Show HN: Piano Trainer – Learn piano scales, chords and more using MIDI | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Piano Trainer – Learn piano scales, chords and more using MIDI

github.com

159 pointsFinalDestiny42 comments

This looks great - well done.

As a self taught pianist I’d like to give a shout out to Simply Piano (1). It’s an iPad app that can take you from absolute beginner to a fairly advanced level. Connects via midi or uses the microphone.

I went from not being able to play any instrument to sheet reading Fur Elise in about a year of playing 15/20 minutes per day.

New music drops every week covering classical, pop, movies, jazz, etc.

A very happy customer.

1. https://www.joytunes.com/simply-piano

Thanks! I'll need to Simply Piano a try. Looks like they support Android too

> I went from not being able to play any instrument to sheet reading Fur Elise in about a year of playing 15/20 minutes per day.

Apps can clearly be very helpful, by doing such things as telling you how well you are playing the pieces, grading exercises, perhaps adjusting the pacing and sequence of the material based on your progress, and more.

When learning from non-interactive methods those can be problems.

But don't give too much credit to the app.

Most of the credit for getting to where you did in a year I think goes to you for putting in 15/20 minutes of daily practice. There's a good chance you would have reached a similar position if you had instead used something more old fashioned, like the first couple of books from Alfred's All-in-one Adult Piano Course or Adult Piano Adventures All-in-one Course and put in 15/20 minutes daily.

An app may make it more likely you will stick with it, say by gamification or by reducing some of the aforementioned problems which might otherwise have discouraged you, so it deserves some credit, but much less than the amount you deserve.

May I ask - when you say you're "sheet reading" Fur Elise, do you mean sight reading (i.e. able to play on sight without memorization)? And is that the whole song, or just the main melody (the part mostly without chords)?

Seconded, this looks great! Didn't have time to do more just than a test to see how it works, but I think I ran into a problem in fifths mode when the second key of the interval was outside the span of my two octave keyboard, so there should be perhaps some sort of an octave limiter setting. Oh, and I don't have any sound in the app, but I use VSTs anyway.

Also, would be great to have triad inversions. (larger chords aside...) I'll surely do some learning when I get some free time.

Thanks for the feedback! I'll see if there's a good way to manage the octaves.

Curious why the sound isn't working, are you using MIDI & which OS do you use?

I use Windows 10 21H2, a bass station 2 as a midi controller and I have like 5 audio output devices. Only one of them is the real one, which is my audio interface, so with no way of choosing the output there will be problems. Wondering if there is an easy way to use ASIO with js-based apps?

I ended up a DAW to get midi from the keyboard and route to both a VST and to a virtual loopmidi port - which I prefer to have nice sounds.

Wow, that is big brain as it gets! I'm sure it's possible but it may have to be done on the application layer. Thank you for sharing your workaround

Man, this looks great!

A fortuitous thing for me as well, as I've been starting to look for a trainer like this just know?

Been playing the guitar for a long time for now and I know my basic theory... but give me a keyboard I takes me a while to figure out my scales, chords, progressions and so on. Now that I've some time to get back to music... and sitting in front of a DAW oftentimes a keyboard is what I got.

So it was an instabuy for me (via itch.io), thank you and I'll follow the github repo as well to keep me up to date.

I was wondering who that may have been! Thank you very much

There'll be an update coming later today

Haven't seen anyone else mention this in the comments, but Synthesia is something I used in the past https://synthesiagame.com/

There's a free trial, but the $29-39 for the full-featured paid edition is well worth it. I was able to connect a 88 key electronic keyboard, load my favorite custom MIDI files (when I could find them) and try to play along with it.

Not knocking anything you've done here OP :) just pointing out another one you can check out for features etc, and also if anyone else is looking for something similar.

By someone on HN there is also pianojacq : https://pianojacq.com/

Following that link on Firefox ESR led me to the following Bugzilla issue about a 10+ year old issue with Firefox not implementing Web-MIDI which was just resolved two months ago:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=836897

Needless to say, I went down the rabbit hole a bit. :)

I found it weirdly interesting to see the advocacy among musicians and music apps (I dabble with synths, and MIDI is pretty important) and the dismissal of the issue by a few maintainers.

Oh it was resolved? Great news. That's the only reason I had chromium on my laptop.

Just out of curiosity -- why build an entire native Rust wrapper app to embed a React app in a webview just for MIDI connectivity, when there's a Web MIDI API?

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MIDIAccess#...

I started the project knowing it'd be built in Tauri (which uses Rust on the backend)

I also really like using React, styled-components, and TypeScript so I stuck with it

For the Web MIDI API, I based the project on ruohki/tauri-midi-example which already used midir (Rust MIDI) so I just left it as-is

This is creepy, I just started writing a very similar app, end then I saw this appear on HN. Though mine is focused more on getting faster at sight reading sheet music, and idk if I'll ever actually release it to the public.

What is the shortcut for getter faster at sight reading other than just trying to sight read new music?

One thing I've been looking for is instructional software that shows the staff with notes on it and illuminates the notes you're ACTUALLY playing instead of just the ones you're supposed to be playing.

I don't know why this seems to be rare; isn't it the obvious thing to do?

Yes, this is what I do with pianojacq.com, there is a cursor for each of your fingers.

Thanks. But it doesn't work with Safari, and I really don't want a Web-based thing anyway.

I sympathize with your complaint about Firefox, though. But check this out: https://blog.karimratib.me/2022/04/23/firefox-webmidi.html

Ugh, now that I've skimmed that, it looks like it's still a major pain in the ass. With Firefox fading fast, you'd think they'd be a little smarter about enabling features that make it competitive.

Aaand now that I've tried your page and another WebMIDI test page mentioned in a Firefox issue with Firefox 101, it still isn't working. So I don't know where that article is getting all that.

Idk if it is actually gonna work, I'll only know that after I try it. But right now, I notice that one of my biggest bottlenecks in reading music, is that, whenever there is a note that is quite a bit away from the clef, or other notes I played before, it takes me some time to recognize what note it is. Right now I am planning to make an app that shows me notes, I'll have to press that key as quickly as possible, and then the next note pops up. I then plan to have a bit of an anki type thing going on, where, if you get a note or chord right, and within a short amount of time, it takes longer for that same note or chord to show up again.

I am not expecting this to be a silver bullet for sightreading. There is still gonna have to be a lot of actual music reading involved, but it is the goal for this to eliminate a bottleneck and give me a bit of a head start. I just want to do more playing and less searching for now.

I'm making a webapp to learn sight reading (only sight reading, not playing the keyboard or any other instrument for that matter): https://babeloop.com

It works well on mobile and so you can use it anywhere.

I'm just getting started. Interested in any feedback!

If you can spare the time have a look at pianojacq.com, I'd love to hear your critique of it.

It's fine. But lucks simple expected features. Few examples, sheets scrolling and delay after pressing play button (also handler for pressing wrong key seems not working). Anyway, good job.

The delay after pressing play button is baked in: after you play the first note the timer starts, not before. Not sure what yo mean by 'handler for pressing wrong key seems not working'? It turns the note red and logs a wrong note in the counters, did that not work for you?

If you do release it please post it here, because I’ve been trying to get back into playing piano after more than a decade of not. Reading the music is a skill that has definitely atrophied for me. I’m sure there’s many others here beyond me who would love to see what you’ve made!

I am in the exact same situation (getting back into playing piano after more than a decade of not doing it). But rn, it is just a very rough proof of concept I am making in pygame, I might make something more proper with actual decent code quality if it actually works, but I thought the same about an app I made to limit keyboard usage on pc (was having some hand health problems), which worked pretty well, but I never ended up making and releasing a better version of it. But maybe

I wish you luck!

I also play the saxophone but … the problem with that one is I live in an apartment building with thin walls and can’t, exactly, bang away like I can on a keyboard with headphones. In either case the music reading is useful.

My mother, a piano teacher herself, would of course just tell me to do more scales but we can make this better with technology now can’t we.

I've posted this elsewhere in this thread, but I'm making a webapp focused on just sight reading: https://www.babeloop.com

It works well on mobile so you can take it wherever. I made it for my kids who were struggling a little with non-treble clefs, and they passed their exams this June!

Interested in any feedback.

Yesss! Another open source project based on the same idea I sometime did a prototype of but never made it. I love it when this happens :)

I've been sitting on the idea for nearly a year just waiting for someone else to do it! Glad I'm not alone

Is there a help page anywhere? Quiz mode seems self explanatory, but I can't figure out what to "do" in the other mode. For example, in "Chords" mode it just shows me the 1st chord. Pressing notes on my keyboard plays the sounds of the keys being pressed, but the UI never does anything different.

Good catch! I didn't think of that. Chords/fifths will only work with MIDI input for now. I'll see if I can come up with a fix for keyboard support

Sorry, I meant MIDI keyboard. It doesn't seem to be doing anything with my MIDI keyboard either, other than playing the notes.

Let's create an issue on GitHub so we can track this a bit better

I'm testing on my end with 2 MIDI keyboards and it should step to the next set of fifths/chords in the scale

https://github.com/ZaneH/piano-trainer/issues/4

Just updated this to v1.0.3 and it should fix any crashes! Very new to Rust

Looks interesting, excited to give it a try! Any future ideas for expanded training features? Chord progressions, songs, etc?

Probably not as people have mentioned in another thread how many apps can do those kinds of things!

This app is unique in what it does and I'll try to keep it like that. Too many other things to build, thanks!