Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)

apps.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 140 posts

Re: Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)

#71

Post by Ericson2314 »

ajepst wrote: post #52
rooster117 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mic works on the standard 440 tuning and converts the input to its midi representation. Trying to understand your question but the mic doesn't really care about the do, re, me but rather that it's the right frequency for the displayed note on the staff. The mic feature is something I'm actively working on improving as it's decent now but not perfect. If you have an instrument with a way to connect to the phone th…

Sight reading practice for voice is super useful, but not many of us have perfect pitch to pull a starting note out of the air! An option to get a starting note audible cue for vocal sight reading would be a great add-on (and hopefully not too difficult!)

I have perfect pitch and it's overrated.

Pro tip: You can pick any note you want as the starting pitch, and do realtive pitch from there. It doesn't matter. Pitch is an affine space, there's no 0 pitch!

Re: Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)

#72

Post by ajepst »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #71
ajepst wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sight reading practice for voice is super useful, but not many of us have perfect pitch to pull a starting note out of the air! An option to get a starting note audible cue for vocal sight reading would be a great add-on (and hopefully not too difficult!)

I have perfect pitch and it's overrated. Pro tip: You can pick any note you want as the starting pitch, and do realtive pitch from there. It doesn't matter. Pitch is an affine space, there's no 0 pitch!

Oh of course, if you just want to practice sight reading on your own, correct pitch is irrelevant, but if you want to use an app like this and have it follow along and check if you’re accurate with your sight reading, you have to agree with the app on pitch!

Re: Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)

#73

Post by patrocle »

alwa wrote: post #53
pil0u wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just learned via your post the term "sight reading" in English. French words and expressions when it comes to music are very different.

Out of curiosity, what’s the French term for this technique?

We call it "solfège".

Re: Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)

#74

Post by tianshuo »

Hi, I've been using notequest before and this really hits a string for my needs. There are some places that could be improved. 1. There is lacking logic in the notes, there should be some kind of pattern that an LLM could create that sounds better. For example for left hand usually there could be eg. walking bass/ chord progressions etc, instead of just random notes. If you need ideas and help on that, you can contact me at (myhackernewsname_at_gmail_dot_com) I am willing to help

2. Now the game is like, press the notes as fast as you can, instead, a musician needs to practice, pressing the note at the right time, which means you can make a metronome + press the notes on time mode, which is even more useful than the present version.

Re: Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)

#75

Post by rooster117 »

tianshuo wrote: post #74

Hi, I've been using notequest before and this really hits a string for my needs. There are some places that could be improved. 1. There is lacking logic in the notes, there should be some kind of pattern that an LLM could create that sounds better. For example for left hand usually there could be eg. walking bass/ chord progressions etc, instead of just random notes. If you need ideas and help on that, you can contac…

Great feedback. I’m working on a new way to generate lessons. It’s better but even when it’s out it’ll mostly just be a structure I’ll be able to build on.

I agree on the metronome and it’s high on my list of TODO’s. I think it would be very helpful.

Re: Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)

#78

Post by roydivision »

Guitar player here. App looks great, but shame it's only for piano. I used a different app that does pretty much the same thing and really benefited from it, the improvement was noticeable after each session.

If you add guitar support it will be an immediate download for me.

Re: Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)

#79

Post by xlii »

Yet another HN moment for me: I use it, and as I bought/downloaded like 50 or more - I think it is the best out there.

Given that I might have you „on the feedback phoneline” I have thoughts, I’d like to share:

- It might not be true, but it seems that notes are picked at random so sometimes I feel there’s disharmony which somewhat distracts me - in age of LLMs maybe it would be plausible to ask for generation of more harmonic sounding sequences?

- I don’t practice sight reading often but when I do I usually practice longer than 1-3 minutes - clicking through lessons to get to the next one is distracting - I’d enjoy endless auto-progress (that is - keep progress structure so no free training but just auto start next one)

- I’d like to have minimalistic practice mode (I.e. follow progression but without any aids at all) - I repeat lessons but my brain flips lazy mode when it sees helpers.

I’d like to thank you for making this app accessible in terms of price though. However I have resources and want to support developers I believe in which includes you and your application. I’d suggest „coffee subscription” - I.e. completely optional no-features added but visible and I’d be glad to enable and forget about it.

In fun-fact context: I have some uncommon traits and my educational needs are different from general population (I cannot do repetitions and I have multisensory aphantasia - can’t hear sounds in my head - so can’t memorize them) and your app so far helped building passive eye-muscle link which I find fascinating on its own.

Re: Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App Store)

#80

Post by thaumasiotes »

patrocle wrote: post #73
alwa wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what’s the French term for this technique?

We call it "solfège".

Huh. My instinct was that (in English), "solfège" is just the name of the collection of notes. (The same way that "alphabet" is the name of the collection of letters beginning "A B C D E ...".)

And interestingly enough, the English wikipedia page completely backs me up on that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solf%C3%A8ge ("Solfège is a form of solmization, though the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably.")

However, the English wiktionary page gives no gloss other than "a method of sight singing". (More fully, "A method of sight singing that uses the syllables do (originally ut), re, mi, fa, sol (or so), la, and si (or ti) to represent the seven principal pitches of the scale".)

Merriam-Webster strongly supports the wikipedia definition, but it does note that "a method of sight-reading music" is an alternative, non-primary meaning.

In French, does solfège refer to any sight reading? A common way to sight-read vocal music is to sing the actual lyrics as opposed to the note names. And by far the most common way to sight-read piano music is to play it without saying anything at all.

Post reply on HN