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

lend-me-your-ears.specr.net

171–177 of 177 posts

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

#171
post #6

Very nice, always wanted something like this. Liked: Sheet/No shit split Would like: - Ability to play with PC keyboard, other apps already have some type of interface to type with keyboard, of course it might change depending on keyboard layout, but it's pretty standard and it happens that the keys aren't usually alighned, so you can have one row be whites and the upper row being blacks. - Maybe the waiting times be…

I would also love a button to pause so I can poke around the keyboard to see what it sounds like.

That's a bit too close to what you can already do without the app though.

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

#172
post #38

It'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.

Thanks everyone for the feedback! I've added a bunch of new updates, just thought I would consolidate to this message since its pinned near the top. *Changes* - Ableton keyboard layout for ladidahh also thanks for a user name that I had to type about four times because of my phone's autocorrect! :) - Tempo sliders for practice and Simon modes - Lock icon which lets you freeze the difficulty at a certain number of not…

Would be really nice to be able to use this with an acoustic piano.

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

#173
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

+1 :)

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

#174

I keep hitting the start button -- which switches to a different melody -- when I want to hit the listen button -- which re-plays the current melody. I feel like "listen" should be the first, more prominent button and "start" should be moved to the end and renamed to something more meaningful like "ahh shit, give me a different one" other than that, cool.

Yeah I thought about changing the wording from "Start" to "New Melody" once you've got a game in progress. Thanks for the feedback!

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

#175

My problem isn't memory. It's my ear. It's tin.

Luckily that's a trainable skill. If you care to.

I have tried many times and I have been very unable to make any progress. In The Witness game, I ended up just guessing at the hardest whistle puzzles because remembering high/low order is very difficult at real-time speeds (mostly I can only compare "higher/lower than previous" so something like 2-1-3 is very indistinguishable from 2-1-2). Absolute positioning is even worse. The "end game" tanker puzzle is still unsolved because I don't want to cheat at that one but I have never been able to get the audio part down. I believe this is because my short-term memory "ingests" via audio (100% aphantasia, so no visuals to help out), so trying to "store" more notes erases anything longer than a note or two back (or I remember those notes and miss new notes coming in). Contrast this with Simon-like games (original, Brain Warp, Bop-It, etc.) where I was routinely able to get 12+ because I could "trace" a pattern in the lights/motions and "offload" the audio bits quickly enough to follow along and "compress" the sequence.

In this app, I ended up hunting for the first note and by the time I found it, I couldn't remember "how far" up/down the next note was (and by even 3 notes I often lost the direction from 2 to go). I /could/ figure out the key positions and go from the staff, but that goes through the FACE/EGBDF path of what notes the lines on the staff mean and is 100% non-aural for me. It's also extremely slow.

I also have a horrible time finding melodies and rhythms in music (kind of like Steve Martin in The Jerk, just more…physically coordinated at least). I end up "tapping" out every note and lyric syllable instead of being able to tease anything apart (separate instruments help, but then I lose "the rest"). Rarely was I able to effectively utilize those "song tapper" apps in the 00's to find anything I wanted.

I do remember playing the recorder in class in elementary school and at least "Horse With No Name" on a guitar in…some higher grade (7th? 8th?), but I believe those were very physical-oriented finger memory rather than anything to do with my ear helping out. New songs were basically from-scratch practices rather than being able to build on prior experience.

So while my ear might not be "tin", so to speak, my mind is not well-wired for ir.

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

#176
post #38

It'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.

Thanks everyone for the feedback! I've added a bunch of new updates, just thought I would consolidate to this message since its pinned near the top. *Changes* - Ableton keyboard layout for ladidahh also thanks for a user name that I had to type about four times because of my phone's autocorrect! :) - Tempo sliders for practice and Simon modes - Lock icon which lets you freeze the difficulty at a certain number of not…

I’m not hearing any sound. Safari iPhone 11 Pro iOS 18.6.2

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

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks everyone for the feedback! I've added a bunch of new updates, just thought I would consolidate to this message since its pinned near the top. *Changes* - Ableton keyboard layout for ladidahh also thanks for a user name that I had to type about four times because of my phone's autocorrect! :) - Tempo sliders for practice and Simon modes - Lock icon which lets you freeze the difficulty at a certain number of not…

I’m not hearing any sound. Safari iPhone 11 Pro iOS 18.6.2

Hey mdnahas - sorry to hear that. I still haven't figured out what is going on with some versions of iPhones.

These worked:

- iPhone 16e iOS 18.3

- iPhone 13 Pro Max iOS 18.0

- iPhone 15 Pro Max iOS 17.5

- iPhone 13 iOS 16.3

These failed to produce sound:

- iPhone 15 Pro iOS 17.1

- iPhone SE 2022 iOS 15.4

I'm baffled - there doesn't appear to be any consistency around this bug. As others have pointed out (though I doubt it) - you might see if you have the hardware mute, Do not disturb, silence mode, battery savings, etc. that might be causing it not to produce sound.

I'll add your version into the list of iPhones that is having issues. Thanks for the feedback!

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