Show HN: SoundZoom – Microtonal and Isomorphic Keyboard HTML5 App | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: SoundZoom – Microtonal and Isomorphic Keyboard HTML5 App

dodeka.info

55 pointsj_rcht25 comments

This is nice, but I have no idea what to do with it. You could probably quite easily also implement choice of different equal temperament tunings. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_equal_temperament and http://microtone.isans.net/ . Note that SoundZoom already implements 12, 24, 36, 48 and 144 tone equal temperament tunings. :)

The first idea for this project was to explore the relationships between linear isomorphism and microtonality and see how such a keyboard layout can add to microtonal modes (i.e patterns, intervals etc.), btw it makes total sense to include other tunings,

Looks and works great. I would put in some control over sustain, without it melodies drown in cacophony. The easiest way would be implementing ASDR envelope where key release triggers R phase.

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, you are right that would be useful. I'll work on that. :-)

When I set up isomorphic keybindings in music apps I usually aim to cover the entire alphanumeric section of the keyboard. It allows me to play passages both vertically and horizontally. This is good, though, it's a good use of isomorphic behavior.

Yes that's right. I've seen a few other apps like this. For this version, I wanted to focus on the linear aspect of the keyboard (even though it's not quite linear). Would be good to have the option though. It shouldn't be too difficult to code.

The violin voice doesn't seem to work for me (Firefox, Linux). Note that the browser console shows some syntax errors when loading the page. Chrome works, regardless of the errors.

Also, the help page looks a bit bad on both browsers.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll look into that! :-)

btw do the other instruments work for you (Firefox)?

Yes, all of them.

Great! Happy to hear that!

I can only press one key before it moves the cursor into the search box.

Firefox.

That is a feature you have to enable yourself :)

That's a Firefox feature, please disable it in settings (maybe you accidentally enabled it?)

Regardless, the website should probably capture the keys instead of letting that happen, I'm not well-versed in JS DOM events enough to know exactly what has to be changed, but, IIRC the callback function needs to return false.

"General / Browsing / Search for text when you start typing".

I can't tell the difference between notes at zoom 4. Is that typical? Can anyone still tell the difference at zoom 12?

I can tell the difference at 12. There's a flash test at http://jakemandell.com/adaptivepitch/ and the (probably heavily sample-biased) histogram at the end suggests 10-20% of people can't differentiate 1/4 of a semitone and 60% ish can't differentiate 1/12.

Great link! Thanks Cobbal.

Yup. Have you tried a higher octave? Depending on the timbre, usually a higher octave will be more sensitive. At least for me.

Yes, easily, (even) between consecutive notes. Try playing two notes, then the same ones in reverse.

Switching voice in the dropdown gives an alert box with what you selected. Leftover debugging?

Also, after selecting a voice, the voice dropdown should blur / lose focus, because I tried playing the keyboard with my "G" key and it jumped right back to Grand Piano on the first note.

Yes, sorry for that - I also noticed this issue. We'll work on it.

I reckon that's not quite useful!

"HTML5 App" looks interesting, nothing visible with JS turned off....

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