Year of Rock: weekly interactive guitar lessons for 2013 | Hacker News Reader

Year of Rock: weekly interactive guitar lessons for 2013

yearofrock.com

84 pointsyegg27 comments

I'm one of the guys behind this, thx so much for all of the support (and to @yegg for posting).

Here's some more detail as requested by @ClayM and others...

The Year of Rock is the work of two guys, myself and @bsstoner. It's powered by the @getinstinct platform, which we also built.

Starting next week, we'll send a weekly guitar lesson by email to everyone who signs up. The lessons are entirely interactive. They listen as you play and give you feedback on each note, using pitch detection software we designed. You can demo some lessons we've already made at http://getinstinct.com

There's no human teacher, it's entirely automated and works in the web browser. The entire site is built in JS and HTML5 (including node.js on the backend), except for some Flash for the audio processing (unavoidable given the current state of browsers).

One thing that's cool about the Year of Rock is that the course is partially crowdsourced. After we create the intro lesson each week (such how to play a blues scale), our users can add practice music and riffs via our tab editor. There's a voting mechanism similar to HN or reddit to help the most popular submissions bubble to the top.

From a usability perspective, we've learned that the course needs to be more flexible than Code Year. Almost everyone will skip weeks or start late. Some people will enter the course with more experience than others. So the course can't be too linear. It should be okay for people to approach it like a buffet.

There's still plenty of time to adjust things, so would love to hear any questions/ideas/comments...

Neat!

How does the hardware setup work if I have to use headphones in my apartment?

As long as the computer microphone can hear the guitar, you don't any hardware.

That said, if you want to plug your guitar into the computer microphone jack, you can. You just need the right adapter to go from the wide guitar cable to the thinner headphone jack.

If anyone is searching for this adapter, it is a 1/4" jack to 3mm (or 1/8") in common industry terms. I've got one, but don't expect to easily use it for much besides this app. Microphone input jacks on most PCs are not designed to amplify guitars or make their input sound good (in my experience). There are pre-amps for doing this kind of recording, though.

Nice job Blake; DreamIt 2008 :-)

Old school :)

I just tried the Beethoven intro lesson for guitar -- first off, these are awesome for me as an almost-n00b guitar player!

Two suggestions:

- When you're holding really long notes the interval to see the next note is really small [the tab moves forward only once the long note ends so you don't have as much time to transition your fingers because you don't know/remember the next note; while in practice these should be the easiest transitions]

- Indicate the note lengths as well in terms of fourth or eighth notes, for those of us who like to count along.

Awesome to hear, I love the Beethoven lessons. Some classical stuff sounds really cool on a guitar (esp Beethoven on an electric).

Both good suggestions. We haven't found out a great way to handle scrolling with long notes yet. Also, agreed that it would be cool to show 1/4, 1/8 notes etc. Would love to find a subtle way to do it within tab, rather than with a tab/staff notes blend.

Learning to code and learning to play music are extremely similar in my experience. http://tommy.authpad.com/when-does-learning-stop-being-so-ha...

Rock on! Can't wait to see it.

This is brilliant! I've seen some early betas of Instinct, and I'm super excited to see this roll out. It really makes learning guitar simple and fun - almost like a video game. I've been an amateur since I got a guitar at 16 - I can play, but never got serious about it. I'm really looking forward to spending some time each week getting better!

For you folks looking to learn guitar, you might also check out soundslice.com Example: http://www.soundslice.com/yt/zvCBSSwgtg4/

Small bug - I signed up via the email newsletter you sent, and it says "2 people are learning guitar in 2013. Why not you?"

I assume you guys have more than two people signed up at this point. :)

Screenshot: http://cl.ly/image/1m3G1q3y400c

thanks, just fixed it.

I signed up. I'm a self taught guitar player, and although I've made pretty good progress, sometimes it's tough to make time to practice. I'm hoping that weekly lessons will inspire me to make time for it.

Good luck!

I love the innovation in the guitar lesson space, and I signed up for this in a heartbeat. That said, does anyone have suggestion for a piano alternative?

Inspired by Codecademy.

I've always wondered how many people finished Codeyear? Did they actually learn how to program?

We only have acoustic guitars at my house. Will this work with them? Should I use an amp? (1 has a pickup).

Yes it works with any guitar and you don't need a pickup or any cables. Because it listens thru the microphone, you can just sit near your computer and play your guitar like you normally would.

Have signed up. I expect I need to get a USB mike - what mike should I get? Please make a FAQ.

This is a mic that has worked really well for our users. Not the prettiest but the audio is solid: http://www.amazon.com/Samson-Mic-Compact-USB-Microphone/dp/B...

I have had almost 100% success with the mic built into my laptop (macbook pro 2010). The ONLY issue I've ever had was it sometimes can't pick up a low open E. But very rare.

Are these for absolute beginners or are they useful for people with some experience?

Hey I'm one of the founders. The early weeks are focused on beginners and then it will get more advanced.

Well give us some more info then, good man!

Ha okay - working on a more detailed comment.

I get the following error when trying to register:

Cannot POST /

It's possible that the server choked for a moment, it should be okay if you try again.

Edit: Also make sure you have JS enabled, otherwise the form won't work.

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