[HN Gopher] Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 ye...
___________________________________________________________________
Show HN: My iOS app to practice sight reading (10 years in the App
Store)
Hello HN, this has been my personal project for quite some time
now. It has been a slowly evolving project over the years and its
core function is for users to expose themselves to progressively
more difficult lessons of music notes. NOTE: It is free and there
are no ads. There is an in app purchase but most of the app doesn't
require it.
Author : rooster117
Score : 74 points
Date : 2025-03-23 21:25 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apps.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apps.apple.com)
| jkmcf wrote:
| What a wonderful logo!
|
| I'll see if my daughter is interested, but I'd love a guitar
| version (hint, hint).
| rooster117 wrote:
| I appreciate it!
|
| I'd love to add new instruments. I actually have a version
| which is violin only but it is pretty stale at this point.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Check out Tenuto for similar types of learning modes, and that
| has guitar/fretboard support for some modes.
| devonsolomon wrote:
| I learned on this. It's near perfect. Nothing to say but thank
| you!
| rooster117 wrote:
| Awesome to hear!
| ppetty wrote:
| That's awesome! I'm not a musician but just impressed by an app
| with great focus that stands the test of time. Makes me wonder
| why Apple doesn't have an area for exactly this type of app; the
| opposite of Latest Apps.
| walterbell wrote:
| Community could maintain an index. awesome-ios-
| apps-timeless
| kibibu wrote:
| Might be my pessimistic mood this morning, but I'm curious
| whether these "awesome x" indices are _actually_ community-
| owned or whether its code for "one passionate person sifting
| through a bunch of garbage until they burn out"
| walterbell wrote:
| Hopefully the next volunteer extends the work of their
| predecessor, instead of starting from scratch.
|
| In theory, reputation signals from 'awesome' lists and HN
| threads could inform search engines, LLMs and app market
| analytics.
| mortar wrote:
| Thanks, just downloaded it to try and purchased instantly - great
| app! Have been "playing" Fur Elise for so many years on piano,
| but forgot how to read sheet music years ago and didn't quite
| know how to get back into it. Thought Synthesia would help but
| struggle at certain parts so the repetition and score based
| learning will help a lot.
| rooster117 wrote:
| It'll probably come back to you fast. My app is best to learn
| the note (letter/octave) of what's on the staff and mixed with
| practice on a real piano should get you back to reading
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I am cursed with enough musical memory that if I learn a piece
| from sheet music, my sight reading literally turns off and I
| play from some combination of muscle memory and ear. That might
| sound like a humblebrag, but it's not -it's quite frustrating
| to "work on reading" and then realize I'm not actually getting
| better at reading. When I come back to the material later, the
| short-term musical memory has usually faded and I'm starting
| over.
|
| That's what comes from playing simpler rock stuff by ear/memory
| for many years and then moving to large amounts of material
| which can't be done only by ear.
|
| My solution is to have a large amount of unfamiliar material
| and just open to a random page and start working things out.
| spunker540 wrote:
| This may sound crazy but my sight reading improved a lot
| after I took an ear training class that required me to work
| in arbitrary clefs. I always knew treble and bass from
| playing piano, and had really memorized the note positions in
| each.
|
| When I was suddenly forced to work in tenor, alto, soprano,
| baritone clefs, I could no longer rely on memorization of
| note positions. I had to pivot to "reading intervals". A
| fifth looks the same in any clef, so if you know the current
| note, and the next note is a fifth above, you know the next
| note too, clef be damned.
| benoliver999 wrote:
| Been using this for years now, it's precisely what I needed given
| that I came to bass clef late in life
| aterp wrote:
| Anyone have recs for good Android equivalents?
| rooster117 wrote:
| I get a lot of requests for an Android version. I've never had
| time but I hope there is something good out there
| punnerud wrote:
| Not an answer to your question but I have 8 iPhone app on
| AppStore, and many more on my phone not published. Made an
| Android app, but it's hard to publish to Google Play compared.
| Stopped almost at the end in the approval process, because I
| felt like this platform must really hate developers. Or is it
| just me?
|
| When I see the stats on paying Android users compared to
| iPhone, I feel I always will start on iOS and only maybe make
| to Android if it's successful somewhere else first.
| busymom0 wrote:
| I made a similar app for both iPhone and Android called Note
| Flash. Works with microphone and MIDI:
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pranapps.n...
|
| https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/note-flash-music-sight-reading...
| hackerdood wrote:
| Chiming in to say I downloaded this what feels like ages ago and
| occasionally come back to it when I'm away from my keyboard for
| too long, so thank you for this amazing app!
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Sight reading is equal parts being quick to parse the score and
| being quick to understand the piece harmonically/rythmically.
| This is why random exercises or simple songs don't really cut it.
|
| Also, it's all about compromise. When sight reading a serious
| piece you will almost never be expected or be capable of playing
| every note. You have to understand what's important and what's
| feasible, and to do that on the fly you need tons of musical
| experience.
| coliveira wrote:
| Yes, sight reading is a misnomer because at some level it is
| almost impossible to sight read a complex piece. It is not like
| reading a book where you will be able to read the words
| correctly as long as you're literate. What you can say is that
| you're familiar with simple/medium complexity rhythms so you
| can play them as you read.
| pil0u wrote:
| This is incredible because it exactly matches my needs. I started
| learning the piano 3 years ago as an adult, I love it, but my
| biggest difficulty is reading scores. I do want to practice but
| also I'm very lazy, I tried to find a tool to help but never
| found yours before.
|
| Tiny question before I purchase to unlock the microphone feature
| (which is really what makes sense for me): does the app
| understands do re mi via microphone?
|
| Thanks for your work.
| rooster117 wrote:
| The mic works on the standard 440 tuning and converts the input
| to its midi representation. Trying to understand your question
| but the mic doesn't really care about the do, re, me but rather
| that it's the right frequency for the displayed note on the
| staff. The mic feature is something I'm actively working on
| improving as it's decent now but not perfect. If you have an
| instrument with a way to connect to the phone through midi it's
| the best experience but if you have acoustic then the mic or
| just the on screen keyboard is the good.
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| Do you mind if I ask what library or algorithm you're using
| for pitch estimation?
| rooster117 wrote:
| currently it's yin
| pil0u wrote:
| Ha, I thought I could "sing" the notes, like reading them out
| loud (which is what my mentor suggests me to work on)
| rooster117 wrote:
| You may be able to sing to it but since it's assuming the
| instrument to be in tune (piano) it may be slightly off and
| still register since it's estimating which note is most
| correct.
| rooster117 wrote:
| My app appears at the top of a search if you specify sight
| reading but if you are searching for "learn piano" or similar
| keywords it will be no where near the top
| pil0u wrote:
| I just learned via your post the term "sight reading" in
| English. French words and expressions when it comes to music
| are very different.
| karol wrote:
| Amazing!
| MarcelOlsz wrote:
| How's it compare to SightReadingFactory? Can I use it for
| trumpet?
| rooster117 wrote:
| I know what sight reading factory is but I haven't personally
| used it. In the app you can isolate the Treble staff for
| practice/lessons so it would work for practice with what you
| read on trumpet (I believe)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-23 23:00 UTC)