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Touch Pianist

touchpianist.com

837 pointsthunderbong228 comments

Oh man! Thank you for posting this. I saw this here on HN years ago and loved it, and then could never find it again. Judging by the YouTube videos linked from the page, it looks like 8 years ago?! I got chills playing through it. Awesome to see that it's still up on the internet after all those years.

It's interesting to compare the comments here to the original launch 8 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9490372

And the Reddit post from the same time: https://old.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/comments/34vcmz...

Wow!

Clicked on the link to see the post's year and quite surprised that 8 years ago was actually 2015 and not 2005 as my system 1 (Kahneman) memory imagined at first!!!

Thanks! Macroexpanded:

Touch Pianist – Tap in Rhythm and Perform Your Favourite Music - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9490372 - May 2015 (100 comments)

I adore this because intentional or not it shows you how critical tempo and a bit of legato can be to giving the right piece the right mood.

You have one singular job here and the way in which you do it drastically affects your interpretation of Beethoven.

Velocity is also critical, but it’s doing that for you.

I only noticed half way through you could adjust velocity depending on vertical touch. Really nifty! More expressive and fun than I expected. Bravo.

I noticed that too! This could be a fantastic learning tool, my music professor described how to crescendo into the tension and decrescendo into the release but being able to experiment with this tool could help you get an idea of what you want to do before your fingers have the right touch to do it.

Tempo rubato! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo_rubato

Great choice of song! If you ever have access to a piano, I highly recommended trying to fumble your way through Beethoven's moonlight sonata, even if you don't know how to play piano.

Not quite sure how to put it into words, but it's absolutely exhilarating hearing your own fingers produce these huge sounds and intense chord progressions. Every time I managed to find the right chord I'd get such a rush. "Oh no he didn't.. he went _there_!?"

This webpage gives a little taste of that feeling. If you enjoyed it, try to give the real thing a go!

I agree! This really gives a taste of the feeling of playing moonlight for real on the piano.

I also realized there are some notes I might have been playing wrong for many years (oops)

Not sure that was the goal, but the text accompanying the first run makes it seem like I'm supposed to get the rhythm exactly in the spacing indicated on paper/screen.

But one thing I love about the moonlight sonata is exactly how amazing one can play with the spacing of the notes. So yeah, I had a lot of fun with this but I'm not sure it's the best choice of piece. :P

What you're talking about is called playing rubato (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempo_rubato), and I think that is part of the point here. The control that you get over the timing allows you to express yourself musically / perform the music with your own interpretation.

The instructions may be a bit unclear, but I think they are suggesting that it works better artistically if you play some parts evenly (the three-note sequences that repeat) and add your timing variations to the other parts. This creates a kind of a baseline of regularity that makes the variations stand out by contrast. (It also gives the feeling that you're capable of even, steady timing and the timing variations you do incorporate are there on purpose.)

Indeed! I think this is what makes this so fun. I can also highly recommend listening to various recordings of the moonlight sonata and notice how different it is depending on the precise timing the pianist uses.

You're right. It is amazing.

The first movement is one of the only pieces I can play on the piano. Yes indeed, anyone can learn it! I came from a musical family, but never really put the effort into learning the piano.

I'm not sure where I heard this, but Beethoven wrote this for one of his students that he was in love with. The first movement was purposefully written for a newcomer to be able to play--such as for whom he admired, but the third movement was a representation of his anger over being rejected, and is one of the hardest piano pieces to play.

That story is about Fur Elise, not Moonlight Sonata. The name, of course, meaning "for Elise," the name of the woman in question.

The 3rd movement is not one of the hardest pieces to play. It’s like medium-hard. It’s not even the hardest sonata - that would be the Hammerklavier.

If one wants to play a well-known sonata I'd rather start with the Tempest. Considerably easier than Moonlights 3rd. And as beautiful imho, the 3rd movement especially.

Totally agree with this. Moonlight Sonata one of my favorite pieces to play while I was growing up. I recall showing my piano teacher I wanted to play it - she was classically trained and taught very advanced pianists (I was not one of those) - and I remember her just rolling her eyes. I kept playing it anyway in my free time...

When I started taking piano lesions a few years ago, one of the first rules that my teacher established was: "No Moonlight Sonata" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My guess is that it resembles in a way playing "Smoke on the water" in a guitar shop.

that's sad. a yearning musician should be able to learn and play whatever they want and whatever makes them feel a certain thing. moonlight sonata evokes something in me i can't explain (which is probably why it's a legendary piece). having strong opinions on what to play when learning feels so gatekeepy. i would have dropped that teacher quickly

Yes, but a teacher I think has the right to decide that after teaching the same song 500 times they never want to hear it again.

I think people can be allowed one song they are tired of.

I’d guess the reason would be different, I think that a person that gets bothered by music repetition would not work as a music teacher.

You might avoid moonlight sonta, but then it’s 500 servings of fur elise.

Or they've learned through their experience they simply don't like the kind of person who insists on learning the one song they like, and can't teach them well, so it's a good filter.

But hey, not every teacher is for every student and vice-versa; and that's okay.

a major rule should instead be: "choose the song you love and let's learn it" -- tells me a lot more about the kind of teaching they do than off the bat shooting down songs. sounds obnoxious. teachers can do whatever they want ofc. doesn't make them good teachers

Naw, the priority is the student not the teacher

My kids just started piano lessons last night and definitely I was a little unsure to hear one of them starting out with I Like Coffee ("the knuckle song"), but I quickly went through this same thought process myself: it's great they're off to a good start doing something that is fun and exciting for them.

Actually, teachers are human beings and they're allowed to have preferences, likes and dislikes. It's okay that not every teacher is for every student 100% of the time. Something can be a bad student/teacher fit without it being a negative value judgment ("sad", "gatekeeping", "drop").

teachers are held to a higher standard because their responsibility is a lot higher than the average citizen, so while theyre fully allowed to do whatever they want and have preferences -- i won't hold them to a standard that i do an average person. they need to above all have the highest patience and the least amount of gatekeeping, full stop.

I wouldn't be surprised if the reason it's so famous is simply because it has that title.

B. wrote 32 sonatas, only a few have titles, and they're usually the most known ones. No one remembers "Opus 27 No. 2".

Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful movement, but there's much better ones among his sonatas.

Stairway to Heaven, a la Wayne's World.

No Stairway? Denied!

There's a Highway to Hell

Smoke on the water is great starter song - and given that amateurs and new players are a large part of people buying guitars, makes sense as a guitar shop song too!

Agreed! And a skilled teacher would start by teaching Smoke on the Water with dyads (two-note chords) and then use that as a starting point for two discussions. First, one about barre chords and second, one about the same chords in their open format.

If the student is into classic rock, it's easy to expand this lesson into Cat Scratch Fever, Rock You Like a Hurricane, and Iron Man which are all similar to Smoke on the Water.

The bigger issue in guitar shops is that the least experienced player is the one salivating to hook up to the Marshall stack and play smoke on the water. Make them demo small combo amps instead and we are all good

Nobody should work with a pompous instructor who decides what is / isn't acceptable on an instrument. As a former guitar teacher, I would help my students learn whatever they wanted - Van Halen, Brittany Spears, Garth Brooks, whatever.

All music has something of merit if you're willing to look for it.

I mean I agree with you but I also understand not wanting to do the same fucking song done badly for millionth time.

> I also understand not wanting to do the same fucking song done badly for millionth time

My wife is a piano teacher. This describes a large part of her job, especially since she focuses on beginners. She'd be so happy if she could teach "Moonlight Sonata" all day. "Old Macdonald" is much more common.

My wife does feel looked-down-upon by some in her profession who see teaching advanced students as more prestigious. But the process of taking a student from beginner to Beethoven (not that she stops there with her students) is every bit as challenging as taking a student from Beethoven to Rachmaninoff.

I can't understand why someone would look down on people teaching beginners. If you teach beginners you play perhaps the most critical role in someone's development. For one, it is the stage where someone is going to decide if this is something they enjoy, and want to carry on doing, or not. Second, you are taking someone from nothing to something. That's a huge step.

We as a society need to step down our high horses. All jobs have a purpose without which our society would not be what it is today, good or bad.

You're spot on.

My wife is a middle school mathematics teacher (and a damn good one). Sooooo many former students (now high schoolers) have approached her and said, "Because of you, I excelled in math in high school...and I love it!"

She had a student last year who actually told her in a very long letter, "You taught me that math matters. You taught me that I MATTER."

The earliest teachers / coaches / mentors set the foundation which is absolutely critical for all future learning.

Want to experience the highest of highs? Become a teacher. Alas, being do close to kids who are changing so rapidly (and often struggling with things outside of school) it also comes with some pretty deep lows.

I was a teacher and the enormity of the highs and lows is spot on. It's not a job for the faint hearted.

I remember someone many years arguing in the media that we shouldn't have the best coaches for the national soccer team. We should have the best coaches for our kids, and in a few years that would pay off tremendously. While I don't know how to do that in practice, that upside-down thinking kinda struck a cord with me. We should do that with more things.

I think it's more it's probably not a very effective piece to learn with. You can learn a few techniques from your teacher and then it's just practicing the variations and transitions, because it repeats roughly the same changes over and over. Learning the piece during your lessons is likely a waste.

I have bad news concerning pop music.

Very little pop music is as repetitive as the moonlight sonata. In that respect it is more closely related to trance than pop. Most pop music is also shorter, and an easier mix of even shorter movements.

In other words, most of it will be over a lot sooner for the poor, suffering teacher.

Do you play piano?

Wonderwall :-)

Smoke on the Water in a guitar shop is annoying simply because people playing loudly in guitar shops are annoying and that's one of the most widespread stereotypes of something an annoying person would play loudly at a guitar shop (incidentally, I'd argue that Stairway to Heaven is the more widespread stereotype).

A guitar instructor shouldn't criticize a beginner student for wanting to learn Smoke on the Water, at least assuming it's in the instructor's wheelhouse—it's also okay for a particular instructor to offer a specific curriculum rather than taking requests from the student.

I had a similar teacher, but it was no fur elise

My guess is that reason is that Moonlight Sonata is not hard to learn, just tedious to teach a beginner, because of the endless repetition of relatively short phrases shifting and changing a little bit at a time.

This is what makes it fantastic, but learning to play it is mostly learning a few phrases and recognizing the shifts, which I can imagine would drive your teacher nuts until you're at a stage where you can pick up the changes rapidly enough sight reading to not have to remember every transition.

I'd guess - as a very mediocre piano player - that it's as a result low "bang for the buck" for a beginner on top of annoying to your teacher.

Upside is once you get even just relatively mediocre at sight reading it's fairly simple to work your way through yourself.

Whilst the first movement is fairly technically straightforward, the last movement is pretty tricky and requires solid technique; I certainly wouldn’t characterise it as “easy” even if it’s not the hardest piece in the repertoire.

If anything, the issue is that as a whole, the piece is fairly technically demanding, but the first movement is simply enough for most intermediate pianists to sight-read, so something that seems approachable soon becomes impossible for anyone below a certain level.

I can buy that it's technically demanding to do the last movement well, in the correct tempo, but learning it to a standard a relative beginner will be happy to achieve was not hard for me. But that may well be another distinction that makes it frustrating for a teacher to try to teach to a beginner, because, yes, it will likely be noticeably flawed.

A lot of music teachers are like that. I personally consider it shitty. My friend's first violin teacher (when she was 10 years old) made her do empty string bowing for a year. Just pull and push bowing. Now, don't get me wrong, technique is extremely important, and a lot of teachers have "if you can't do it well, don't do it" mentality. But really these people miss music is also tons of fucking fun. For a 10 year old infant, you really need a better curriculum to motivate her than just perfecting empty bowing.

I tell people: you wanna play Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto? Go fucking play it. I mean you're not gonna play it well, even some world-class pianists can't, but if it gives you pleasure to try, and motivates you to play piano, that's fine. If you're gonna be a professional pianist, or you're a student at university, it's an entirely different matter. Some people are just hobbyists, or they want to be composers and learn piano to help compose (which is an extremely important core skill for a composer). Those people can just sit down and play whatever they want, along with things that are at their level that they can perfectly play.

This happened to my sister. She was having fun playing Disney and ABBA songs, then changed to a different teacher who discouraged her from playing anything but classical. She quit playing within a year and now refuses even to play her favourites.

I give the Moonlight Sonata credit for me becoming a decent pianist. It was above my level when I was a kid, but I wanted to learn it, and my teacher encouraged that. With enough practice on a piece that was so far above my current ability, I seriously leveled up as a pianist.

My teacher's ability to help me learn what I wanted to learn made me so invested in piano as a kid. Many kids don't stick with music because (IMO) they can't find a way to enjoy it or be invested in it. For me, what I enjoyed happened to be Beethoven, but at other times I just wanted to improvise various modern songs. (Which can be as simple or as complex as you want, but a lot of classically trained teachers can't/won't/don't teach improvisation.)

Technique and theory only get you so far. Being able to emotionally invest in your playing is what sets musicians apart, imo. And as you're growing as a musician (even when you're a kid), you're going to sound like shit if you just try to monotonously follow the instructions. I'm not sure enough music teachers get the importance of being personally and emotionally invested in the moment as you're playing. (One-buttock playing is a good word for this: https://youtu.be/r9LCwI5iErE)

The choice of what you want to play is pretty important in keeping you invested.

This hits the nail. I agree that there are tons of music teachers, especially classically trained teachers who are like this. They can't/won't/don't teach improvising, composing, encourage you to develop your personal style, ask you to bring your favorite pieces to play, teach you musicianship etc... My own violin teacher taught me nothing other than playing Bach et al. I did pass all those ABRSM violin exams, so people would call me a "good" violinist but I had absolutely zero idea when it comes to ear training, interval training, composing, improvising, listening to music, rhythmic training, notation, music theory etc. Nothing. Now as an adult, I'm composing, writing my own pieces I like that other musicians play, and I'm only now realizing how incredibly shitty my music education was. They made me a robot. I didn't learn any music, I just learned how to correctly move the bow.

I started piano lessons at age 5, I’ve taught piano, and I still arrange music and accompany professionally from time to time, so I’m a fairly snobbish classically trained pianist, and it is my considered opinion that that is a lovely piece of music and every pianist should play it any time they want. If you teach, and you don’t like the Moonlight Sonata, you should hold your nose and teach it anyway.

I can't not cringe slightly when someone calls something like Moonlight Sonata a "song".

Reading back my comment now, I know what you mean! I guess "piece" would have been a better word, or even just "music".

Yeah, just music. I have heard people use song to mean any music before, though, so it's probably something I have to deal with. I do like some songs but 90% of the music I listen to is comprised of either tracks/records (electronic music) or pieces (classical).

Moonlight sonata was hard for me, still is… because I only ever became fluent up to three sharps and three flats key signatures. And moonlight is in a key that is 4 sharps. Makes it very hard to fumble through

That's interesting. I suppose I was lucky, because I started as a kid with traditional piano lessons but lost interest around age 12, but my interest in piano was rekindled when I discovered the guitar and was introduced to the idea of playing by ear. I got back into piano by playing along with a lot of pop and rock songs, so E major has been a very comfortable key signature for me since it's such a great guitar key signature.

Ease of playing the piece vs ease of sight reading the music is different though

5 flats is easier to play mechanically, imo, because hitting black keys is often easier

True. I never found it difficult to play aside from sight reading the key signature

A lot of classical music is this way to be honest, there is a lot of formulaic composition (I don’t mean that derogatory at all) and once you get the patterns it’s easy to extend, maybe even play it like a fake book.

I recall a lot of what we know was originally something closer to figured bass in the first place and later fully arranged by someone who wasn’t the original composer. Or, take a look at Mozart Requiem for example, only a small percent of which was actually manuscribed by the man himself.

One thing to think about, if you're in common practice music, most of the accidentals will be there for a specific reason (e.g. chromatic grace notes, applied dominants, harmonic or melodic minor, parallel key borrowing, augmented sixth chord). Music theory classes can help understand these if you're not familiar. But the thing to know is whether the particular reason involves raising or lowering the natural note in the scale.

One thing that frustrates me about music notation is that when you have a key signature with lots of flats or sharps, it's hard for me to tell at a glance what the accidental is doing relative to the key signature. I've gotta look back and remember what was the unmodified note.

For me, my brain kind of locks in to the key signature eventually. It might be worth practicing scales and simple chord progressions in each key to try to imprint it in your brain. I found keys with lots of sharps and flats intimidating for a long time, too.

Not a bad idea for the first and maybe the second movement. The third is definitely for advanced students. Nevertheless if you have command of a few basic keyboard skills, learning to play a passage or two from a really advanced piece can be advantageous for later work though few teachers will recommend it. Let's go for the ultimate but assume you're not actually taking lessons!

How about Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit? Certainly one of the most difficult pieces ever written. It's quite possible to work productively on the first page of 'Ondine' and as with the Moonlight sonata, it's exhilarating to hear yourself play that exquisite tune - distilled as it were, into its essence. Plenty of other possibilities such as passages from Mozart piano concertos. A bonus is that one's appreciation of great artists becomes much enhanced.

Moonlight Sonata 3rd Movement is one of the most exhilarating songs I've ever heard, if not the most. I can't believe a piece of music written a few hundred years ago still sounds so modern and exciting and new, it's an incredible work.

I urge everyone to listen to it, specifically the 3rd movement. It really shocks me that Beethoven or anyone could write a piece of music so brilliant like that!

One of my favorite 'reinterpretations' of the piece is by Meganeko, link here:

https://soundcloud.com/meganeko/beethoven-moonlight-sonata-3...

There's many movements like that through his sonatas. You might enjoy the Sonata no 27 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLzQbyWfBnY

it starts with a catching rhythmic pattern, it gets calm and lyrical but it builds up to incredible heights.

Moonlight Sonata is a good example of how you can be "brain-limited" in learning a piece, rather than limited by technique and finger dexterity.

Moonlight is very easy on the fingers. But the constant variations are a challenge for people with poor memorization and slow recall like myself. You hit an F# instead of G# on the third repeat of a pattern and it's all over.

Moonlight Sonata is a great choice, the arpeggios makes the song quite recognizable.

(I don't play the piano but have learned the guitar version of Moonlight Sonata, and it looks very much like this version.)

I wanted to see how fast I could play the entire song:

const interval = setInterval(() => document.getElementById('pixi-canvas').dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent("mousedown", {bubbles: true})), 0);

rip headphone users :D

Thank you for this snippet, it inspired me to play to add some randomish groove :)

    function play(i) {
        document.getElementById('pixi-canvas').dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent("mousedown", {bubbles: true}));
        const wave1 = Math.sin(i);
        const wave2 = Math.sin(i * 8);
        const mod = ((1 + wave1 * wave2 * wave2) * .5) * 350;
        delay = 150 + mod;
        i += 0.01;
        setTimeout(() => {
            play(i);
            // console.log(delay);
        }, delay);
    };
    
    play(Math.PI);

Here's the wave: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/aqs7thumdm

It's fun adjusting the final number here. I found 100 to be entertaining.

This was one of the first pieces I tried to learn as a kid. I would just restart it repeatedly because my Casio keyboard had a library of classical music on it that one could listen to by hitting a function key and then a unique white key. I think it's something that Casio did in the late 80s - mid 90s. They don't seem to use the old song library much or at all anymore, but I thought it was a great feature.

So I'd just restart from the beginning and learn the next note. Guess-and-check. As an adult I've continually tried to learn to read sheet music, with frustration. So I learned jazz theory and invented my own music theory system. Now I encode most pieces harmonically in my brain. It would be cool to see this kind of indication in the app, so for example, the first couple lines:

  3/4
  |C#mi|    |    |    |C#mi/B |       |     |    |
  |A   |    |D/F#|    |G#5(b6)|C#mi/G#|G#sus|G#7 |
  ...

I like to use this as a jam idea, for example play it like a montuno.

This is a great kind of thing for getting people into music. There's a piano in my local pub and when people say they "can't play piano" I'll play a 2-5-1 in C and tell them to hit any of the white notes. People love that they can make up their own tunes having never played before.

And then you show them the black blues note...

I was miserable for most of my piano lessons (I learned to sheet read well – I become a fairly adept piano-playing robot – but I never sort of "figured out" music more generally.) That said, one lesson my teacher played a basic blues chord progression and told me to hit anything on the blues G scale however I wanted. That was one of the most fun times I've had making music ever. Well, the only time that has been fun, actually.

If you want to do this with someone who doesn't play, the experienced person can play in Eb and then the black notes make an Eb blues scale.

The pedant in me is screaming -

ii V I

Here I was doing barre chords on the 2nd fret, 5th fret, and 1st fret on my guitar and wondering why it didn't sound good. ;)

I do this too! D dorian works great as well.

More pieces and menu "button" don't work for me on Chrome.

It'd be nice to see actual note lengths and rests so the user can learn how to read actual notation, maybe as an alternate view.

I'm not sure I get it. On desktop I just click to play the next beat? On mobile there's no audio (in Safari or Chrome). And the track selection appears to be broken?

Have I missed something? What's the pull here?

I had audio in Safari. But it didn't start right away.

How long does it take to start? I've given it a few minutes and still nothing. I'm on fast stable wifi and the audio worked immediately on a desktop on the same wifi so I can't imagine it's having trouble downloading the samples.

Safari iOS - started in after perhaps 8 taps

It doesn’t make sounds on my mobile Chrome either (iOS) but I’ve noticed other sites don’t either. I’m guessing there’s a setting somewhere that I denied once long ago and now it can’t play sounds :/ If anyone knows what that might be please let me know!

Is your phone on silent?

Hahah yes, yes it was.

Honestly, I don't understand what the pull is either. This is just cow clicker for music. I appreciate the design and interactivity, which is nice, but maybe because I'm a musician, I don't understand what is fun about this.

Try speeding it up and slowing it down: it's not guitar hero.

Took me a few seconds.

Also, on mobile you can mega-tap.

I had to switch off silent mode on iPhone for audio to work. Any chance it’s the same issue for you?

Bingo! Thank you. Turning off silent mode and refreshing the page fixed it.

That's very strange though, I wonder if it uses a weird sort of web calling API or something for the audio. I've never had an issue with audio in web pages before, and even the youtube video the page embeds sounds fine. It seems quite poor UX (of Safari? Chrome?) to require turning off silent mode – many people never turn it off so it's not very discoverable, and then forgetting to turn it back on again could be pretty bad.

You're confused why a feature called "silent mode" would make your phone not make sound?

"Silent mode" is not the same as "mute". With the former you still expect to hear sound if you're using a function where sound is critical.

iOS has changed over time, such that silent mode affects notification and interaction sounds but not multimedia - I can still listen to music or watch videos regardless of whether the phone is on silent or not.

There is no other media content that is disabled by silent mode. My mental model for silent mode is that it silences things outside my control - like calls - but not things that I explicitly ask for, like music.

You are not alone! It’s indeed very bad UX on the part of Apple.

I run a website with music education tools and we had to make a dedicated help page for this particular annoyance:

https://www.soundslice.com/help/en/player/troubleshooting/23...

It seems like the Android version is not (yet) available despite it being advertised for Android.

I think it's the opposite. This is quite old software which hasn't received App Store updates in years. It's likely the Android version has been pulled from the store or otherwise bit-rotted.

It would be great if I could see the music script instead of some bubbles

I was surprised I could recognize the song just from the bubbles without even having audio enabled

I love the way how NOONE mentions that it is not available on android: "We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server."

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.earslap.to...

As my piano teacher used to say, “what did the piano do to you to make you hit it quite so hard?” This is known as the “Moonlight” sonata not the “thunder and timpani” sonata.

It’s a great demo but the dynamic range of your piano robot is horrible.

Oh! Can I adjust the dynamics based on where I touch? I take it back! Bad workman blames his tools etc.

"Thunder and Timpani sonata" sounds like it would be a fantastic piece especially if written by Beethoven

His 17th sonata is know as the tempest, close enough.

Model M piano is clicky

Made my day : D

That was a lot of fun. I know the first movement off by heart so that was fairly easy.

Third movement was much more fun - trying to get some of the timing on that was pretty tricky. Had to alternate between 2 fingers and then throw in the 3rd one for some of the trills.

I like the idea, but there's a delay. It's noticeable enough to be annoying and making it impossible to play out the pieces exactly as I would like to. It just feels like when I get in a rhythm I end up being one tick forward. Or is it just me?

no delay at all for me

ok, no delay on their app, and in there the experience is very satisfying. the web version seems to _feel_ somewhat better when using the touchpad instead of the keyboard, but still not the same.

No delay on the web version to me. Probably depends on the system/browser/specs/etc.

Are you using Bluetooth headphones? AirPods have a delay that makes playing rhythm games impossible

thank you. it was bluetooth to blame in general (was using external speakers). now all delays are one.

Bluetooth codec is to blame. Some Bluetooth codecs are (very) low latency.

I used my phone speaker. My daughter (5) loved it, thank you.

Was odd it only worked once in Firefox Mobille (Android). I had to install Vivaldi (badum-tsh) to get it to work again. Was a let down it was only one song.

There are more songs in the menu (I think).

Nope, coming soon. Was a disappointment for my kid after I told her there were more songs.

there are more. the menu is somewhat awkward. it wasn't working for me in chrome properly (wasn't able to choose other pieces). works ok in safari, had a blast with toccata and fugue in d minor.

I couldn't get it to work on mobile but I did get it to work in private Firefox window.

i had that problem also and as a drummer I'm pretty sure I could press the spacebar with above-average steady time. I was using firefox though, maybe that matters.

I too have musical education. using osx on m2pro, tried safari / chrome / firefox — nothing helped, the delay was maddening.

"was" — because indeed, blueetooth audio was the culprit. was using external speakers at the time I tried it first. now it's flawless and extremely enjoyable.

On web, opening up the "choose differnet piece" window, then clicking a piece does nothing.

Expected would close the window and load a new piece.

That works in Safari, but not Chrome for some reason.

I'm using a Microsoft Surface and had the same problem when trying to click using the trackpad, but tapping it on the touchscreen worked.

Open up developer tools, choose "toggle device toolbar" in the top left (or equivalent in other browsers), pick a tablet device, and set orientation to landscape. This lets you simulate touch events with your mouse.

In some cases, like with Mozilla's Firefox mobile browser (also tested in Chrome), you can request that the "Desktop site" be shown; that workaround allowed me to choose different songs.

There are also a couple of pages that seem to have a copy of the com.earslap.touchpianistapp APK, but I can't vouch for any, as I don't have a disposable mobile with which to test at the moment.

Google Play app link says "We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server."

Surprisingly satisfying -- I think my heart rate dropped a good 10 bpm in a few minutes of playing. I'd love a little map to know how far I am in the song, and some way to work pedals for dynamics for more advanced users; I don't play piano, but I'm a musician and am familiar enough with many of these pieces to have opinions on the expression. If I could map it to custom keys that would be perfect -- I happen to have flight pedals. Obviously that's atypical.

It's quite similar to this one:

https://sunebear.github.io/Piano-Flow/#/pieces

That one seems to be counting finger touch down and lift off as a click on ios

Wishlist - As a piano player, the left and right hands really need to be broken up into separate rhythms (esp for grace notes), also it needs a sustain pedal. Maybe as an advanced feature.

As a professional pianist that's spent the past couple of years obsessing over questions of tempo, breath, phrasing, movement and musicality, this app really tickles my fancy.

Some casual observations:

- As someone who has delved a little in DAWs and working with MIDI, one thing that struck me is when controlling velocity with on a physical, linear scale, exactly how little extra velocity is needed to voice a melody properly. For example, playing Moonlight on my phone, I play the opening notes as quietly as possible and voice the melody by playing a few bare "millimetres" more to voice it.

- It has really forced me to know the music in a different fashion, as a single, additive rhythm as opposed two hands with two independent rhythms. For example, the first few bars when the melody enters in Moonlight sonata: I wasn't sure if I keep the fidelity of the dotted-eighth rhythms verses the triple eighths, or if I turn it into essential a sextuplet.

- I found that some quicker figures, such as the opening of Mozart's "Alla turca" are best achieved by using the actual fingering I would use in the original. At a certain speed, in order to achieve the rhythmic precision required, I had to use piano technique.... on my phone screen.

Wow! Thankyou very much! That was beautiful. New and genuinely good ideas are truly rare and I feel you've possibly discovered something here. I can just imagine the possibilities if one could also somehow vary the dynamics as well just with touch. Alas force-touch screens are probably not coming soon to consumer cellphones soon but now I can visualize a good reason for them. Edit- apparently this was from 8 years ago. The app does not appear to work on my modern iphone 2nd edit- it looks like I can vary loudness or softness depending on where I tap on my phone, at least on the website 3rd edit: Having way too much fun just playing the moonlight sonata at different tempi with different loud and soft passages. Tapping as fast as I can with 2 fingers is a new revelation of this piece!

I loved this. Unfortunately the android app seems to be taken down, so no La Campanella :(

Yeah. I spent money on it back in the day but it was never updated.

Pretty cool... the third movement of that piece would be... something else!

If one were really great with this - would it be possible to reproduce both the Richter and the Gould version of the WTC 1 Prelude in C Major (except maybe some flourishes)?

For reference, the first few minutes of these links:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1osi_pQcUdM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjnKuhcfB6U

Prelude in C is what i went to try look for before hitting the upgrade screen!

Agreed, that piece changes so much with tempo, i was excited to play with it.

As someone who paid many of these Beethoven sonatas growing up, I love this. It's like guitar hero! You get to not worry about a whole class of things and just focus on your timing and dynamics.

It would be really cool to be able to work voicing in, but I can't think of a way short of another piano!

Random question, but... why is everyone in this thread referring to volume as velocity?? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

I think that’s the term used for synth music

Ahhh interesting, thank you!

This is like the piano version of hacker typer.

https://hackertyper.com/

One thing I noticed about this piece is that the one thing that kills its spirit is too steady of a tempo...

it is actually quite amenable to an extremely loose interpretation of tempo, with swings of 300% in the pace feeling both natural and moving

....like the tempest of the storm...sometimes racing, sometimes deliberate. Try it here by listening t the mood of the music and clicking faster or slower...its quite amazing.

Same energy: https://hackertyper.net/

i cant change the music? clicking isnt working

I had to switch to Safari for the menus to work correctly.

I immediately got OG iOS app vibes and wanted it on my iPad..

But the reviews...

There are ads on top of in-app purchases?

And the fact that there are songs for $0.99 (which let’s be honest are probably sourced from freely-available MIDI files and plugged in to the already-made engine).

I’m going to heartbrokenly stick to the web version.

Can someone suggest some good piano learning software? I really don't like subscriptions.

Many years ago I used Voyetra Teach Me Piano Deluxe which ran on Windows XP, but gave up after some time. I think I'd have to create a virtual machine to run that again. My town is so small I can't find a piano teacher.

https://sightreading.training/ might be useful for you.

This old thread go mentioned a while ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16482104

I love that they have the Bach Partita -- I used to listed to this piece on repeat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuPr9m98XQQ Knowing the melody makes it a lot easier to 'play' in this app.

I love how tapping an irregular rhythm (eg xx-xx-x-) gives Beethoven a progressive metal vibe.

Or hitting four keys at the same time in a waltz rhythm (so a "one" that's slightly longer that two and three). I couldn't make this piece sound funky, though, probably because of the triplets that all move in the same direction. But try Rach's Op 39, no 6. You can play it like salsa/son.

App idea inspired by this that I'd like to see:

Something like this, that has a big library of songs, where you specify the delay between notes and the speed at which it is played (ideally w/all notes displayed so it can be really really customized).

Lol. That's fun, and frustrating! I can't manage tempo just repeating the same key on my short-travel keyboard, and if I start wandering around the keyboard, my old piano lessons start messing up my "fingering".

I love this, especially for Bach’s counterpoint. To be able to go through pieces I know at a speed I dictate, giving myself however long I want to “hear” the chords in their relation to the previous chords, is just magic.

I like this. I feel like it conveys proportional relative intervals visually as well, so it’s teaching you patterns correlated in audio and visual geometry

I tried out Rondo alla turca, and it's almost like a puzzle, because it's mixing left and right hand into one stream, and if you were used to doing those two separately, you're going to futz it

Wow, this really puts in to perspective how hard the Appassionata is - I could barely keep up with the tempo doing the trills with one hand, I can't even imagine actually playing it. One day maybe :^D

Once upon a time I realized that Bach had invented macro expansion. The occasion was me trying to figure out why Partita 1 doesn't sound at all the way the notes are written, and what is that little wavy thing over the notes? It turns out that that little ornament expands into an 8 note sequence centered on the note written. Not that there weren't plenty of notes already on that page...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9etK1RuN2jc

42 seconds in.

Beware that at least on my iPhone 14 the app doesn't work — no visuals, which makes it impossible to use properly

That aside, this is an amazing idea. Would happily pay for a working version

I thought it was very interesting how something so simple was able to make me zone in. Even though I can only control the rythm and velocity, it really felt as if I was playing somehow.

And my mom said I'd never learn piano without practicing!

Funnily enough, I found gymnopédie #1 harder to play, even if I actually already played on the piano. Its like if muscle memory of actual piano was fighting it.

This is so cool. I'm a huge classical music fan.

I wish you could distinguish between "right" and "left" hand keypresses to control each line separately

yes! This was my request as well.

And maybe a "learn" mode where you can see the original timing or the timing of a famous interpretation, like ghosts in video games.

Love it! Thanks so much for doing this.

Love it! It could be even more awesome if the velocity of each key press had an impact of the volume, that way we could control two properties at once.

Velocity is controlled by where you tap the screen (vertically)

Ah yes indeed, but I don't think it can be controlled if you're using a physical keyboard. For instance if I play using the keypad on my keyboard, 1 could be pianissimo and 9 fortissimo.

Reminds me of https://hackertyper.com/ (and clones)

Nice idea. I'm really missing a way to contol the dynamics. Maybe just mapping 1-9 keys to a velocity scaling?

On touchscreen vertical height of the touch is mapped to velocity - really nifty

Magic! Using velocity for accents, tapping out odd-time signatures on a regular piece is so much fun! #Zappafan

If you try this on Bluetooth headphones the latency will kill any rubato you're trying to inject into this

No audio on the website. No audio or graphics in the app (except menus). iPhone 12 mini on latest iOS 16

Does anyone know how this does the playback in the browser?

Is it WebAudio?

I tried to reverse engineer it but couldn't figure it out.

Creator has a nice writeup here: https://earslap.com/article/the-browser-sound-engine-behind-...

Awesome, thank you!

I would love to watch someone who's never heard Beethoven's moonlight sonata try this.

With a lockdown-enabled iPhone I only get a loading page that says chrome highly recommended.

Sad to see author abandoned it. Last iOS update 8 years ago. Not working in current iOS.

Nah, it's no good. Especially with the Moonlight Sonata. Each chord in a bar requires both left and right hand notes. I try to press a key with each hand, but that counts as two keystrokes, whereas it should only count for one. It teaches the wrong muscle memory, definitely some work needed around chords.

You is doing it wrong. This game is not about chords, it's about tempo.

Unfortunately it doesn't feel like a game. It's a bit too close to the real thing. The multiple dots often beg for a multi-finger press. If it's really meant to be a tempo game, why not show one dot, chord or otherwise?

I installed this on my phone and have never had so much fun with a 6-inch pianist.

Quite entertaining it as the volume knob on my keyboard counted as an interaction.

If there was a way to adjust volume based on force that would be a game changer.

The higher on the screen you play, the more velocity!

Very fun. Though nothing seems to work in Chrome except for the tutorial piece.

I found it ironic that the app recommends chrome, while track selection only worked in Firefox for me.

Same indeed

The site is from 2015.

There's no reason sites from 2000 would no longer work, unless they use APIs that weren't properly standardized.

I guess that's why it recommends Chrome. Hah.

I guess he used some audio API that behaved differently in firefox back then

Very cool, great job! It looks like this is using PIXI for the graphics?

I don't really get it

In music, the performer can either perform the music as written, or they can inject emotion into the piece by changing the velocity and timing of the notes. This app lets you inject the emotion through timing, even though you don’t actually know how to play piano.

It also lets you focus entirely on the “feel” of the piece.

I found it really fun.

Rachmaninoff's Prelude (op 3 no 2) is incredibly fun to play!

iphone app is broken for me, and according to reviews, many others. I paid the $12 for full access and currently unplayable. Notes don't load, song does't start - help!

could Apple give you a refund?

such a Great choice of song, especially since plugging round the ears any headphone, earphones to help the player's enjoyment. How they push it out into MIDI is beyond...

Weird lag on my iPhone…maybe Bluetooth headphones are to blame?

quite probably. had the same issue on osx safari desktop with bluetooth speakers.

I am sorry if this is not the place to discuss it and will remove my comment if needed, but seeing websites "highly recommending" the use of Chrome seems like bad taste nowadays, especially with what's going on with WEI.

It seems to work fine on Firefox for Android. I wonder what the author's concern is that he'd recommend Chrome?

Maybe they only tested in Chrome and do not want to address complaints coming from users on a different web browser, who knows

I just get real «this website was optimized for internet explorer X» vibes from this, I really do not want the web to end up back to this state.

It's not like putting that message there will stop those complaints, more like the opposite.

What's the first song? Beethoven's what symphony?

Beethoven Sonata No. 14 "Moonlight"

Let's hope it doesn't have the third movement in it or else we'll be needing new keyboards.

It does have the third movement. I tried it for shits and giggles:

- Playing fast sections of a song is like mashing through a cutscene, but it's easier to press quickly (not sure at a consistent pace) with multiple fingers. The original piano music was meant for multiple fingers as well.

- The hardest part is advancing the right number of buttons. I don't even know the right number of notes in the trills, and would kinda prefer if the website automatically advanced through trills finer than a 16th note, so it's less likely to end up desynced with the actual piece (I'm not sure if you get used to it with learning each piece or not).

- The website has noticeable audio latency, which makes it hard to associate keypresses and which sound came out in fast sections.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Sonata_No._14_(Beethov...

Love it! No tutorial needed, works on mobile, relaxing

Love it ! I allways want to learn and play piano !

It’s kind of funny how trills work in here.

This is incredible. Thank you for sharing.

Piano Hero with one thumb, I like it!

Very pretty.

But. Have you tried pronouncing the name of the website out loud?

I don’t get it?

Think immature

That was nice.

WOW I love

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