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Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

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Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#51

Post by darylteo »

I've definitely thought about how one goes about coding an intelligent agent that can identify what you're playing and the make accurate guesses about where in the piece you're playing.

The player could make mistakes as well, which means any intelligent algorithm would need to apply some degree of probabilistic calculations to find the most likely point.

Very often, when practising, you'd constantly repeat passages multiple times. And certain passages may also be exactly the same in different parts of the piece as well.

To me it sounds like a incredibly difficult problem to solve. Not sure if the recent AI advances change anything.

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#52

Post by ToJans »

vanjajaja1 wrote: post #17
rjzzleep wrote: post #15

On this note, does anyone know some books in references to applied music theory? I'm a pretty advanced piano player, but a lot of more basic piano players can make up chords to play with with simple tunes that sound pretty good, most of those people seem to know a certain of rules that I don't know. And googling books about piano music on google books or the likes has not yielded any useful results.

I think what you're describing is the difference between learning by 'top down' thinking (ie. learning what to play) vs learning by experimentation 'bottom up' (ie. mashing random things and making mistakes until you eventually learn to replicate your favourite mistakes) what helped me was to imagine charlie day from its always in sunny in philadelphia saying "idk man, the piano just speaks to me", then I pretend to…

I'm not well versed in this, but I have the basics down: start by finding the bass notes, and add the melody on top. Most of the time the a musical phrase will end on the note that's in the key of the song. Combine the bass note with the third and fifth, and you're already halfway there...

Typical chord combinations are in the 1-4-5-6, so when the key is in C, for the first chord (I) you start on the C, skip one, E, skip one and then G. These 3 notes compose the first chord. To get the second chord, just move your fingers one key to the right.

A major scale in C contains the following chords if you move your 1-3-5 grip one key to the right each time:

- I: C (C-E-G)

- ii: Dm (D-F-A)

- iii: Em (E-G-B)

- IV: F (F-A-C)

- V: G (G-B-D)

- vi: Am (A-C-E)

- vii: Bdim (B-D-F)

Capital roman numerals indicate major chords (happy-ish), lowercase indicate minor (sad-ish).

Just try a few combos of I, IV, V and vi with your right hand, while hitting the first note of the chord with your bass.

You will instantly come to a few recognisable tunes.

Up next is transposing scales: move every note two half steps up to get to a major scale in the key of D for example.

Another handy trick is inversions: look at the individual notes in a chord and when switching from one chord to another, minimize have movement by playing some of the notes an octave higher or lower.

This is just the start, but it should help you a long way to play list of the simple pop songs.

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#53

Post by rjzzleep »

nxobject wrote: post #40
klimperfix wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to go in the jazz direction, the Jazz Piano Book by Mark Levine [1] is great! It has everything a jazz player needs to know, from II - V - I voicings to scales, upper structures, etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jazz_Piano_Book

Oscar Peterson has a nice series of étude books, too – it's not an exhaustive course, but he was a great pedagogue and expositor, and he really did care about the classical training he got as a wee one.

Both helpful, thanks for sharing.

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#54

Post by nh2 »

rreyes1979 wrote: post #6
xlii wrote: post #2

This looks fascinating. Im missing one thing though. Highlight of an app is that it can analyze play from MIDI but being an interested person it immediately pushes me toward “pick a device” which is immediate ehhhh area for myself. I know there are many and there’s personal preferences etc. but I think that (since it’s an educational system) there should be kickstart process accessible, i.e. matrix of recommended dev…

Came to ask exactly the same thing. Want to buy one for my kids to practice but I don't have an idea which would be the best given our budget and preferences so a matrix of compatible devices would be great.

If you want kids to be excited about playing the piano, get a keyboard with light keys like the Yamaha EZ-300.

Combined with a learning software that can control the light (Synthesia, or the one from Yamaha itself, maybe also the one in the original post), it creates a huge amount of fun and motivation. Also works very well for adults.

Keyboards like this do not give you proper hammer-action piano keys, but it makes you discover you /want/ to be a pianist, cheaper and with fun.

(There are also a few hammer-action lit digital pianos but they aren't as fun, and already quite expensive.)

Also consider Synthesia's short list: https://synthesiagame.com/keyboards/info

(I'd get the EZ-300 over the PSR-EW310 listed there for that price class, I believe it didn't exist when that list was written.)

Pop in songs they like (e.g. Disney or Pokemon) from a MuseScore subscription for engagement optimisation ;-)

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#55

Post by pclmulqdq »

kashunstva wrote: post #36
wccrawford wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not strong opposition there. One basically says it's boring, and the other says that only a certain technique can ever be good, and then it isn't even cited.

Professional pianist here. They are boring but that’s hardly the biggest issue with Hanon, unfortunately. The biggest problem is the instructions that the composer leaves for the student, which includes the insistence that the student lift the finger high off the keyboard with each note. I can think of practically nothing more injurious to good technique and nothing more likely to induce tension than this. Hanon coul…

I played a lot of Hanon as a teenager, and I confess that I never read the instructions. It does appear to get results in terms of strengthening your fingers and getting you used to specific patterns of movement.

A couple of piano teachers suggested reading stuff while doing Hanon, and apparently Liszt was known to do that.

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#56

Post by alfiedotwtf »

solarengineer wrote: post #45
kashunstva wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professional pianist here. They are boring but that’s hardly the biggest issue with Hanon, unfortunately. The biggest problem is the instructions that the composer leaves for the student, which includes the insistence that the student lift the finger high off the keyboard with each note. I can think of practically nothing more injurious to good technique and nothing more likely to induce tension than this. Hanon coul…

Are there any exercise books or videos or schools that teach this concept of weight transfer that you speak of? I am a one-finger pianist at the moment.

Literally the Hanon set of books will teach you this :)

But if you’re a hunt-and-peck for piano, I would recommend stop what you’re doing and go back to the very beginning and relearn everything properly so that you don’t have any bad habits.

As for other resources, this app looks like a good bet!

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#57

Post by mrbombastic »

nh2 wrote: post #54
rreyes1979 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Came to ask exactly the same thing. Want to buy one for my kids to practice but I don't have an idea which would be the best given our budget and preferences so a matrix of compatible devices would be great.

If you want kids to be excited about playing the piano, get a keyboard with light keys like the Yamaha EZ-300. Combined with a learning software that can control the light (Synthesia, or the one from Yamaha itself, maybe also the one in the original post), it creates a huge amount of fun and motivation. Also works very well for adults. Keyboards like this do not give you proper hammer-action piano keys, but it makes…

Question from an adult because it seems like you have experience with some of these tools, I’ve been using SimplyPiano for a few months, which listens to notes you play and gives you feedback, and while it is satisfying to hear the music I can’t shake that I am not really learning just copying. For instance I can play some of the advanced songs in the app but I open a piece of sheet music and I am lost. Is there similar concern for synthesia?

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#58

Post by huhtenberg »

Yo, OP.

That's your third post on HN in two years. All posts are promo, and yet you made not a single comment.

If you are doing a "Show HN", it wouldn't hurt to engage with people a little. Otherwise it looks like a low effort drive-by ad and not much else.

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#59

Post by lioeters »

solarengineer wrote: post #45
kashunstva wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Professional pianist here. They are boring but that’s hardly the biggest issue with Hanon, unfortunately. The biggest problem is the instructions that the composer leaves for the student, which includes the insistence that the student lift the finger high off the keyboard with each note. I can think of practically nothing more injurious to good technique and nothing more likely to induce tension than this. Hanon coul…

Are there any exercise books or videos or schools that teach this concept of weight transfer that you speak of? I am a one-finger pianist at the moment.

> one-finger pianist

That reminds me there are people who type on the (computer) keyboard with two fingers, searching for each key and pecking at it. I was fortunate to have "blind typing" classes as a child, including a fun game where you type to shoot at words falling on a city. That skill has been really valuable over the years.

I wonder if there are similar concepts for learning to play on the piano keyboard, like "blind" playing to learn where the notes are without even looking; or games where you can practice playing melodies. Even the idea of "weight transfer" seems related to computer keyboard, like typing without lifting your fingers too high.

Re: Show HN: Hanon Pro – piano technique and exercises for the digital age

#60

Post by smokel »

darylteo wrote: post #51

I've definitely thought about how one goes about coding an intelligent agent that can identify what you're playing and the make accurate guesses about where in the piece you're playing. The player could make mistakes as well, which means any intelligent algorithm would need to apply some degree of probabilistic calculations to find the most likely point. Very often, when practising, you'd constantly repeat passages m…

There are multiple parts to this problem, but it seems quite doable.

Shazam can do generic look-up of music since around 2003, see for example this page on abracadabra [1].

I'd guess that if you limit things to a piano, one could relatively easily find the notes being played with some Fourier magic, and then solve a Hidden Markov Model to find the most plausible position in the music. Using a MIDI interface makes it even simpler.

[1] https://www.cameronmacleod.com/blog/how-does-shazam-work

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