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Show HN: Fiddlewax

news.fiddlewax.com

89 pointsakumpf56 comments

Very interesting. I was ready to hate it, but the walkthrough video was actually really good too.

My only real point would be to try to bring the user sound feature in earlier, since some of the built in sounds are a little disappointing, and that might put people off before they realise you can record your own. That might be resolvable by adding some effect dials too.

As an Android person it annoys me to think you probably couldn't do something like this so well on Android, as the highly variable touch input and audio latencies would kill it.

Thanks. I think you're spot-on about getting to the user-recorded sound quicker. I'll definitely keep that in mind for future videos.

Yeah, we've been trying to make Android happen, but it's exactly as you mentioned -- the wide range of device capabilities in general, and the audio latency in particular, makes things quite a bit trickier.

Who knows, maybe KitKat or beyond will prioritize the audio/interaction a bit further and help us out. In the meantime, we'll keep trying just in case we stumble across some magic. :)

They gave a good talk at I/O on just audio latency: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3kfEeMZ65c

The touch latency alone is generally in the >80ms ballpark as well though, and varies a lot between devices.

I know I'm in the minority, but I went to buy and download it after the awesome video, only to discover it requires iOS 7.0. :(

iOS 6 is still at 13% usage, and is basically staying there (until iOS 8 comes out, presumably). It would be really nice if you could support just one operating system version back.

Arg. I'm sorry to hear that.

We wanted to support iOS6, but the updates they made to the audio backend in iOS7 were important as we developed so it's kind of locked in at this point. I'll double-check, just in case...

That's fair enough.

I just tried purchasing Fiddlewax before I found out it was iOS7 only. I would upgrade iOS, but I'm hoping Quasar (Cydia multitasking app) makes it to iOS6. If I give up on that, expect a purchase from me.

Also: Android?

They talk about this in one of their news articles. Looks like they got burned on Android previously and were trying to get to an MVP:

"It was also evident that the touch and audio latency on iOS were much faster than we could get with other mobile devices. Additionally, iOS devices are fairly standardized, reducing the number of edge cases to debug (previous experience with Warmly highlighted that trickiness with over 2000 Android devices to consider/debug)."

Indeed. :)

I'd really like it to work on Android myself, but it's a serious wrestling match with low-latency audio apps. The Android devs are working hard to speed things up, so fingers-crossed it'll be just around the corner.

That number is at 13% probably because of people using devices that can't actually run iOS7, not because they choose not to. iOS8 won't change that.

I know a few people using a iPhone 4 that choose not to upgrade to iOS7 because of performance issues.

One of our iPad 2s is on iOS 6 for that reason and also because after updating my iPad 4 to iOS 7 I can almost never successfully send an email the first attempt.

Wrong.

iOS 7 is a minor update (beside major OS-theme changes). I prefer the iOS 6 look&feel and will stay with that version til several UI bugs in v7 are finally fixed ..so probably with iOS 8.

You realize that the look and feel of iOS6 that you like isn't ever coming back right? I've had friends refuse to update because of that exact reasoning as if they think somehow their defiance will change the course Apple is taking with the UI...

At the risk of painting all of HN with a very broad brush, I find the calls in this thread to support iOS 6 at 13% usage amusing, given the countless times I've seen arguments here to drop support for old IE versions with similar adoption numbers over the years.

When small team ships a product, they have to make tough calls. The reality is that some day very soon, the number of iOS 6 users will be almost zero. Any delay or time spent making the app work on iOS 6 is time that can't be spent on the core features of the app, bug fixes, and (importantly) testing new beta versions of iOS that we know with 100% certainty will be dominant on the platform in the future.

I do think you are painting HN, and software development, with a very broad brush indeed. Every time people call to drop old IE versions, there seem to be an equal number of HN'ers saying, you people aren't living in the real world, where we do have to support old versions of IE, because there are customers there.

Furthermore, IE8 is nearly five years old, but many of us are still supporting it for users who can't upgrade from XP.

Whereas iOS6 was supplanted less than 6 months ago. And many people are unable to upgrade for hardware reasons.

Of course a team has to make "tough calls". But that doesn't mean people still using iOS6 can't inquire about it. And sometimes, supporting a previous version doesn't even require that much work -- it depends on the particular set of functionality.

Really liked the app!

Couple of feedback points:

1: it'd be nice if the instrument sounds were much better - they sound too synthetic to me.

2: I had a really hard time using the 'fretless' UI - i.e., everything I did sounded horrible (see my recording below). Maybe you can snap-to-note if I am close-by the actual note?

Here is the 4 tracks recording with BandHub: http://getbandhub.com/s/52fce1e87fa2ce0443000002

Awesome! I totally dig it.

But yeah, I get your point about the fretless UI. I'm churning a bit on how to keep it analog; maybe giving notes gravity so things stay more in tune, but that would make the sound waver on the longer slides... hmm. Definitely a tradeoff to consider.

Thanks for sharing your tracks. You rock.

Here is an idea: you can make it "slide" from wherever you were with your finger to the actual note whenever you enter the surroundings of the note. And you can even light the note a bit when that happens... I think that'd work without making it sound like a step change.

Nice. Seems like a good way to go for most slide guitar style riffs.

The real tradeoff is when you do want to purposely play all of the notes in between (microtonal scales). Of course, the way the UI is built, different sliding styles could be different view modes, so it's just a judgement call for total number of modes and what those modes should be.

You've got me thinking, so thank you :)

This has been a 3-month venture so far. Would really appreciate any feedback/thoughts.

Video walkthrough here if you're interested: https://vimeo.com/86297286

Thanks!

Have you tried Polyplayground for iPad? It's the same ball park but has more depth (synthesis) and versatility (mappable grid, MIDI output) and also implements some really interesting music pedagogy research.

Your app has a nice feel and UI. How are you synthesising your sounds?

Thanks for the feedback. Polyplayground looks interesting, but definitely a different approach in terms of UI complexity and entry-point.

I'd love to get MIDI into Fiddlewax. Hoping we can do that for the next version.

As for sound generation, we built our own module that can handle recorded samples, synthesis, envelopes, filters, and effects. Since Fiddlewax Blue is focused on being accessible for new musicians it doesn't expose much of it in the high-level UI.

There's a lot of ways you can hook things up and generate sound on the backend, so hopefully that'll be a fun thing to work on next (especially synth configurations) to give the experts a little more to chew on. :)

Very cool. I can see how this really would make it a lot easier to learn chords and chord progressions.

Actually, this is probably a great 'prototyping' app, too. I'm not sure I'd use this app directly in a track, but I could see myself toying around with this until I got something that sounded interesting, and then jumping over to a real synth to record.

Anyway, very nice! Congrats on the launch!

Thanks for kind words and congratulations. It feels great to go from experimenting for fun to really putting something out there and seeing if people actually like it.

My hope is that it really does open the door for more people to create their own music and not be intimidated by it. Your response makes me hopeful. Cheers.

This app looks amazing, great job.

App looks cool once I found the walk through. I almost gave up before I had any idea what it was. I think one mistake people make with Show HN posts is that they don't link to the right page to actually show it. I would have linked straight to the walk through and not the landing page for news. Good job. Not for me though since I don't do Apple.

I was really frustrated when I clicked the link. It looked like something I might enjoy (it looks music related!)

Is it an ear-trainer? Synth? Song-learning tool?

Haven't seen the video yet (which I only found after I managed to hunt down a link to the homepage.)

As an avid iPad music hobbyist, this is really cool. Reminds me a bit of Polychord (http://polychordapp.com/), but Polychord's UI is a bit awkward and the app is incredibly crash-prone. Looks like Fiddlewax has significantly more to offer in regards to melody exploration, which is exactly what I'm looking for. Bought and downloaded.

As if you haven't heard this enough already, throw my vote for MIDI support on the pile. I use iPad synths like Animoog and Sunrizer for writing songs, and being able to combine Fiddlewax's tools with Animoog's sound would be glorious.

Glad to hear it!

MIDI is now on the roadmap :)

Awesome! As soon as MIDI is in I'll be buying!

as an in-app purchase, or free update, lol

Downloaded it and I am really enjoying the app. Keep up the good work.

Just a comment on one thing of interest which I ran into upon first messing around with the app... While moving my fingers about, the four and five finger gestures kept taking me out of the app and into the next in my multitasking queue. I did not know until now that these gestures even existed. But, I know now that I can turn such gestures off in the general settings.

I wonder if an app is allowed to automatically disable/enable these gestures for a user upon entering and exiting the app. Could be useful for music apps such as this.

As a member of the 78%, it looks interesting (and I just bought it). However, the video seems to provide the only real tutorial. There needs to be a walk-through in the app (perhaps there is).

Also, I'd like to see some sort of visual/tracer feedback as you press the keys (and apparently, you can even able to vibrate them). I don't know if the processor can handle it, but you could use the sound wave in the key itself. But even color changes or a sparkle (users could turn off in preferences).

Good luck!

Congrats on shipping an interesting app. I really like the name too. You've joined a fairly small group of apps which seem to make good use of the touch interface for creating music in novel ways. I'll be checking Fiddlewax out tonight.

BTW I released my more traditional iPad synth[1] a couple of years back and all the cries here for MIDI support take me right back :)

[1] http://omnivoresoft.com/

Ouch, that top 1-star review is pretty damning, and right at the top. That's got to be a major buzzkill on your DLs. I wonder if you could address that somehow in your description. Actually the CA seems interesting to me.

Yep. A bit annoying to say the least, plus he clearly hadn't used it as all his suggestions around looping, pre-made automata patterns etc. are in there. For one thing, it has the concept of 'immortal' cells which have a surprisingly big effect in making repeating patterns - perfect for LFO-replacement duty.

That review was a huge buzzkill personally, and it had a very big effect on DLs. 2-3 a day, down to 1 a week or so. Prior versions had a good number of 4 and 5 star reviews, nothing lower, with some good comments.

Easiest way to address it would be to push out another update, but that review was months ago and it kind of knocked the wind out of my sails (not to mention my sales!)

For an audio app, I would really try and get a better microphone for the voice over and the demo audio. It would definitely help sell it.

Also, midi output would be a great feature.

Looks really cool.

I'm not sure if introducing inversions in the more advanced mode works for me: without a piano keyboard in front of you the concept wouldn't make much sense to a beginner. So the basic mode sounds kind of jarring as you jump around first inversions, I think I expected to hear a bass note and then the triad being the closest inversion to the root chord.

Just nitpicking though, congratulations on building this :)

I'm not a music guy, just came to say congratulations on getting a product out the door, and I hope it's a success. Looks like it provides a lot of cool functionality. Changing the sound when the user vibrates their finger over a cord is cool, not sure if other apps do that, seems pretty unique.

It would be cool to see a demo of like, 5 professional musicians playing a song using only this app.

Good luck!

Looks fun. I especially think the multi-touch portamento/"analog" function looks really expressive.

Another thing that could be cool is a mode that finds the most efficient note changes/inversions between chords. E.g., from C to Em, you can keep the E and G and drop the C down a half-step to B.

Sorry to admit it, but before I clicked "play" link on your homepage I had no clue whatsoever what is this page about, there were some weird news about like everything... You could make it clear that it's some kind of musical app right away...

Wow, I thought about almost the same app idea yesterday (the first 2 and last screen). It would be useful find a good "music texture". We live in a small world.

Nice work. Is there a special reason that it is iOS7 only? (no iOS6?)

Thanks for the feedback. I totally agree on tweaking the sounds more.

We decided to go for iOS7 as the base since the audio support runs a bit deeper.

Capability-wise, it seemed to make the more sense to start from higher ground where possible, and the iOS7 adoption rate is already around 85%. https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_7

just downloaded and fuzz around a little. Can't replace my guitar but good enough to accompany some impromptu singing. Now when I travel, I'll always have a handy instrument. Does what it said. Recommended.

@akumpf: guitar & electric guitar sounds too synthesize, not sure if it's even appropriate to label as such. I know it's tough but if you guys can tighten up on the guitar sounds and add strummings patterns, eg. Jam with Chrome type, that'd be awesome. Great job on your debut version.

Thanks for the feedback.

I've seen a handful of comments here about dialing in the sounds. Definitely going to be a big consideration for future versions. I also like the idea of working in strumming. Cheers. :)

In the about page there's a list of JS libs - are you using PhoneGap or similar to package it as an iOS app? What was your experience with the audio API?

Truly original, well implemented concept. Neat.

How about adding a feature to campfire mode where your app listens on the microphone to determine the chord or dominant note being played and highlights that on your display?

Android version please.

We're looking into it. :)

Initial tests gave us some issues with audio latency that made the interaction feel sluggish. I'll keep noodling and see if we can connect the dots.

This looks like an amazing educational tool for music. Of course, I would feel silly "Oh you play piano? That's cool. I play my iPad here."

Looks cool.

Might I suggest switching from a 3 column layout to a 2 column layout? 3 columns looks a bit squished.

Just to clarify, are you talking about the way the news/blog posts are organized? or the Fiddlewax Blue app itself?

As for the news/blog posts, they should reflow to fill your screen. I'll see about giving them a bit more breathing room. :)

Can this act as a MIDI Controller?

Also curious. That would be totally awesome.

Looks really cool! Hope you're planning on an Android version :)

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