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Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear

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141–150 of 177 posts

Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear

#141

Just a quick compatibility issue: for some reason, my midi board triggers a key input both when I press it down, and when I let it go. I'm assuming that it might just be something wrong with my board, but I did want to let you know in case there might be some nuance you haven't considered with respect to the midi commands. I know my first crack at it didn't distinguish between note-on and note-off commands, for insta…

Hey catapart, Thanks for the feedback. Oof that's weird. Maybe I'm triggering some kind of odd aftertouch? EDIT: Just saw ta2112's note. That's super helpful I'm definitely only responding to standard MIDI NOTE_ON and NOTE_OFF messages. I'll try to get this fixed this evening.

Sweet! Thanks for the follow up. I hope it's a straightforward fix!

Aside from that, nice work on the app! Looking forward to giving it another try.

ETA: a shameless plug, but since you may have an interest in this kind of thing - I built and published a free, online midi piano (and drum kit) available for anyone to use. It's pretty bare-bones and doesn't really explain itself, but in case you ever want to use it, check out https://midi-speaker.com/

works with midi input as well as keyboard and touch/mouse input. it only has the two sampled instruments, but it's great for a groove in a pinch!

Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear

#142

I 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 fe…

Transformers are nice. You can train a very minimal network that can output reasonable sequences very easily. They won't be high quality, or too pretty, but they will "make sense" way more than randomness and (usually) change keys in a coherent way.

Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear

#145

Just bought a digital piano as New Year present to myself. So far I am doing single-note-a-time melodies from my child's practice book and so far enjoying my slow progress, but I am really struggling. Spent 3 evenings on a single simplest song and still can't play it end to end reliably. I have to sign every note with a letter in a music book because only other way to "read" music sheet for me is count lines for each…

Keep at it! It takes a few years, but so long as you practice new things consistently and every day you'll keep getting better and better.

Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear

#146

On iPhone, no sound.

I'll look into this, is it possible that you have Silent Mode enabled? I tested the app on an old iPad and it worked okay but unfortunately I don't have any other iOS devices.

iPhone 14 in Firefox (still Safari under the hood of course) - no silent mode, no sleep/DND/etc., volume turned up (confirmed via other browser tab playing YT) - and still no sound from the app.

I’m guessing you may be using a JavaScript API which possibly doesn’t exist in whatever version of Safari (fuck Safari…fuck Apple’s control of browsers…etc).

My advice: Use the free tier of BrowserStack to test basic functionality on a wide range of devices (assuming they still have a free offering…). Also check “caniuse” to see if all the JS APIs you’re using are available on a wide range of devices.

Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear

#147
post #36

Don’t seem to get any sound on iPhone 16 even after clicking :(

I had to turn off silent mode. I always forget that physical switch for games.

Huh thanks that works but that’s not how silent mode is supposed to function. Still a bug imo.

Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear

#148
post #106

Funny, I posted my (less cool) version of this exact idea last week: https://keybykey.app

> come back tomorrow! I hate that I can't do a second one after finishing the first task... I know this is supposed to be this magic user engagement trick where people come back day after day because there's no other way to use it, but it's not for me if I can't choose when to play a game or practice a skill

Yeah fair enough, it does have a practice mode after you complete the daily challenge so you can keep playing around with it. There aren’t many tunes added at the moment though.

Re: Show HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear

#150

Fun 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.

For sure! keep up the good work
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