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Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear
51–60 of 177 posts
Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear
#52It's a very cool little game! One suggestion: could you make it so you can noodle around on the keyboard without submitting the answer and then once you've worked it out, have a submission mode? Right now, it's frustrating that if you enter a wrong note, it shows a message, so you can't experiment on the keyboard to try to work it out.
came here to write this comment, +1!
another +1
Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear
#53[flagged]
There are plenty of musicians here saying this is useful for them or would be useful while learning. As meta commentary, those not in a subgroup sometime fail to see utility of a thing built for that subgroup and it's easy to feel a sense of superiority "oh how dumb and trivial this thing is", but it may be better to first have curiosity and see how the intended audience responds. Often it's not dumb or trivial, you'…
It’s the typical “engineer thinking they’re smarter than everyone else” trope. From my experience, engineers fall squarely in the middle of the bell curve. The AI hate is just used as justification, so I don’t even take it that seriously. And fwiw, as someone that played piano when I was younger, this is 100% a useful tool. In fact, during quarantine I was learning to play guitar and used tools like this to learn which string is which by ear.
Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really a great way to train your ear, and fun, too. I can play ukulele, but mostly just to strum and play songs to, but a few years ago I just started picking notes to try to recreate melodies of songs I knew or heard recently. At first it was slow-going with lots of searching on the fret for the right note, but over time I worked up the skill to mostly get the melody on the first few tries. It was the most amaz…
My disconnect is I can't read sheet music. So I can hear it, then memorize where it is on the piano/keyboard... but that just teaches you play piano by ear. It doesn't teach you how to play music in the traditional sense. I guess this showing you the sheet music as you find the notes can help with that, but as others noted - I'd like a "mess around" mode, before a "test" mode.
I think it depends on your end goal.
I have a great ear and am terrible at reading sheet music. Fine if you aspire to be a rock guitarist. Not so fine if you aspire to be a classical pianist.
Funny, but I'm final tired of my poor sight reading and have set a goal for 2025 to average one hour of piano playing from sheet music per day.
And I agree...a "mess around" mode on the app would be great. Feels almost punitive when I make a mistake.
Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've been playing piano for 40 years, tend to hate anything with AI-buzzwords anywhere adjacent to it. But I generally think this particularly one is a good thing. Curious what you mean by no attempt to teach. We learn multiplication tables by rote. Are flash cards a genuine instrument of learning? The only way to learn intervals is to practice identifying them. This is how you do it. You can read about music theory…
This teaches intervals like Duolingo teaches language rules. You sort of pick them up because you need them to figure out the small melody it plays. But you don't get the concept of a 'fourth' or a 'fifth' and there's never a moment where the actual rules are explained. That said, I think it's very useful for what it is and highlights that whatever your view on AI, there is a niche here that AI can fill that people o…
It's ear training, not theory training, right?
Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear
#56[flagged]
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Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear
#57I like the game up until 7 or 8 notes, but it keeps adding note. I couldn't find a setting to freeze the difficulty where it's comfortable and where the melody can still be construed to make sense. When adding more notes, it breaks the flow and turn a training for pitch practicing into a memory game for rain man, even more so when we make a mistake and must redo the melody partially.
Hmm - I was hoping that the Practice Mode would cover this, but I think there's probably some room to add an option where you can freeze the difficulty level - I'll see if I can add this later in the evening.
The "construed melody" is a harder problem. I've been playing around with the idea of using a markov model or even borrowing what CPU Bach did to try to create more coherent melodies over time.
Thanks for the feedback!
Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear
#58It's a very cool little game! One suggestion: could you make it so you can noodle around on the keyboard without submitting the answer and then once you've worked it out, have a submission mode? Right now, it's frustrating that if you enter a wrong note, it shows a message, so you can't experiment on the keyboard to try to work it out.
That's a good idea - I'll try to get that implemented this evening.
Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear
#59Great technical demo, but the usability feels unpolished. So here's a little bit of feedback of trying this out on a piano: Just because my piano has 88 keys doesn't mean they are all useful for ear training. The very low and very high notes shouldn't be used, at least not by default. Also they don't even show up properly in the sheet. As the melodies get longer and longer with each win, this devolves quickly into a…
Good point - it's a bit of a hack and I didn't point it out but technically you could play the lowest/highest notes when you configure your midi device that you would like to practice with.
I'll need to put in some proper limitations or possibly add 8va type symbols to more properly limit to a grand staff.
Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear
#60Fun app! One of the things I wish it had if it can record the ambient notes and match it (like one of those guitar tuner apps). Playing by ear is something I've done all my life and any user can have any instrument matching the notes
Thanks! Honestly I'd love to implement a proper pitch detection so you could play the game with an acoustic guitar.