is by bars, repeatedly re-playing bars say, 1 to 4, until I get them, them 3 to 7, until I get them, etc.. But most piano apps want you to start playing from start to end slow, then faster, etc. So: piano apps should allow breaking a piece into bars, allow you to repeat those bars again and again unt…

This one actually does exactly that, so please give it a try. It also has an auto mode where it measures how well you play and then sends you to practice those bars where you are still weak.

sg! will take a look!
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