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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

#131

Post by avtar »

jacquesm wrote: post #122
prionassembly wrote: post #103

My dad is a music tutor, piano and guitar. He does two different "tracks" according to what the student wants: (1) learn currently popular songs or (2) learn didactic music in the classical tradition (e.g. Czerny). In either track he's really teaching music theory: most popular music will be I-IV-V; jazzy music with turnarounds do ii-V-I tricks, etc. He doesn't teach an instrument, he teaches music.

Very nice! Is your dad available for a consultation? We would very much like to teach things properly but for that we need more understanding and someone who has been teaching music would be a huge asset to us. If you could please ask that would be awesome.

My mother-in-law used to teach piano. What's the best way to put her in touch with you?

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

#132

Post by thebeardisred »

jacquesm wrote: post #121
TrueDuality wrote: post #97

There is an `about:config` setting to enable webmidi in Firefox `dom.webmidi.enabled`. It's not a great experience to have to set that by hand. It does work though, at least in Linux. It looks like your site isn't detecting whether the webmidi feature is present though, it looks like its just doing dumb UA filtering.

No, it isn't doing dump UA filtering, it tests whether the WebMIDI interface works and if it does then it proceeds to work. So that must be something else. You can check the code if you don't believe me, it's plain JS.

I would.... but you also keep redirecting me to /firefox.html. Thus, I can't look at the site (on my phone) to be able _see_ the code.

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

#133

Post by avtar »

thebeardisred wrote: post #132
jacquesm wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't doing dump UA filtering, it tests whether the WebMIDI interface works and if it does then it proceeds to work. So that must be something else. You can check the code if you don't believe me, it's plain JS.

I would.... but you also keep redirecting me to /firefox.html. Thus, I can't look at the site (on my phone) to be able _see_ the code.

https://gitlab.com/jmattheij/pianojacq

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

#134

Post by halostatue »

jacquesm wrote: post #121
TrueDuality wrote: post #97

There is an `about:config` setting to enable webmidi in Firefox `dom.webmidi.enabled`. It's not a great experience to have to set that by hand. It does work though, at least in Linux. It looks like your site isn't detecting whether the webmidi feature is present though, it looks like its just doing dumb UA filtering.

No, it isn't doing dump UA filtering, it tests whether the WebMIDI interface works and if it does then it proceeds to work. So that must be something else. You can check the code if you don't believe me, it's plain JS.

It’s worth noting that I don’t use Firefox by default, but Safari, and the messaging only talks about Firefox.

I thought I’d read that WebMIDI was declined to be implemented by Apple because of security issues (including the ability for random webpages to send firmware updates to connected MIDI peripherals), and going back about four months I found an article here on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23676109 — note the top comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23679063).

I seriously doubt that Firefox is going to implement this.

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

#135

Post by jacquesm »

avtar wrote: post #131
jacquesm wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very nice! Is your dad available for a consultation? We would very much like to teach things properly but for that we need more understanding and someone who has been teaching music would be a huge asset to us. If you could please ask that would be awesome.

My mother-in-law used to teach piano. What's the best way to put her in touch with you?

jacques@modularcompany.com , thank you very much.

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

#136

Post by jacquesm »

halostatue wrote: post #134
jacquesm wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't doing dump UA filtering, it tests whether the WebMIDI interface works and if it does then it proceeds to work. So that must be something else. You can check the code if you don't believe me, it's plain JS.

It’s worth noting that I don’t use Firefox by default, but Safari, and the messaging only talks about Firefox. I thought I’d read that WebMIDI was declined to be implemented by Apple because of security issues (including the ability for random webpages to send firmware updates to connected MIDI peripherals), and going back about four months I found an article here on HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23676109…

That's just too bad then. Also, it really is nonsense, yes, you could do that, but that's a matter of blocking those specific calls, a pretty simple implementation would already be extremely useful and nobody even wants the firmware update extensions to be implemented, you can fairly trivially filter those out and redflag any application that even tries to do so.

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

#137

Post by jacquesm »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #129
jacquesm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MIDI files do not take into account stuff like key, time signature, etc. They actually do. What they don't take into account is whether a particular black key is a sharp or a flat, and this causes all kinds of headaches. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enharmonic

They do not take "key" into account. In terms of the note-related data contained within a MIDI file, it's just a series of noteOn and noteOff event pairs, with a note number between 0 and 127 for each event. There's nothing in a MIDI file that specifies the key/scale/mode. They can describe time signatures and tempo. And yes, they don't handle enharmonics because in MIDI, notes are known only by number, not by any na…

Yes, but MIDI does allow for the file to contain a KEY specification (as well as tempo, time signature and a bunch of other info).

I know the scale/key/mode as such as not encoded in the note on/off signals but once you know what key you are in (and this can be determined in a variety of ways, including from the statistical properties of the note on/note off signals) the problem becomes a bit more tractable. Still, you will never get it perfect and that is not the goal, the goal is to get it as good as possible (and we are not even there yet).

> And because of the MIDI Tuning Standard, you cannot actually say a priori which notes (i.e frequency) a given note number corresponds to, although in practice most things will take the note number and map it to a a 12TET 440Hz standard.

This is true, but for a teaching application like this one it is simply not relevant.

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

#138

Post by sudosteph »

bromley wrote: post #75

I can imagine this being really useful for improving sight-reading. However, for me what made piano a whole lot more fun was ditching the sheet music and opting to learn about chords, all the different ways to voice them, and the various scales that fit well on top of them. I started taking lessons with a pro jazz pianist (instead of a more typical classically-focused piano teacher), I gave up on sheet music altogeth…

I'm in a similar boat, and agree completely that it's super fun to learn this way. Coming from playing guitar, I was already used to starting from chords and listening for the rest, so it wasn't a big change. I'm a big believer in proper timing and solid rhythms being more important than notes, and learning by ear makes those aspects more intuitive, in my experience at least.

One thing I did find was the very helpful, was putting those stickers with note names on each note on the keyboard. They help me keep track of what I'm playing, and when I compose something I rely on the stickers to help me transcribe.

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

#139

Post by hsitz »

jacquesm wrote: post #41
weinzierl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Midi is 'lossy' in the sense that it flattens a bunch of knowledge about how a piece is to be rendered into note-on/note-off pairs. As using MIDI will probably never be perfect, have you thought about using the score in a suitable format, like LilyPond, directly?

Yes, absolutely, and we will add more import formats.

I don't really follow the idea that "midi is lossy" in the sense described. Because it uses note-on/note-off pairs? I don't see the problem there. Certainly the idea that a score somehow has more information in it than a midi recording is ridiculous. A score always requires interpretation. The midi is, in contrast, fully specified, very little room for interpretation.

A midi recording contains pretty precise velocity info for each note (0-127) that is either not present at all in a score, or is present only in the form of a limited number of dynamic markings[1], which govern the flow of dynamics imprecisely, and almost not at all on a per-note basis.

With tempo it is similar to dynamics: midi will precisely determine when notes turn on and off, down to the millisecond, in the process resulting in the midi performance having a precise tempo. In contrast, musical scores have limited means to indicate proper tempo[2], necessitating (as with dynamic markings in a musical score) much interpretation by the musician.

All of this is not to say that a midi performance is somehow "better" than a score. There are good midi recordings and bad ones. A good recording will generally be made by an accomplished musician who in making the recording records fairly precisely a particular (and good) interpretation of the score. Likewise, a bad recording would generally be the result of a poor interpretation of a score. But whatever the case, the midi recording is far more precise than the score itself.

[1] https://www.aboutmusictheory.com/music-dynamics.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo#Basic_tempo_markings

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

#140

Post by cblconfederate »

save_ferris wrote: post #21
drchopchop wrote: post #14

This may teach you to "play" piano, but the real question is whether this sort of rote memorization will really teach you how music fundamentally works. Seems a bit like re-typing Javascript programs in order to "learn" programming? Will you be able to improvise after enough of this? Play songs by ear? There are a few fundamental musical concepts that I'm not sure you easily pick up by rote memorization: * Most music…

> Will you be able to improvise after enough of this? Play songs by ear? How many Herbie Hancock's have you come across after finishing a grade 1 piano book? Of course a single exercise app or book isn't going to create the perfectly rounded musician. For a child or beginner player, this looks like a great tool. Advanced musical skill is entirely composable. Having solid improvisational skill or technical ability lar…

i think op may be hinting that learning basic chords and scales (which is not difficult) makes it much more fun to play things (and thus more productive) rather than trying to follow each note on a pentagram.
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