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YouTab: Automatically get chords for music

youtab.me

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Re: YouTab: Automatically get chords for music

#71

Post by jberryman »

mcnape wrote: post #67

Hey, great job on the website! I have one small criticism (in addition to others already listed here). I put in a song that was in the key of B. The most-used chords of this key are B, E, F#, and G#m - as I'm sure you're well aware. However, the songs chords were detected as B, E, F# and Abm. While technically correct, as Abm and G#m are the same chord, the convention is to list Abm as G#m in this case. I believe thi…

You're right. The idea is that each note of the scale should fall on a successive line or space on the staff, and the "convention" of having keys be only sharps or flats falls out from that (hm, why? I've never thought about that). So for diatonic chords we spell them with those same notes of the scale as well, of course. Some scales even have double flats or sharps!

Re: YouTab: Automatically get chords for music

#72

Post by sinwave »

don_draper wrote: post #31
yoodit wrote: post #2

Hello, I've been hard at work on a project that I would like to share with you. It's called YouTab and its what I believe is a great way to sync lyrics and chords with music. The smart guys I work with use a nifty algorithm to "listen" to the music and in a lot of cases it does a really good job in getting the chords. But since technology has its limits there's an editor application that lets you fix what is wrong. I…

Very nice. You know one feature I would love to see are strumming patterns. It's nice to see the chords but it's tough for an amateur to identify the strumming patterns.

Would it be useful to see this on a grid? I find it's much more intuitive to coordinate strumming with my sense of hearing.

Re: YouTab: Automatically get chords for music

#73

Post by somehnusername »

jordanwallwork wrote: post #63
yoodit wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been thinking a lot on how to implement this feature. Showing it easy enough, but creating strumming patterns is a bit of a challenge... This is my favorite feature though.

Don't implement strumming patterns! I've watched my wife trying to learn guitar pursing her lips saying up-down-up-up-down to herself and it just sounds robotic. Once you can play the chords smoothly enough strumming just happens. Even better, everyone seems to strum their own way (i cant sing so i strum a lot to compensate, whereas i have a friend with a beautiful voice who barely touches the strings)

IMHO, strumming patterns are something that you (as a beginner) need to experiment with to see what sounds just right. Eventually you end up not thinking about it anymore.

Re: YouTab: Automatically get chords for music

#74

Post by baddox »

jberryman wrote: post #71
mcnape wrote: post #67

Hey, great job on the website! I have one small criticism (in addition to others already listed here). I put in a song that was in the key of B. The most-used chords of this key are B, E, F#, and G#m - as I'm sure you're well aware. However, the songs chords were detected as B, E, F# and Abm. While technically correct, as Abm and G#m are the same chord, the convention is to list Abm as G#m in this case. I believe thi…

You're right. The idea is that each note of the scale should fall on a successive line or space on the staff, and the "convention" of having keys be only sharps or flats falls out from that (hm, why? I've never thought about that). So for diatonic chords we spell them with those same notes of the scale as well, of course. Some scales even have double flats or sharps!

> The idea is that each note of the scale should fall on a successive line or space on the staff, and the "convention" of having keys be only sharps or flats falls out from that (hm, why? I've never thought about that).

The second part is really the same as the first. You want to be able to spell each diatonic alphabetically in order without skipping any letters of the alphabet. The B major scale is

    B  C# D# E  F# G# A# B
If you tried spelling that with flats, you'd get

    B  Db Eb E  Gb Ab Bb B
The skipped C and F, and the double E and B, is just nasty. The same would happen if you tried spelling the scale with a combination of flats and sharps.

As for diatonic scales that start on an accidental, as far as I know you can use either the flat or the sharp notation. They are enharmonic equivalents. I know there are often traditional preferences, simply to choose the spelling that leaves fewer accidentals in the key signature. For instance, I think that Db major is more common than the equivalent C# major because the former has 5 flats while the latter has 7 sharps.

Re: YouTab: Automatically get chords for music

#75

Post by baddox »

abakker wrote: post #16

I'm pretty impressed with this - I purposely fed it a song I thought would kill it ("Fuzz Universe" By Paul Gilbert) - It did an impressive job of capturing many of the underlying chords, while ignoring the lead lines over the top. I notice that it is not really great at capturing very fast chord changes, an has some trouble with varying time signatures, but great first effort. It would be pretty cool if you could up…

Ha! I'm impressed at its attempt at the early parts of Fuzz Universe. I think it can do really well when there's a clear bass note, and the bass is clear as a whistle on that album. When it has the bass note it seems to usually get the character of the chord (maj, min, dim, etc.).

Re: YouTab: Automatically get chords for music

#76

Post by baddox »

yoodit wrote: post #37
junhiwo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and I must be on the same wavelength because the first thing I threw at it was "Scarified".

PG is my all time favorite guitar player.

Without a doubt for me as well. His brand new album is a little disappointing, but I don't really care for cover albums. Shredding to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is amusing though.

Re: YouTab: Automatically get chords for music

#77

Post by pimlottc »

yoodit wrote: post #2

Hello, I've been hard at work on a project that I would like to share with you. It's called YouTab and its what I believe is a great way to sync lyrics and chords with music. The smart guys I work with use a nifty algorithm to "listen" to the music and in a lot of cases it does a really good job in getting the chords. But since technology has its limits there's an editor application that lets you fix what is wrong. I…

Very cool! You've already captured a few hours of my life.

A bit of feed back on the editor -

First, in general, it's a little... mysterious? It's not immediately clear exactly what clicking in difference places will do, and it's easy to click the wrong the and have the song jump around or a element shift or something, so it ends up feeling a bit twitchy. One thing that might help is better mouse cursors, like the i-bar for moving the current play position line, or the hand for grabbing-and-repositioning.

I get what's going on with the timeline being split in three horizontal rows, but I still find it kind of confusing, especially when working near the edges.

Also, scrolling the timeline backwards is awkward when the music is playing, as it brings the play line closer to the end of visible timeline which causes the whole thing to jump forward, negating your progress. I think a zoomed-out preview box would be helpful with highlights marking what's currently visible (like graphics editors often have). I did see you can move around in the song in the player controls but it doesn't show the blocks.

Keyboard shortcuts would be very helpful, particular for fine-tuning block positioning. Perhaps even you could have a key to mark positions during playback for later use in aligning blocks? In fact, in general it would be helpful if you could align blocks to one another, or to the beat.

As a non-musician, I would find it useful if you could "play back" the chord track, for comparison with the song.

Re: YouTab: Automatically get chords for music

#79

Post by golergka »

yoodit wrote: post #2

Hello, I've been hard at work on a project that I would like to share with you. It's called YouTab and its what I believe is a great way to sync lyrics and chords with music. The smart guys I work with use a nifty algorithm to "listen" to the music and in a lot of cases it does a really good job in getting the chords. But since technology has its limits there's an editor application that lets you fix what is wrong. I…

It would be really nice to be able to download the chords in midi.
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