[HN Gopher] Show HN: Learn piano without sheet music
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: Learn piano without sheet music
I always found sheet music way too hard to read - and I literally
spent a year at a company building a sheet music rendering engine.
I wanted an app that would display music like the tutorials on
YouTube, but not be focused on upselling lessons etc. like most
current apps, and also would let me import my own files This works
on MIDI files. If it's a valid midi it probably plays. Since
releasing, I did add a subscription for classical music - on a
theory that most normal users don't know what a midi file is. It
changed about a month ago from an up front price to in app
purchases and/or a subscription - which has absolutely tanked
revenue so far - but maybe it will pick up Would love to hear your
thoughts and if you have any suggestions!
Author : jacobp100
Score : 115 points
Date : 2023-09-22 13:02 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jacobdoescode.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jacobdoescode.com)
| kashunstva wrote:
| I'm a professional pianist; so I'm not in your target audience.
| There may well be some system of notation that is superior to the
| standard that has developed in Western music; but nothing I've
| seen matches the expressive flexibility and compactness of the
| way music is now notated.
|
| Experienced players read music in a way that overcomes some of
| the limitations that form the assumptions that are behind these
| alternative notation systems. Instead of looking at a measure as
| a collection of individual notes that must be perceived,
| interpreted and executed in sequence, they take it in as a chunk.
| (I imagine reading code must be similar.) This is why the density
| of traditional notation isn't intimidating - after a while it can
| be read as a whole.
|
| Whether a system like this could be a pedagogical bridge to
| formal notation remains to be seen. I've encountered such
| bridging systems before. I'm an admitted skeptic because my
| orientation to this is that if you want to learn a thing, just
| start learning the thing. The struggle, within limits, is known
| to enhance learning.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| I spent decades not understanding music theory and thinking of
| music as a sequence of notes, and I never understood why music
| notation and the layout of a piano were so bizarre. It just
| seemed like something that we were stuck with due to tradition
| and lack of innovation.
|
| Ever since I started learning something about music theory
| (just in the past couple years... I'm _far_ from an expert), I
| 've realized that both sheet music and the piano layout are
| both very clever in unexpected ways that, as you point out,
| make the music notation both expressive and more compact than a
| straight timeline of linear note values, because they lean on
| the fact that sections of music tend to skip very predictable
| parts of the range of notes. They tend to use them in
| particular patterns that make it useful to reduce your focus to
| a subset of the available range at any given moment.
| unc0n wrote:
| I'm an experienced musician and this really resonates with me.
| It's possible to see a scale written out in the score and know
| exactly what that means in terms of how it's supposed to sound,
| what fingering I should use, and whether there are any
| "aberrant" notes in there that I should watch out for. The same
| goes for many other common note patterns. Trying to decode
| something like this into something that makes sense to me
| musically is a huge additional burden that doesn't exist. That
| said, having been through the journey of being able to sight
| read music myself and then trying to teach it to a number of
| people, I agree that reading a score in real time is one of the
| greatest hurdles to beginner and intermediate players alike,
| and probably a huge impediment to many people learning to play
| a variety of instruments.
|
| There is one particular instance in which getting away from
| traditional notation can help. I have absolute pitch, and I've
| played transposing (woodwind) instruments before. The mental
| link between specific finger positions and specific tones /
| notes on the score, is one that causes me untold issues with
| transposing instruments. If I could just focus on the finger
| positions without the distraction of the score, that would help
| me. I don't think this is a common problem though.
| nescioquid wrote:
| I think there might be two different basic strategies that
| could help you out of this:
|
| 1) just work on actually transposing whatever you're reading
| by a fixed interval. If you get fluent in doing this, you'll
| get past your "page says f but it sounds d" discomfort.
|
| 2) practice reading C clefs (+ octave transposition). You
| play a C on a clarinet in B-flat, it sounds a B-flat. So,
| imagine instead of a treble clef, it were a tenor clef (but
| 8va higher) instead. That third-space treble-clef C is now a
| tenor-clef B (you have to add the accidentals).
|
| In either case, it is probably matter of just getting used to
| it, and that means spending time with it, so no truly "easy"
| answer for you.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > There may well be some system of notation that is superior to
| the standard that has developed in Western music; but nothing
| I've seen matches the expressive flexibility and compactness of
| the way music is now notated.
|
| I like Ableton's Push system and associated sequencing
| software. I think it is superior.
|
| Its an LED grid and matrix, but primarily within that grid it
| highlights all the C notes for every octave
|
| for someone that doesn't have the discipline to already sense
| them, there is no need to ever gain or hone that sense anymore
|
| its hard to describe, as the combination of hardware and
| software is quite comprehensive, but in comparison it really
| does seem like this just wasn't revisited for the last 700
| years. the matrix is for playing and reading. whereas these
| would be separate things in analog devices and things that
| simulate them. hm, lines blur with the term analog. I mean in
| comparison to traditional physical instruments.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I love me a matrix sequencer, but they don't easily convey
| things like dynamics, or tempo changes, or key changes. It
| also requires a score for an 88 key piano be 88 rows tall. A
| 4 bar rest and 64 16th notes also all have the same length in
| the sequencer, which is some times helpful but often not
| helpful.
|
| The Ableton Push sequencer is also designed with using it in
| a scale-only mode in mind. It gets a fair bit uglier if you
| enable chromatic mode.
| jrockway wrote:
| Looking at the screenshots, I think this notation was chosen
| because it's easy to generate from MIDI files. MIDI files just
| say what note is being played, when it starts, and when it
| stops. Sheet music is much richer than that (as you'll note if
| you've ever used a tool to turn MIDI into sheet music), so
| anything that takes MIDI as an input is going to be terrible if
| it produces traditional notation as output. (I bet AI could
| help a lot here, though.)
| simonjgreen wrote:
| Very importantly, just to append, midi start note also
| contains velocity, and midi also contains and control
| changes.
| rwhyan wrote:
| Looks cool design-wise, but who is this for?
|
| Although the upfront cost of learning sheet music is a few weeks
| of study, it quickly becomes worth it due to gains in speed of
| learning and sightreading skills.
|
| Maybe this can introduce people to piano and get them playing
| quickly, but it'll ultimately stunt their development.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| If you already know and like sheet music, I don't think this
| app will be for you
|
| I know at least one other person who didn't bother learning
| sheet music. Maybe it's because I came from guitar, where tabs
| aren't particularly sight readable, so I just learn and
| remember the entire piece
| rwhyan wrote:
| Yes, this app could serve as an introduction to piano, but
| ultimately relying on it will be detrimental to long-term
| growth.
|
| I think the app would b more useful if it helped teach sheet
| music (which can be frustrating for beginners) through this
| friendly UI.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| In the jazz world it is fairly common for pianists to be unable
| to read music. For example, Colin Vallon, one of the most
| successful jazz pianists of the new millennium, has admitted in
| a number of interviews that he never learned.
| rwhyan wrote:
| I wouldn't call it "fairly common."
|
| There are certainly outliers who play by ear or rely on
| improvisation, but musicians in all genres rely on sheet
| music to develop their craft.
| Rochus wrote:
| Many, many "outliers".
| teo_mosce wrote:
| Yeah that's true but I know for a fact that many of my friends
| would like to simply learn a few simple songs without really
| getting into the details of learning music! So this might be
| helpful for all those people like them!
| nogridbag wrote:
| I learned piano when I was young, but I never practiced and
| basically repeated the same lesson over and over. We started
| taking our 5 year old for piano lessons and I was inspired and
| wanted to start practicing as well, but I found I couldn't read
| any sheet music.
|
| I found a course on Udemy: Read Music FAST and Read Music FAST!
| Part 2. I highly recommend those. It basically took a week or
| two to get through them and I was able to jump into the
| author's free Intermediate lesson.
| ksenzee wrote:
| For people saying "but there are amazing musicians who don't
| read music," yes, of course there are. Literacy isn't required
| for poets, either. There are rich oral traditions that weren't
| written down for hundreds or thousands of years. But you cannot
| convince me that reading and writing are unimportant for poets
| and audiobook readers. You can do both jobs without reading or
| writing, but they're a heck of a lot easier if you do.
|
| I think it also depends what instrument you play. It's
| understandable that there are guitarists in this thread saying
| "eh, pianists don't need sheet music, I do fine without it" but
| they are missing the fact that sheet music is way more useful
| for piano than it is for guitar. If someone truly does not want
| to learn to read music, they might consider taking up an
| instrument like guitar where you can get along without it.
| tobr wrote:
| This is wrong. Played piano all my life, and never learned to
| read sheet music fast enough for it to be any use. This has not
| stunted my development. I play by ear and chords.
| abid786 wrote:
| You're probably not very good at playing the piano. I'm not
| sure what you mean by far enough, but not being able to sight
| read a piece is not the same as being unable to read sheet
| music at all.
| tobr wrote:
| > You're probably not very good at playing the piano.
|
| This is rude. What the heck do you base this on?
| dbalatero wrote:
| Yeah it's a moronic comment. I'm not even going to bother
| to compile a list of musicians that smoke everyone else
| without reading sheet music, but you can't throw a rock
| without hitting one.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| In the professional music scene, you can go for an entire
| career without running into one. It is a relatively small
| set of outliers, and even then, there is a narrow set of
| genres (most of them Western and modern) where a
| professional player can get away with not reading or
| writing music.
|
| Even in the poster child of learning by ear, Jazz,
| something like 99% of session and pro players learn to
| read music.
| djaychela wrote:
| Wes Montgomery couldn't read music, but he was a pretty
| good guitarist [1]
|
| [1] This is an understatement, by the way.
| bityard wrote:
| I've noticed that across my many hobbies, there are always
| people who insist that THEIR way of learning how to do a
| thing is the ONLY way to learn how to do a thing. This
| seems more prevalent in the music world, though. Especially
| if they had strict teacher.
| rwhyan wrote:
| I'm sure you can play piano, but I'm also willing to bet it
| has put a ceiling on the types of pieces you can learn.
|
| Have you tried learning a Chopin Ballade or Bach WTC fugue
| without sheet music?
| dbalatero wrote:
| GP might not want to play that kind of music. You can
| easily get away with no reading ability if you play in
| bands, pop groups, etc. (not that it's not useful to read)
| tobr wrote:
| Who is it for, you asked. Do you think there might be a few
| beginner pianists who see value in being able to play other
| music than 300-year-old fugues? If an interest in
| developing musical abilities in a different direction
| constitutes a "ceiling" and "stunted development" for you,
| you have a very narrow view of what it means to play an
| instrument.
| rwhyan wrote:
| It's objectively a ceiling if you can't work towards
| playing the most technically challenging music.
|
| It doesn't have to be Bach. You will struggle to learn
| ANY advanced piano without sheet music.
|
| Sure it's for "beginners," but I'm saying it will
| inherently stunt their growth compared to putting in the
| work to learn sheet music.
| eitally wrote:
| That's not remotely true. if your objective is to play
| keys in a rock band, you really mostly just need chords
| and a little fill here and there.
|
| I completely agree with your fundamental point, but it's
| a mistake to say someone needs to be able to be
| technically excellent in order not to feel like they've
| hit a ceiling in what they can do.
| tobr wrote:
| It's not an objective ceiling when we disagree on which
| way is _up_! You have a super-weird and specific idea of
| what it means to play piano. I really can't think of a
| less inspiring goal than playing "advanced" or
| "technically challenging" music. If you like to do that,
| go nuts, but don't assume that anything else is
| meaningless.
| rwhyan wrote:
| How is that "super-weird" or "specific"? If anything,
| your idea of advanced pieces _not_ being "up" is
| obscure.
|
| > I really can't think of a less inspiring goal than
| playing "advanced" or "technically challenging" music
|
| Really? You can't understand how aiming to conquer a
| highly technical and musical piece is inspiring? It's the
| same as tackling any other difficult goal.
|
| Music at a less technical level isn't meaningless, but
| it's an inherent limitation on your musicality if your
| repertoire is limited by technique.
|
| Technique facilitates greater musicality. Sheet music
| facilitates greater technique.
|
| Regardless, do as you please, but it's like saying, "I'll
| never learn code, because I can build no-code products!"
| tobr wrote:
| > You can't understand how aiming to conquer a highly
| technical and musical piece is inspiring?
|
| You are putting words in my mouth - I am saying it's not
| inspiring _to me_. I can understand that someone else
| might find it inspiring, sure! Like speedrunning a video
| game, some might find it an enjoyable challenge - but I
| think they can see that there are other reasons to play
| games. They wouldn't say "who's it for?" about a strategy
| guide because it's not about speed.
|
| For what it's worth, I disagree with almost all of your
| descriptions of what musicality consists of. It's not
| about repertoire or technique. If you see what types of
| music most people enjoy listening to and playing, you can
| see that you have a niche point of view. Technically
| challenging music is not more enjoyable to play or hear.
| Sheet music is irrelevant to most types of music, both
| historically and today - music is fundamentally heard and
| felt, not written and read, nor conquered.
|
| I'll leave this conversation now as it doesn't appear to
| go anywhere meaningful.
| dbalatero wrote:
| Yes, and, it's a niche view even if you restrict things
| to America/western music. From a global perspective it's
| even more niche, limiting, and boxed in.
| [deleted]
| ksenzee wrote:
| I play by ear and chords too, but being able to jot something
| down, or read something someone else has written down, is as
| useful to me in music as it is in English. Literacy is just
| plain practical.
| tobr wrote:
| Practical and useful, yes! Stunting development is
| something different. I _do_ know how to read sheet music,
| but I've never practiced it to be fast enough to sight
| read. I've never felt that this has stunted my development
| - if it had, I probably would have picked up speed
| naturally.
| crtified wrote:
| I applaud tools like this, which give alternative options for
| people to access the music world. Traditional sheet music is a
| very competent tool, but it's also a very specific form of
| translation (of sound, to print). Certainly not the only one, and
| not even necessarily the best possible one.
|
| I am getting a little off-track here, and I'm probably doing my
| suggestion few favours by burying it here where few will ever see
| it, but on a similar track, I envisage music tuition being _a
| huge potential application for augmented reality_. The
| possibilities there are mindblowing.
| jnovek wrote:
| Is this just musical notation or do you hook up a MIDI device so
| it can point out mistakes?
| jacobp100 wrote:
| For now, it's just MIDI files rather than MIDI devices
| AntonyGarand wrote:
| Congrats on the release, looks great!
|
| Reminds me of Synthesia[1], with a better UX but less features!
|
| How do you handle the displaying all notes on a portrait phone
| per your homepage screenshot? Especially on songs with a large
| gap between both hands, seems like it would be pretty cramped so
| a tablet might be the better option.
|
| [1] https://www.synthesiagame.com/
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Yes - it is heavily based on Synthesia. It has a few different
| priorities - it won't play weird formats like MusicXML, but it
| has stuff like looping, a speed trainer (looping with an
| automatic tempo increment), transposition etc.
|
| Portrait on your phone is about the worse way to use the app,
| but it does technically work. You'll have to scroll side to
| side to see all the notes. Landscape is better - you fit all
| the notes in - and if you tap the screen once, it'll hide the
| header for a bit of extra space. But yes, an iPad or Mac is by
| far the best experience
| AntonyGarand wrote:
| Thanks for your response!
|
| I was confused on the portrait as the phone is shown as-is on
| the homepage, I would advice making it landscape instead as
| it seems to be a more usable format
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Yes - that would make a lot of sense! I copied the layout
| from the TechniCalc page, and never gave it a second
| thought
| stenio51 wrote:
| I think it has potential! However to me the piano is too small
| and hard to see.
|
| Check the Flowkey app for reference, their piano representation
| is more sophisticated, but note that it takes half the screen
| (landscape mode) and there is no wasted space on the ending left
| and write.
|
| Either way, cool project!
| jacobp100 wrote:
| If you're on an iPhone, landscape is definitely the better way
| to use it. I should advertise that more. Looking up flowkey,
| they have a video in landscape, and their screenshots are in
| portrait - I might look at doing something like that
| Madmallard wrote:
| Synthesia has done this exact solution for well over a decade
| now. But there's also the option to read generated sheet music
| and adjust the playback and gradung in many ways.
|
| https://synthesiagame.com/
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Yes - the core app is similar. Synthesia for sure has better
| import support and connects to physical keyboards. This app
| focuses a lot more on UI/UX, and still has some unique playback
| features, like setting up a loop that starts slow and speeds up
| after each iteration
| conkeisterdoor wrote:
| I recently started looking into cheap electric keyboards that I
| could use to teach myself piano, and this looks so awesome for
| learning. I would pay for this app, but unfortunately I don't
| have any Apple devices.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Sorry - yes it is Apple only. Their OSes have a tonne of audio
| stuff out the box which can be pricey to license from other
| places
| conkeisterdoor wrote:
| Understood and makes sense - best of luck with this, it
| really looks fantastic.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Thank you!
| bityard wrote:
| Be careful admitting this in public: you are going to get
| comments from people telling you that it is impossible to learn
| how to play piano on a cheap keyboard because it doesn't have
| the same feel as a real piano, and lacks pedals. Fortunately,
| they are wrong up to a certain point. There is a difference
| playing the two, to be sure, but it's like saying you can't
| learn to drive in a car with an automatic transmission.
| conkeisterdoor wrote:
| Hah that's good to know, the comparison to learning to drive
| makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the tip
| nogridbag wrote:
| I just did the same. I wanted to get something cheap-ish, but
| still feeling like a piano. Roland seems to the default choice,
| maybe with Yamaha being a close second.
|
| I wound up buying a Roland FP-30X, but I think the FP-10 feels
| basically the same. When we visit friends who went for cheaper
| options, their keyboards feel like toys.
| yepguy wrote:
| I just did the same, and I think those Rolands are basically
| the cheapest options that will actually serve you well over
| the medium to long term.
| Madmallard wrote:
| What we actually need is a program that effectively teaches sight
| reading sheet music well. That would be the music school winner.
| Octabrain wrote:
| It's great to have tools that make easier to learn how to play
| music, which btw, I feel music should have evolved naturally
| itself towards something with better high level abstraction
| (kinda like programming languages). However, my fear with this
| kind of approaches in music is that you might end up being a
| simple "typewriter". I mean, you play by pure mechanical memory
| instead of due to develop a logical understanding of what you are
| doing. This was the main reason I ditched yousician for guitar. I
| saw myself just doing a more complex "guitar hero" kind of thing
| and I don't want that, I want music theory and understanding
| instead of moving blindly my hands following coloured dots on the
| screen.
| jsphsl wrote:
| I've been taking piano lessons for several months now and I'm
| still struggling with sheet music notes. I may give this a try!
| It reminds me of playing guitar hero back in the day :)
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Yeah I was in the same boat. I came from guitar, so had some
| level of dexterity. I couldn't use beginner tutorials that show
| you what note to play, because they were far too basic. But
| then with sheet music, I'd spend 90% of the time counting EGBDF
| - and getting it wrong a lot of the time too!
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Does it support midi-in? I've got a small midi keyboard, being
| able to hook that up to this would be ideal.
|
| And if that's in there, what about a mode - like typing
| instructors - where the page only advances if you hit the right
| keys? I think that would be an ideal way to learn the notes,
| followed by a mode like Guitar Hero where you have to hit the
| right notes at the right time.
|
| Finally, given that the app is aimed at teaching, I'd add a
| progression path, have the user start with simple music and
| gradually progress. Finding rights-free midi files and assessing
| difficulty might be difficult though.
| QVVRP4nYz wrote:
| Synthesia works with midi(via USB) - at least the PC and
| Android versions do.
| buffington wrote:
| I use Synthesia on the iPad and it works great.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| No MIDI in for the moment. It'd be nice to have, for sure!
|
| For learning - I agree - I wanted to have some kind of
| 'difficulty' heuristic for pieces, and recommend easy ones. I
| just haven't been able to come up with anything yet.
| dbalatero wrote:
| You can look up the royal grading the UK uses for classical
| pieces and use that.
|
| A single difficulty score is a bit difficult (hah) as a piece
| will have many technical dimensions to it, and ideally you're
| comfortable with most of it but a few dimensions push you out
| of your comfort zone.
|
| I think these standard grade scores attempt to give some kind
| of loose ordering to when you might want to tackle the piece.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| I'm actually from the UK. Is this the grade system people
| normally refer to - like they say they're grade 8?
|
| I meant more an algorithm to determine the difficulty.
| Things like tempo and how much your fingers would need to
| move. But equally, I could probably just cherry pick some
| easier pieces far quicker
| zengid wrote:
| This is really awesome, congrats on shipping. If you don't mind
| me asking, what do sales look like on average for an app like
| this? I'm hoping to someday make a "music education app", but I'm
| skeptical if people would pay for it. Thank you!
| jacobp100 wrote:
| I don't mind being candid about sales - I always found it
| really interesting reading about others
|
| So for 2022, this app was a $5 up front price, and made $200. I
| have a similar one for MP3 playback - also $5 up front - that
| made $900. Then you used to be able to buy both together for
| $8, which made $130
|
| A month ago I moved to in app purchases and subscriptions - and
| since then I've only managed to get one subscription and zero
| IAPs. The downloads have also been terrible - with about 5 a
| day
|
| The level of marketing before has been having a good store
| listing, and some effort into keywords, but no active marketing
| (self promotion or ads etc.)
|
| Focus now is on marketing. The nice thing about it being free
| to download is it's easier to get interest from posts like
| these. That was much harder to do before
| zengid wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! One thing I've thought about for
| marketing an app like this was to just sit down and do a
| Twitch stream or something and screen-share while using the
| app. I feel like if it looks cool enough you'll get a few
| folks that want to check it out.. and hopefully it snowballs.
| You could record it and slice up clips for YouTube with the
| good parts..
|
| Good luck with marketing!
| zengid wrote:
| And another note.. Free-to-play apps with IAP could benefit
| from learning about how it works in the gaming industry. I
| highly recommend the Gamecraft podcast from the incredible
| VC Mitch Lasky
|
| https://www.gamecraftpod.com/
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Thanks! I'll give that a listen. I think I have a lot of
| learning to do here
| Emigre_ wrote:
| Hey this is really cool! Thanks for sharing it!
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Thank you!
| ksherlock wrote:
| Maybe it's just me, and I'm not particularly good at reading
| sheet music but -- for piano -- I find all the alternative even
| worse.
|
| At least this sort of display eliminates the "akshually C and A#
| are different"-type cranks.
| catapart wrote:
| Oh, awesome! I'm working on something similar, to put out as a
| PWA. Seems I had similar aspirations/complaints that you did, but
| also didn't have an apple device (that I wanted to use for the
| app).
|
| Yours is a very nice presentation! I like the annotations
| feature, and the comprehensiveness of the features, even for the
| stated goal of such simple functionality. A lot of people might
| leave out percussion loops, or be a bit more stingy with the free
| tracks.
|
| This may be a stupid question, but I'll ask anyway: does it
| recognize Midi controller input? In my practice, I've found value
| in having the notes I play represented digitally, so that I can
| keep my eyes on the screen (and, let's face it, Rock Band/Guitar
| Hero is fun). But I didn't see that specifically advertised
| anywhere, so I was curious!
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Funny - this actually started as a web app!
| https://github.com/jacobp100/piano
|
| It does not recognize midi input at the moment
| masukomi wrote:
| on the one hand, yay. Tabs have made learning guitar stuff
| incredibly accessible, and dealing with the separate hands of the
| piano and separate clefs is a PITA. On the other hand... ugh.
| We've successfully churned out generations of musically
| illiterate musicians. We've also made it really hard to find the
| sheet music for a piece instead of the tabs, and the tabs are
| lacking in SO MUCH information.
| avtar wrote:
| Thom Yorke, among probably other great musicians, couldn't read
| sheet music.
| sebastiansm wrote:
| Maybe not, but he has an amazing ear and a vaste knowledge of
| music theory.
| zengid wrote:
| But Jonny Greenwood _can_.
|
| I completely agree with your point though, sheet music is an
| element from Western "Music Theory", and has nothing to do
| with being able to make music. It definitely does help if you
| want to have musicians trained in that Western cultural
| practice to play your music, but not everyone cares about
| that.
|
| Edit: my point about Mr Greenwood is that he is a huge part
| of the sound of Radiohead, as well as the other members.
| duped wrote:
| Notation is always lossy. And for what its worth, for the
| entirety of human civilization music has been an aural
| tradition passed down from teacher to student, and primarily
| learned by ear. The notation is just whatever is most
| convenient to people for taking notes at the time.
| holri wrote:
| There has always been a very old method to learn music without
| sheet music. It is called playing by ear. It is incredible that
| we have a word for that. Because nobody is saying he is learning
| to talk by ear. Because talking and making music is an acoustic
| thing, and the natural thing is to use primarily your ear for
| that. The eye can be helpful, be it sheet music or a midi
| visualisation like this app. But an eye can not hear music.
| tredre3 wrote:
| Learning by ear can be more fun and is easier to some. It is
| indeed a more natural process; hear something -> replicate it.
| But, unless you're just playing alone or jamming with friends,
| not being able to read sheet music is a real hindrance when it
| comes to collaboration.
| wizofaus wrote:
| You'd think, but I'd suggest the bulk of collaborative music
| making throughout human history was done without notated
| music. But it's undoubtedly a massive timesaver if all the
| musicians going into a collaborative session know what
| they're supposed to play ahead of time. I certainly can't
| imagine it being possible to perform something like a Mahler
| symphony or Wagner opera without the vast majority of
| performers being competent readers of sheet music.
| Fervicus wrote:
| Is this something you have learnt? If so, any suggestions how
| to go about learning music this way?
| wizofaus wrote:
| Practice. Trial & error. Playing along with the recording. I
| still do it regularly and it can often take a few goes to get
| all the chords just right, even with the relatively simple
| tonal/rhythmic language of most pop music.
| layer8 wrote:
| The problem with this is remembering what you want to play, for
| pieces of any length and complexity. The comparison in that
| case is not talking, but reciting a long poem/article/novel.
| utexaspunk wrote:
| I mean, I can sing or whistle any song I can think of -surely
| thousands of tunes- without thinking about what I need to do
| with my lips. That same mechanism that connected tune in head
| to lips and mouth can also connect tune in head to fingers on
| piano with enough effort.
| bumby wrote:
| I think, maybe to the OPs point, that would require you to
| either 1) remember the tune perfectly to recreate it, 2) or
| to have a recording that you can continually reference. #1
| is still unreliable and sheet music was created when #2 was
| unavailable.
|
| I'm personally envious of those who can play by ear but
| have found reading music to be easier to learn by
| comparison and more precise.
| Joeri wrote:
| I've been learning piano for over a year gradually learning
| more and more pieces like that, and I'm starting to notice
| a limit to memory. The basic melody is easy to remember as
| you point out, but piano music often has multiple things
| going on at once, and it gets harder to keep track of all
| that in your head.
| duped wrote:
| One problem I see with your design is that there's no way to deal
| with rubato, and presumably you can't alter the tempo on the fly
| as you're playing.
|
| The problem that sheet music solves is providing a static
| notation that can be read non-linearly for a dynamic piece of art
| that must be played linearly.
|
| There's also no way to represent dynamics, as far as I can tell?
| The MIDI file won't give you that information.
|
| Similarly unless you support MIDI 2 clip files (to my knowledge,
| no one does yet) you're also missing the key signature
| information, which is kind of important (otherwise the notes have
| no meaning - you need to infer their function from context, which
| is ambiguous)
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Midi actually supports a lot of this. You can change the tempo
| on the fly, and each note has a velocity that's effectively
| your dynamic
|
| Yes - there's no key signatures. It's something I may add in
| the future
|
| Don't forget - most people who use this app don't learn a lot
| of this stuff. They just want to play
| duped wrote:
| MIDI supports neither. It supports an encoded tempo change,
| there is no way for you to read a MIDI file back at the pace
| a player wishes to play using just the MIDI file. Velocity is
| not the same thing as dynamics, it represents the particular
| force applied to a key at a moment in time but cannot
| represent change in dynamics over time (or even leave room
| for interpretation).
|
| The thing is that if you want to play you need to learn some
| fundamentals first. A keyboard isn't a just slab of buttons
| to push at particular times.
| vcg3rd wrote:
| I can play piano, trumpet, and trombone, but hardly ever do
| anymore. I have been able to read sheet music since I was 8.
|
| If the whole concept of this confuses me, and it does, it may
| confuse people who are eager to learn and get playing (without
| doing endless scales) and don't read sheet music.
|
| I have no idea what tabs means in this context, though I am
| vaguely familiar, I think, with it as a guitar term (which you or
| a commenter came from).
|
| Looking at the graphics on the site (I don't use Apple) gives me
| no clue how the notes for each hand are displayed "according to
| how they look on a keyboard."
|
| What am I missing? Will someone who uses Apple, can't read sheet
| music, has never played any instrument and wants to learn how to
| play piano be able to figure it out within app tutorials?
| singleshot_ wrote:
| If someone described to you how to play d above middle c on a
| trumpet by saying "1 & 3" that would be pretty close to guitar
| tablature. Instead of reading a score, they show you what frets
| to hit.
| karmakaze wrote:
| The layout is a rotated & mirrored version of that commonly
| used on DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations) so it certainly makes
| sense to professionals.
| wizofaus wrote:
| It's just a vertical piano roll (in fact that's the typical
| orientation of physical piano rolls - DAWs typically rotate
| them 90 deg as we're accustomed to the concept of time being
| the horizontal axis).
| solardev wrote:
| Looking at the screenshots, it reminds me of Guitar Hero / ROCK
| Band on like ultra hard mode, maybe?
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2YF34XlfzU
| ShamelessC wrote:
| > I have been able to read sheet music since I was 8. If the
| whole concept of this confuses me, and it does
|
| It's been my experience that most people who are fond of sheet
| music learned it at a very young age.
|
| Or perhaps I'm just stupid? I've tried several times to learn
| sheet music in my 20's and it is brutally difficult. Guitar
| tabs? Easy. Chord charts? No problem. Sheet music? Go fuck
| yourself!
|
| What is it with the musicians in the comments here having
| _zero_ awareness? Sheet music is probably great! Sure, fine.
| But to claim that OP's idea or even YouTube tutorials are
| outright not a good idea is laughable and tone deaf.
|
| Not everyone's folks bought them a Steinway and piano lessons
| at age 5-13 (the age when humans can magically pick up on
| absurdly difficult concepts with relatively little effort).
| balfirevic wrote:
| [delayed]
| billfruit wrote:
| Does Casio Chordana play do something similar?
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Looks like it! I'm definitely not the first to do this
| ics wrote:
| The pricing model is confusing at first and not very clear until
| you start trying to use the app (tried the macOS version for
| now). The App Store description does not mention the subscription
| and what features it unlocks, and in the app it doesn't trigger
| until you try to play a song. If you dismiss the window, you
| actually have to go back to playing a song (and wait) to see it
| again as there isn't a settings pane or other trigger _just_ to
| see the subscription page. A few suggestions on that front:
| - Put the pricing either on a splash window after opening for the
| first time OR in a message tile on the library screen -
| Include certain (full) songs in the free version and give them a
| badge of some sort ("free", "included", etc.) - Put a badge
| in the toolbar indicating whether you are in a free or paid mode
| - Make it clear if a subscription is valid for iOS *and* macOS or
| if they are separate (2x the cost) (edit: downloaded on iOS and
| it's not limiting anything so it must be a universal
| subscription. Put that early in the description for sure.)
|
| I put a piano in my apartment in 2020, the year the app appears
| to have been first released. Several people in my household were
| looking for something exactly like this to practice and never
| came across it, though we did get suckered into a few $10/month
| or $75/year subscriptions for other things that ended up barely
| getting used. If the pricing stays the same but is much clearer
| to people I believe you could get decent conversion from a little
| bit of targeted advertising.
|
| Besides that, the import dialog could be less spartan. It is not
| indicated in the app itself that it takes MIDI files only. Normal
| users may not know what a MIDI file is at first but you might be
| surprised at how many would learn and go seek those if given a
| tiny bit of guidance. Tons of non-technical people have learned
| to get their hands on playable guitar tabs the same way.
|
| As for the playing interface, I like it quite a bit. Plenty of
| people will comment about how anything getting in the way of
| becoming an expert in sight reading is somehow evil (hyperbole)
| but this is silly. I could easily recommend this app to friends
| who played Guitar Hero as kids and now want to play along to
| stuff on the piano or keyboard- hey, we all got older and maybe
| acquired more "mature" instruments with black and white keys. I
| used to read standard sheet music for chamber/orchestra but it's
| been years and frankly it's the least important skill for the
| type of music that I play. However I do have a piano and once in
| a while want to play something without getting into a lesson on
| sheet music especially since what I used to read had far less
| range than a piano.
|
| App Store note: searching for "piano tabs" the app doesn't show
| up even after a _lot_ of scrolling. "piano tabs learning &
| practice" finds it as the top result. I am a fan of the plain
| name; it's short and self-explanatory to the point that I imagine
| people do randomly search those terms without knowing about your
| app. That should be a good thing but in practice it seems the
| discoverability isn't there which is worth looking into.
| ics wrote:
| Some suggestions and features based on personal preference, so
| I'm putting in a separate comment. - Put an
| "Import MIDI file" button in the Imported Files section -
| Star or bookmark icon, pick one for favorites. Currently one is
| used on the library screen and a different one in the song
| view. - Sidebar for the different sections with hide/show
| toggle, for example I don't like to scroll through stacked
| Sections and don't really care to see Recents at all -
| Options for thumbnail, tab display could be one but some
| variations would be interesting: - Color based on tempo
| - Dot-based graphic (primarily aesthetic, but recognizable at a
| glance) - Size S/M/L option which assigns per section
| - Tags for tracks, ideally color-codable. Maybe I want to tag
| something "mastered", or "difficult", "somber", etc. -
| After entering the search box, escape key or outside click
| should dismiss and return to the home layout. Currently the
| sections get reorganized, Favorites and Recents disappear and
| Pieces shows up at the bottom, but I can't get back without
| closing the app. - "Choose Random" button to open a piece
| - Composer interface, create new pieces from scratch or modify
| from the library using something similar to the playing
| interface (n.b. a decent interface for this if no
| keyboard/midi-in would be present a 1+-octave keyboard with
| some modifiers, so multiple key taps can create individual
| notes, optional rest interval, or extend a continuous note.
| Row-level actions so you can duplicate creating repeats, shift
| up/down, etc. Slight differences between macOS/iOS.) -
| Allow user editable text, emoji, or color highlight in the play
| scroll. Noting a section of the piece is one obvious use but it
| could be handy for several uses. - (semi serious) watch
| integration to vibrate on tempo. - Music box mode, notes
| only play as you scroll (I see you did this actually. My
| daughter is gonna love this...)
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Thanks again for the suggestions!
|
| What OS were you using where you couldn't get out of the
| search page? On the main page, the layout is altered so
| there's no duplication on results - but if you exit the
| search interface, it'll go back
|
| Also note you can press the chevron to the left of a section
| to collapse it, and it'll remember that setting
| ics wrote:
| On macOS 13.5, entering the search shows no obvious way to
| end/return. However I just pressed Enter and that took me
| back, which was unexpected. So it works, just oddly mapped
| I think. On iOS the search+cancel is just fine.
|
| For the sections, I noticed that but still find it odd that
| the home library view doesn't actually show me... _the full
| library_. You have to discover pieces by composer which I
| missed at first. BTW, there is a typo on both mac /iOS
| versions where the header is missing an r in "Lib[*r]ary".
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Ah yes - mac is particularly difficult to get that
| interaction right
|
| Thanks for pointing out the typo. I'm really bad for
| those!
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestions! A few people are saying they were
| confused, so I'll put some more effort around that wording
|
| The import dialog is unfortunately just the system dialog - I
| have some other apps using it and it's frequently something
| people are confused about. There's no real way around it
| though.
|
| I'm still experimenting with the catalog. The app used to have
| a lot of links to places to get MIDI files from, but I just
| don't think it's something most people wanted to bother with.
| But that remains to be seen!
| ics wrote:
| On iOS, I don't think the term MIDI is mentioned anywhere in
| app. Unless you recalled it from the app store description
| then the Import button seems quite mysterious; average users
| might mistake it for something to interpret and extract notes
| from MP3s or whatever.
|
| I have this site bookmarked for fun: https://bitmidi.com/ If
| I showed this app to some friends, the first thing they'd go
| looking for would be some video game music which is a whole
| different set than classical. Considering that, it would be
| nice to have separate libraries or playlists for genre
| organization. Offer some pre-populated as IAP, e.g. Classical
| is default but you can get popular songs, SNES tracks, etc.
| for $1-2 per collection if doable with individual licenses.
| jjallen wrote:
| How do you only have one review?
|
| This looks super cool and would make me basically immediately
| able to roughly play quite a few pieces. Need to setup my
| keyboard and try it out.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Short answer, I'm terrible at marketing, and I've had bad luck
| with users
|
| I had to reset the rating a few months back because people
| would give me a 1 star review when a song didn't open. I always
| try to be as helpful as possible here - when a song doesn't
| open, it has a link to email me, and I've always fixed these
| issues. But those 1 star reviews never got updated. Hopefully
| now that's a thing of the past, because it's tested on all 800
| pieces from the catalog, which all have to parse successfully
| to generate the previews
|
| If you'd like to add to the reviews, it would be really
| helpful!
| openquery wrote:
| I've been playing piano for a few years (no teacher, on and off)
| and have always been curious about the topic of sheet music. When
| you're first learning it's very painful. The notation isn't that
| bad, sharps, flats, time signatures etc - that part is ok. What
| _is_ difficult is corresponding a position on the staff to a
| physical note on a keyboard, especially when you have a treble
| clef and a base clef.
|
| However over time it becomes easier and easier - and then you
| wonder is sheet music somehow optimal or is it 'good enough' and
| has withstood the test of time (also accounting for the fact that
| there is an enormous corpus of existing sheet music).
|
| The question regarding this app (which looks awesome) is, is this
| format for reading music better than sheet music at the expert
| level (for professional musicians). And if not, how can we get
| that 10x improvement to make the switch from sheet music to
| something better.
| strunz wrote:
| It's even more frustrating on guitar where the literal same
| note in the same octave appears all over the fretboard. You
| have to figure out all the notes nearby to figure out what
| position you should be in. Even with years of experience I find
| tabs faster
| b450 wrote:
| The flip side of this is that chord shapes (in terms of hand
| shape, not intervals) are constant on the guitar (assuming no
| open strings). Learning piano after guitar, I was intimidated
| by the fact that - for example - an Am and Bm had different
| shapes, whereas on the guitar it's just the same shape
| transposed up the neck.
|
| Anyway, I've noticed some music youtubers can read and write
| midi notation just as fluidly as sheet music. Which can
| result in some fun shenanigans[^1]
|
| [^1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy_0mMcj0Q8
| warcher wrote:
| It might be, but it also might not. If you're just cowboy
| chording, sure, but if you're playing chord melody you'll
| find the chord you choose is highly contextual based on
| what you're playing and where you're going. An Am chord is
| a continuum of notes going up or down the neck A-C-E (G?)
| over and over-- wherever your hand sits, there's an Am
| available to you. It just might sound better (or more
| interesting!) or play easier to grab one set of A-C-E
| versus another.
| wizofaus wrote:
| There's no standard Midi "notation" that's human-
| readable/writeable AFAIK - even written out in, e.g. hex, I
| would be flabbergasted if anyone could perform from a
| displayed Midi file. The YT video appears to show a piano-
| roll type display (common for DAWs etc.), nothing to do
| with midi (which doesn't even have the concept of notes or
| note lengths at all).
| kzrdude wrote:
| There's a lot of same shapes on the piano as well.
|
| And the differing shapes are a bit like how A major and C
| major have different shapes on the guitar isn't it, for
| practical reasons you don't use the same shape for those
| two.
| airstrike wrote:
| This reminds me of this excellent video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9IkpUYlOx8
|
| Can we get this guy to play the Super Mario World ending theme
| with the notation from TFA?
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| > What _is_ difficult is corresponding a position on the staff
| to a physical note on a keyboard, especially when you have a
| treble clef and a base clef.
|
| This is my biggest issue. I played piano for years and still
| struggle with this. (though I never excelled, and started
| young)
|
| Any suggestions on a simple way to overcome this issue?
| wizofaus wrote:
| Even experienced pianists would have trouble sight reading
| music that uses an excess of ledger lines - i.e. we can't
| accurately judge what note is intended just by estimating its
| vertical distance from the staff. But notes on the staff (or
| 3 or fewer ledger lines off) are rarely an issue - it's
| really just familiarity (I struggle reading off unusual clefs
| too). Which is why I don't think any sort of piano-roll based
| notation system is ever going to become the norm for
| performers, because it essentially does require accurately
| judging which key to hit, when to hit it and how long to hold
| it for just by its spatial position on the score.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| I think back when music notation was being actively iterated
| on, you had to convey all the information possible, because
| it's not like you could share a recording. Things like guitar
| tabs - which typically erase timing information - only work
| because who ever reading them has already heard the song and
| know what it's meant to sound like
| bumby wrote:
| Aren't guitar tabs typically combined with abbreviated
| notation to show the rhythm? No lettering of notes, but just
| an "X" associated with half-notes, quarter notes, etc?
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Sometimes. Guitar Pro had a text format that could output
| them - but it's not frequently used. Bar lines are encoded
| pretty reliably, which is at least some timing information
| warcher wrote:
| There's always been a tendency towards shorthand-- medieval
| manuscripts elided certain parts of the harmony/accompaniment
| because it's just known to be there by the musicians of the
| day. Same for jazz lead sheets-- they give you the melody and
| a general sense of the harmony, with the understanding that
| specific voicings and reharmonizations will be left to the
| discretion of the performer in the moment.
| phlakaton wrote:
| It is not.
|
| I am, once again, asking people to understand that piano roll
| notation is no substitute for traditional notation when it
| comes to performance, among many other things.
| zharknado wrote:
| I want to try to articulate an idea I see represented elsewhere
| without dismissing the value of what's being offered here.
|
| There are many comments to the effect that this is a crutch that
| will inhibit future learning. I agree with that assessment.
|
| I also agree that such a tradeoff is probably fine for many
| people, depending on their goals.
|
| I studied music composition in college and then worked in adult
| world language curriculum. Perhaps a useful analogy is the use of
| Romanization to teach world languages to native English speakers
| (romaji, pinyin, etc.)
|
| For languages like Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, etc.) where
| there is (virtually) no phonetic information in the writing
| system, it's just too dang hard for a lot of people to make the
| leap to pronouncing characters as they are reas by natives.
| Pinyin or its equivalents are an "inauthentic" but valuable tool,
| but eventually you have to discard it to progress.
|
| With straightforward phonetic languages like Korean, it's
| actually counterproductive to try to bridge people to familiar
| symbols, because there's very few resources for the learner until
| they start mapping sounds to Hangul.
|
| That'd be my argument---if you find you can't easily make the
| leap to reading music and just want to get playing, sure, use
| this. But know that there's a whole world of communication out
| there that you'll be missing until you abandon this simplified
| representation and cross the full chasm.
| teo_mosce wrote:
| Tried to teach my girlfriend to play the piano for a while now.
| But reading notes was too difficult for her. I can see this be
| really helpful for newbies!
| pascalxus wrote:
| Two fatal issues I discovered: - the apple store was so biased,
| even when I typed in "piano tabs", it couldn't find your app in
| the top 10 results. I had to type in the name of the entire app:
| "Piano Tabs: Learn & Practice"
|
| Then I attempted to install it and got this: - "This application
| requires iOS 15.0 or later". This is a deal breaker on so many
| apps. I don't trust apple enough to change my iOS version. Note:
| this happened on a pretty recent iphone 7+
| fortran77 wrote:
| I've been playing the piano for 55+ years, and still practice
| daily.
|
| What makes piano difficult isn't reading music notation. You can
| learn to read music notation in a week. What makes it difficult
| is the physical challanges.
|
| Skipping music notation may save you a few weeks at the very
| beginning, but you'll quickly hit a wall and need to learn the
| physical skills. And if you can't read music, you won't be able
| to make music with other people.
|
| This is a very, very bad idea.
| paddim8 wrote:
| People have different goals and ideas of how they want to play.
| I don't think that's something that should be gatekept.
| filcuk wrote:
| That honestly looks amazing. Do you plan to release on Android by
| any chance?
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Unfortunately not! This is a SwiftUI app using a lot of Apple
| audio libraries - so it would be a complete rewrite to get it
| running on Android
| awill wrote:
| What's the pricing model here? the AppStore lists a yearly
| subscription as $10, but then an additional IAP to import songs
| of $5? It's confusing, and I never install apps when the pricing
| is unclear. Also, any plans for lifetime, as a lot of people
| simply don't want yet another subscription.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| The subscription unlocks everything while it's active
|
| The 'lifetime' option is $5 but only unlocks importing your own
| files (not the 800 pieces in the catalog)
|
| Its a good point - I should clarify this pricing
| tnecniv wrote:
| This is kind of a tangent, but I've played instruments all my
| life and I never really understood how to use sheet music beyond
| the initial learning of a piece. I always see musicians actively
| referencing it while playing, but I've never been able to read it
| nearly quickly enough to do so. That also holds for guitar tabs,
| which I can read more quickly than sheet music (for guitar or
| piano). For anything remotely complicated, I need to memorize the
| piece so I can focus on what I need to do with my hands. A chord
| sheet I can follow while improvising even if I haven't seen the
| progression before, but my playing definitely isn't as good
| because the mental load of reading, listening, and playing is too
| much. It's like having one too many processes open on your
| computer and the OS / CPU can't quite keep up
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I play a lot of piano and harpsichord at a very advanced level,
| and almost always use the sheet music. For me, it's a memory
| aid and a sort of "map" to the piece. You can also write stuff
| on your score to have reminders. This takes cognitive load off
| when you are performing. The goal of music is to play the
| music, so why waste brain capacity on getting to perfect memory
| of a piece when you can instead spend that on making the piece
| more expressive?
|
| I will also say that learning to play without looking at your
| hands is a great skill to have, and also takes off some of the
| cognitive load.
| powersnail wrote:
| The ability to read unfamiliar music while playing is called
| sight reading, and generally speaking it's more of an exercise
| than a capability relevant to actual performance.
|
| During performance, sheet music is like a cheat sheet during
| exam, a reminder of something you already know. Most of the
| music is in your head and hand. The sheet music is just there
| to prevent a memory slip. Some orchestral music can be awfully
| repetitive, and having the page there helps you keep track of
| where you are. You are not supposed to devote lots of attention
| to the page itself, (unless you didn't practice before the
| performance and decides to sightread on stage, which, you know,
| happens).
| bibanez wrote:
| Having good memory is important. It seems to me you have a
| really good muscle memory and that has helped you play without
| looking at the score.
|
| I've played the piano since a very young age and the thing is,
| learning to play without looking at the keys (eg whilst
| reading) is actually a good skill to have. The argument goes
| that this way you can look at one hand without worrying about
| missing with the other while in a concert. I tend to agree.
|
| Also I scribble a lot in my sheet music because part of
| studying a piece is discovering things written in it
| (everything has a purpose, every staccato, forte, piano, etc.)
| distantsounds wrote:
| This doesn't teach you how to play piano, this teaches you how to
| read vertically scrolling notes. It doesn't actually teach you
| where the notes are on the piano, when key changes are made, or
| when to play a note strong or soft.
|
| This is gamifying an actual skill without teaching the actual
| skill. Good for a few parlor tricks but actually learning piano,
| requires, well, actually learning how to read the sheet music.
| [deleted]
| tornato7 wrote:
| I agree that sheet music could be improved. The worst part to me
| is simply that notes are identical symbols just shifted up or
| down ever so slightly. But based on the screenshots your app does
| the same thing, just side to side. I think it would be more
| helpful if each note had a color to it.
| jacobp100 wrote:
| Yes - that is a problem with the format. There's a few visual
| cues I add for this, like the black notes extending all the way
| up into the score, markers on every octave. You can also scroll
| the score like a normal scrollview, and it'll highlight on the
| visual keyboard what's currently played, and also play the
| notes if you scroll slow enough
| jimmytucson wrote:
| This is really cool! Guitar was my first instrument, then I went
| on to learn bass, drums, and a bunch of others, but I never
| bothered to learn how to read music - or, really, sight read. The
| few songs I know on piano, I learned from an electronic piano
| that had a display with an image of the keyboard and the keys
| would change color to tell you which one to play. When I play
| Maple Leaf Rag for other musicians they're often surprised to
| find out I can't read music.
|
| So I can definitely see a market for this and will probably try
| learning another song on piano with it. That said, I do wish I
| had just learned to read music up front, as I learned my first
| instrument. I think it would have opened up doors for me,
| particularly for playing with other musicians (like an orchestra
| or a jazz band). But who knows how much longer that will be the
| case - tomorrow's great musicians may learn on an app like this!
| foobarian wrote:
| I learned a soprano instrument and was able to sight read the
| treble clef since forever. But try as I could I never could
| teach myself to be fluent with the bass clef. It just messes
| with my brain somehow.
| notorandit wrote:
| Learning piano without reading scores (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven,
| Chopin...) is like learning C without bitwise operators and
| pointers...
| bregma wrote:
| Hmm. Looks like the classic piano roll notation.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-09-22 23:00 UTC)