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

Ear Training Practice

tonedear.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 130 posts

Re: Ear Training Practice

#71

Post by alok-g »

titzer wrote: post #57

This is a great domain for vibe-coding your own apps. I put together a combined music notation / ear trainer app as a single HTML app: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/titzer/Rif... I've been working on a voice trainer that uses DSP to analyze a signal and do real-time pitch tracking: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/titzer/Rif... The latter I've been using to suck just a tiny bit le…

Very nice!

My wish list for UX / features:

For the Note Quiz, it was not immediately obvious to me what I need to do - i.e., pick from one of the four what were answer choices. Consider adding some instructions for newbies like me.

I got 90% right for the Note quiz. On Key Quiz, I won't even get 20%. :-) Either way, it would help to have a "Teach" mode also, not just Quiz/evaluate mode. This may show me two keys/chords/sequences side-by-side along with the answers (and prioritizing the cases that I tend to get wrong). I could then hear those repeatedly at will to learn to distinguish.

For the pitch tracking, I wish for a view that is not centered on a waveform but on the instrument. My goal is to improve my voice to sing the right notes/sequence, not the entire time history of it. So a long/moving waveform is less helpful.

A simple view for notes training could be a horizontal piano roll (seeing it like a piano in the front of me) showing a red mark on the piano roll itself for the note / frequency I am singing.

For note sequences and transitions, the same view could show (vertical) waveforms like you have in the Note Quiz (three notes lasting for some three seconds) comparing the desired vs. the actual.

Thanks!

PS: Are you planning to add some FOSS license?

Re: Ear Training Practice

#72

Post by alok-g »

vunderba wrote: post #2

These are all good exercises that help you build a solid foundation, but they can sometimes cause motivation to dip being somewhat clinical in nature. So what I usually do is compile a list of melodic hooks from popular songs my students enjoy. Every so often, we’ll play them and let the student try to pick them out on the piano or their instrument of choice. I find that the satisfaction they get from being able to r…

Nice!

My wish list for this:

1. Even the practice mode has a high bar as it expects me to get the whole thing right in the first shot. It should let me try some before jumping to tell me I got it wrong and automatically playing it again.

2. Show me the first key of the sequence and have me figure only the rest. Why: When I hear the note sequence, I cannot pick the absolute scale, only the intervals. So I practically always get the first key wrong, which then goes to #1 above.

May be there are some settings related to the above. I could not find if there.

Re: Ear Training Practice

#73

Post by wisemang »

xlii wrote: post #35

Tip: you don't have to recognize sounds in order to compose music. I have aphantasia and can't memorize sounds or recall them. For decades I thought I'm deaf (Ockham say hi). But I picked up piano, play for 3 years, can't discern C from G if my life depended on it but my friends tell me I'm pretty decent composer. Writing this so people don't get disappointed about themselves just because they can't pick ear skills.

First I’ve heard of aphantasia applied to sound / music. Though I have on a number of occasions thought about the concept.

I have (visual) aphantasia. But am better able to remember / hear notes and timbres in my head than images. Never really tried composing and for the number of years I took piano lessons I’m pretty crap at it (lessons don’t matter if you don’t practice in between).

But sounds stick with me more than visuals. So interesting that it’s all on a spectrum with these various facets.

Re: Ear Training Practice

#74

Post by bluGill »

fl4regun wrote: post #58
nostrademons wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we? My impression was that strings, woodwinds, choirs instinctively tend to use just intonation, and Wikipedia entries for both just intonation [1] and equal temperament [2] seem to back that up. That's why symphony orchestra players will often have a different flute, clarinet, or oboe for different tunings. It's just fretted instruments like guitars that are by nature equal-tempered. On a side note, both Wikipedi…

Not just fretted instruments, pianos as well. Anything which lacks ability to adjust tuning on its own, while being played (things that wind instrumenst and non-fretted strings can do), for example a steel pan drum, would be equally tempered (assuming you want to be able to play in all possible keys). >That's why symphony orchestra players will often have a different flute, clarinet, or oboe for different tunings. No…

Not everyone tunes their piano equal temperament. I use an alternative tuning ebvtiii which I think is a better compromise. There are a ton of well-tempered tunings with various compromises. I would like a piano that has 15 keys per octave so I can tune it in quarter comma mean tone. (i've seen pipe organs done this way, but never piano.)

Wikipedia has an entry for well tempered as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_temperament

Re: Ear Training Practice

#75

Post by bluGill »

analog31 wrote: post #61
DrewADesign wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think music— essentially expressing ideas and emotion through sound— isn’t approachable enough to children because the notation lacks a solid foundation in math? I very much disagree. In fact, I think teaching children to experiment more with musicality well before they’re introduced to things like notation and formal theory would do far more to pique their interest. I happily played guitar for a decade before I…

Indeed, likely the most widespread teaching method today is the Suzuki method, and it doesn't introduce reading until after at least the first couple of years. There are books, but they're more for the parents to follow along than for the kids. American teachers were horrified by this idea when I was a kid. But the Suzuki method has been successful, and I think it has raised the level of playing overall. Many famous…

All the Suzuki teachers I know use the book even in the early years for even their youngest students. It isn't what the method intended, but that is what is commonly done.

Re: Ear Training Practice

#76

Post by bluGill »

altruios wrote: post #10
functionmouse wrote: post #3

I think we would be a lot more musically verbal as a society if our musical notation had a more objective foundation in math and reason. For example, A to B is a different distance than B to C. We have a 12 note system with only 7 names for them; 12 names would make sense, and even 6 names would make sense, but 7? We could be teaching notes to children objectively like how we teach colors, but we're not.

We actually have multiple names for all the notes - which have a 'reason' to exist. A B-double-flat and an A-natural, and G double-sharp exist, distinct for notational purposes... yes, it sounds dumb. Music IS arbitrary in a lot of ways. For example: 12 tone equal-temperament was chosen/invented (nearly) (by Bach) over just intonation because of 'musical gags' like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Musical_Offering (…

Bach did not invent equal temperament. He probably had thought of it at some time, but his writings make it clear that he would be against such a concept. He was in favor of a 12-tone temperament, but it wasn't equal. It's not clear, but I generally doubt he invented it, only that he heard it at some point and favored it.

Re: Ear Training Practice

#77

Post by vunderba »

alok-g wrote: post #72
vunderba wrote: post #2

These are all good exercises that help you build a solid foundation, but they can sometimes cause motivation to dip being somewhat clinical in nature. So what I usually do is compile a list of melodic hooks from popular songs my students enjoy. Every so often, we’ll play them and let the student try to pick them out on the piano or their instrument of choice. I find that the satisfaction they get from being able to r…

Nice! My wish list for this: 1. Even the practice mode has a high bar as it expects me to get the whole thing right in the first shot. It should let me try some before jumping to tell me I got it wrong and automatically playing it again. 2. Show me the first key of the sequence and have me figure only the rest. Why: When I hear the note sequence, I cannot pick the absolute scale, only the intervals. So I practically…

Hi alok-g,

I'm going to be implementing number 1 - a "playground" that lets you sort of plink around until you're happy. I've gotten a number of requests for this.

The second request has me a bit confused, so I may be misunderstanding.

Under “Note hints” in the options, there are three different modes for practice. In all of them in Practice Mode, the very first note of the sequence is always shown in standard sheet notation. Then depending on the "Note Hints", you can basically change the exercise from an ear training exercise to a sheet reading exercise.

If you change Mode from Practice to Simon, even though it doesn't show the first note - it's always the root of the signature - e.g. if it says G Major, then the first note of the sequence is always G. I should probably make that more clear.

Does that description line up with what you’re seeing?

Re: Ear Training Practice

#78

Post by titzer »

alok-g wrote: post #71
titzer wrote: post #57

This is a great domain for vibe-coding your own apps. I put together a combined music notation / ear trainer app as a single HTML app: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/titzer/Rif... I've been working on a voice trainer that uses DSP to analyze a signal and do real-time pitch tracking: https://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/titzer/Rif... The latter I've been using to suck just a tiny bit le…

Very nice! My wish list for UX / features: For the Note Quiz, it was not immediately obvious to me what I need to do - i.e., pick from one of the four what were answer choices. Consider adding some instructions for newbies like me. I got 90% right for the Note quiz. On Key Quiz, I won't even get 20%. :-) Either way, it would help to have a "Teach" mode also, not just Quiz/evaluate mode. This may show me two keys/chor…

All interesting suggestions. I might add a toggle for horizontal mode, but would probably retain both modes to not lose functionality. For my other apps I have forks of each version, with the idea that if it changes radically from one version to the next, one can always go back to a live copy of the old version.

I pushed an Apache 2.0 license. Feel free to clone the GitHub repo and throw Claude at it. It might surprise you how well it can add features to a single file HTML; it can work out basically how the entire thing works without needing to read any docs. So by all means, vibe code a fork :)

Re: Ear Training Practice

#80

Post by paytonjjones »

Very cool! Many people don't know this, but all kids can learn perfect pitch before age ~5-6. So if you have kids, use the perfect pitch trainer function :)

For a more complete training program, shameless plug for an app I built / ported for that purpose: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bsharp.app

Post reply on HN