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

Show HN: HTML5 guitar lessons with pitch detection

getinstinct.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 61 posts

Re: Show HN: HTML5 guitar lessons with pitch detection

#11

Post by it_learnses »

b1ake wrote: post #2

We first launched here on HN 1.5 years ago, and we're pretty excited to share v2. Our goal with Instinct is to add deep interactivity to any music lesson. We think that one day, every lesson on YouTube might have pitch detection, scrolling notation, a scoring system and personalized feedback. This v2 is a big first step in that direction. We've teamed up with a bunch of online teachers to create fully interactive vid…

I bought a guitar 3 years ago and I've tried to learn it on and off but never really went past the c chord because I always lose interest.

I just finished my first lesson and this is superb for me. I love the scoring system which motivates me to try and do better each time and just the ease and simplicity with which I can immerse myself into learning it at my own pace.

Just a minor thing that confused me was that the music tab layout(maybe that's the standard) is different from the layout of the strings in the animation (which is the same as my guitar). I think both should be the same as the guitar.

Re: Show HN: HTML5 guitar lessons with pitch detection

#12

Post by carlesfe »

ozten wrote: post #6

Firefox 30, Shockwave Flash 11.2 r202 enabled, Ubuntu 14.10 - I see the flash dialog, but am unable to allow access to my microphone. Why not use getUserMedia({audio:true}) instead?

I second that. Flash does not work well for me, a fully functional HTML5 version would totally get my money.

Re: Show HN: HTML5 guitar lessons with pitch detection

#13

Post by unit009 »

it_learnses wrote: post #11
b1ake wrote: post #2

We first launched here on HN 1.5 years ago, and we're pretty excited to share v2. Our goal with Instinct is to add deep interactivity to any music lesson. We think that one day, every lesson on YouTube might have pitch detection, scrolling notation, a scoring system and personalized feedback. This v2 is a big first step in that direction. We've teamed up with a bunch of online teachers to create fully interactive vid…

I bought a guitar 3 years ago and I've tried to learn it on and off but never really went past the c chord because I always lose interest. I just finished my first lesson and this is superb for me. I love the scoring system which motivates me to try and do better each time and just the ease and simplicity with which I can immerse myself into learning it at my own pace. Just a minor thing that confused me was that the…

"Just a minor thing that confused me was that the music tab layout(maybe that's the standard) is different from the layout of the strings in the animation (which is the same as my guitar). I think both should be the same as the guitar."

I agree. Tabs are normally an inversion of the guitar, or more accurately, how you view the strings when looking down at the guitar in your lap (high string is on the "top" of the neck, low string on the "bottom" of the neck)

i also found the left handed guitar player a little weird :)

Re: Show HN: HTML5 guitar lessons with pitch detection

#14

Post by b1ake »

it_learnses wrote: post #11
b1ake wrote: post #2

We first launched here on HN 1.5 years ago, and we're pretty excited to share v2. Our goal with Instinct is to add deep interactivity to any music lesson. We think that one day, every lesson on YouTube might have pitch detection, scrolling notation, a scoring system and personalized feedback. This v2 is a big first step in that direction. We've teamed up with a bunch of online teachers to create fully interactive vid…

I bought a guitar 3 years ago and I've tried to learn it on and off but never really went past the c chord because I always lose interest. I just finished my first lesson and this is superb for me. I love the scoring system which motivates me to try and do better each time and just the ease and simplicity with which I can immerse myself into learning it at my own pace. Just a minor thing that confused me was that the…

Awesome, so glad that your first lesson was a good experience!

Yeah I agree about the layout of strings in tab notation being confusing as a new guitarist. We wanted to default to the standard layout for tab, but then it gets a little confusing because it's different than the guitar layout below.

One trick with Instinct is that you can flip the notation by clicking on the string names along the left side of the tab.

In the future, we also want to give you the option to flip the guitar, but so far we've only implemented that in our pro courses (i.e. the courses that have pictures of real teachers on them).

Re: Show HN: HTML5 guitar lessons with pitch detection

#15

Post by b1ake »

carlesfe wrote: post #12
ozten wrote: post #6

Firefox 30, Shockwave Flash 11.2 r202 enabled, Ubuntu 14.10 - I see the flash dialog, but am unable to allow access to my microphone. Why not use getUserMedia({audio:true}) instead?

I second that. Flash does not work well for me, a fully functional HTML5 version would totally get my money.

Yeah we like HTML5 / WebRTC a lot better too. In Chrome, Instinct actually uses WebRTC instead of flash to access the mic.

We had a few issues with Firefox WebRTC though, still trying to work through those.

Re: Show HN: HTML5 guitar lessons with pitch detection

#16

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Really great - played first lesson. Second lesson crashed on https://getinstinct.com/courses/intro-to-guitar/amazing-grac... before I could play along with the review of part-1.

Would like regular music notation as I already know that. Also it's a bit quiet, would love to have a voice guide rather than just reading the prompts.

One slight problem is that on parts where the section to play starts on the same note as the end, and uses an open string, the sustained note of the string automatically skips the first note of the repeat playthrough. Perhaps the algo needs to look for an amplitude peak at the start of the students playthrough to avoid this?

Incidentally the tuner is better than any of the simple tuners I've used on Android, haven't tried it on my phone however. It coped with my children talking over it and still helped me tune very quickly.

Re: Show HN: HTML5 guitar lessons with pitch detection

#18

Post by bmelton »

it_learnses wrote: post #11
b1ake wrote: post #2

We first launched here on HN 1.5 years ago, and we're pretty excited to share v2. Our goal with Instinct is to add deep interactivity to any music lesson. We think that one day, every lesson on YouTube might have pitch detection, scrolling notation, a scoring system and personalized feedback. This v2 is a big first step in that direction. We've teamed up with a bunch of online teachers to create fully interactive vid…

I bought a guitar 3 years ago and I've tried to learn it on and off but never really went past the c chord because I always lose interest. I just finished my first lesson and this is superb for me. I love the scoring system which motivates me to try and do better each time and just the ease and simplicity with which I can immerse myself into learning it at my own pace. Just a minor thing that confused me was that the…

I haven't tried Instinct, but having learned guitar off and on many years ago, the biggest 'leap' I made between knowing a few chords, and a few riffs, and actually learning enough to pick up a guitar at a party without embarrassing myself occurred when I started learning full-length songs.

There are a plethora of very simple songs that are super easy to play, and if you learn some that people might like singing along to (even guiltily, like "Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead or Alive"), you'll likely bound ahead in skill by a lot.

To that effect, I'd recommend hitting up YouTube for an instructor like Marty Schwartz (user 'martyzsongs') and finding some of his easy tutorials, then learning a few songs to string together. Get 15-20 of those easy songs under your belt, and everything starts getting a lot easier from there.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=martyzsings+easy

Re: Show HN: HTML5 guitar lessons with pitch detection

#20

Post by b1ake »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #16

Really great - played first lesson. Second lesson crashed on https://getinstinct.com/courses/intro-to-guitar/amazing-grac... before I could play along with the review of part-1. Would like regular music notation as I already know that. Also it's a bit quiet, would love to have a voice guide rather than just reading the prompts. One slight problem is that on parts where the section to play starts on the same note as t…

Great points, and thanks so much for the kind words about the tuner.

Agree that sheet music would be great, and also that the lessons do feel a little quiet / less lively than they could. Your voiceover idea is really cool. We've also thought about adding backing tracks as another way to increase the energy level.

We've also run into that wraparound issue you describe, where a section that starts and ends with the same note can cause an issue when you get to the end and sustain the note. I think you're right about the solution, i.e. better attack detection by looking at the amplitude of the signal.

Post reply on HN