alt Hacker NewsShow HN: I made a memory game to teach you to play piano by ear
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It be nice if you mapped the keys to the user keyboard kinda like ableton, for people who dont have a midi controller handy
White Keys: The keys from ‘A’ to ‘L’ on your keyboard correspond to the white keys on a piano, covering a full octave from C to D. Black Keys: The keys in between, like ‘W’ and ‘E’, correspond to the black keys or the sharp notes on a piano. from : https://www.electrikjam.com/use-your-keyboard-as-a-midi-cont...
Clean project, well done.
As a classically trained pianist, I'll say the following commentary regarding this thread: there are many ways to learn to "play the piano" and no one is going to agree on "the right way" because there's no true way.
This project is a good way to practice basic sheet music reading as well as to aurally recognize notes and phrases; teaching would require some cultivation of understanding the context and nomenclature. Thanks for sharing!
I took several years of Suzuki piano method when I was a kid. Suzuki focuses initially on developing the ear.
During lessons, we did this kind of stuff all the time. I would close my eyes and my instructor would play a series of notes and I would need to play them back by ear.
I would also listen to whatever song I was learning before I went to be bed and again when I woke up in the morning, visualizing every note.
Give me a guitar today and I can work out pretty much any song I hear on the radio in under a minute just by listening.
EDIT: To be clear, I also played a LOT of guitar and piano. Ear training was in addition to the hard work of becoming a player.
I like the game up until 7 or 8 notes, but it keeps adding note.
I couldn't find a setting to freeze the difficulty where it's comfortable and where the melody can still be construed to make sense.
When adding more notes, it breaks the flow and turn a training for pitch practicing into a memory game for rain man, even more so when we make a mistake and must redo the melody partially.
Great technical demo, but the usability feels unpolished. So here's a little bit of feedback of trying this out on a piano: Just because my piano has 88 keys doesn't mean they are all useful for ear training. The very low and very high notes shouldn't be used, at least not by default. Also they don't even show up properly in the sheet.
As the melodies get longer and longer with each win, this devolves quickly into a memory game. I'd like to keep playing ear training, but I struggle with remembering what sequence of notes came at steps 8+.
This is somewhat aggravated by completely resetting the current level and replaying the whole melody after a single mistake. If I keep making a mistake in note 10, I get all the notes over and over again, which is a bit maddening.
Funny, I posted my (less cool) version of this exact idea last week: https://keybykey.app
Just bought a digital piano as New Year present to myself. So far I am doing single-note-a-time melodies from my child's practice book and so far enjoying my slow progress, but I am really struggling. Spent 3 evenings on a single simplest song and still can't play it end to end reliably.
I have to sign every note with a letter in a music book because only other way to "read" music sheet for me is count lines for each note, which is unbearably slow.
I wonder if there is any modern (AI, bluetooth midi app, etc) way to get over initial hurdles easier?
This is great! Please consider even easier settings for kids. Maybe 2 notes (not 4) as the min starting point and slower ramp up as you succeed.
Also, I think the missed the first note UI could feel a little nicer. Something about the popup/hiding the music takes you out of the flow. Possibly just a subtitle would be enough with an encouraging message. There is a big difference between failing to do the whole pattern and failing the first note so definitely worth refining the feedback here.
Just a quick compatibility issue: for some reason, my midi board triggers a key input both when I press it down, and when I let it go. I'm assuming that it might just be something wrong with my board, but I did want to let you know in case there might be some nuance you haven't considered with respect to the midi commands. I know my first crack at it didn't distinguish between note-on and note-off commands, for instance.
I keep hitting the start button -- which switches to a different melody -- when I want to hit the listen button -- which re-plays the current melody.
I feel like "listen" should be the first, more prominent button and "start" should be moved to the end and renamed to something more meaningful like "ahh shit, give me a different one"
other than that, cool.
Absolutely awesome. Move the help button off the keyboard. Let the user select whether or not the replay should always play after a mistake. Many issues with learning the longer sequences in practice mode can be difficult if the replay freezes the keyboard every time you hit a wrong key.
This is really cool! As someone who has basically no piano training, this is fun! Perhaps there could be some super-easy mode where you actually highlight the keys while you're playing the sounds (in simon mode) to help the super noobs train their ears.
Interesting, but it shows the first note, and after you play it, it shows the next note, so I have to not to look at the notes when trying to guess them.
Also, too complicated for a beginner, I would start with things like "guess which note is higher" or "how many notes are played simultaneously".
This is great - bookmarked! I've connected my casio midi keyboard to it, hope it will help me with getting the right key of a song (I can work out a tune already, but sometimes in the wrong key)
I'd like more tries to pick out the notes when pecking at the on-screen keyboard. I don't need to hear the pattern again, I need to learn where the note pitches are on the keyboard.
I really like this idea. Simple interface, a single goal, it and it doesn't claim to be a full piano course. However, the user experience is incredibly frustrating for amateur players like myself. For some reason i have to hold down each previous note or else it fails? And often when I do play the right note I get no feedack to say so. Another thing is the annoying wait between listening to the piece and playing every time. It would be nice if user input immediately cut out the example piece
Love this!!
One improvement that would help me a lot is to control the playback speed. My brain needs to start a bit slower as some of the sequences are fairly fast for my brain right now.
Thank you
Hah, very cool! I have a variation on that in an experimental version of some software I wrote and found it to be really interesting to compare experienced pianists' performance on it versus newbies. And that is the main reason why it is still unreleased, it is very hard to design a good educational tool so kudos on shipping!
Very cool! Love the simplicity of this. Built a similar mode in Midiano (also a midi webapp, but focused on playing MIDI files). But this is much cleaner for a quick exercise. Mine never really got past the prototype stage though. Safe to say, I'll be coming back to this thread for ideas when I do get around working on it again :)
I love it. Just bought piano to my apartment in SF and always wished simple tool like this existed. thank you!
As someone who practices music 2 to 3 hours a day. I love this. I think people are coming at it as if it were a video game or designed to be a "portfolio project" but as a musician, I think you really created something awesome and lets me practice on what I'm most insecure about....my ear.
Nice! Would love to use it.
I don't have a midi piano. Wondering if it is easy for you to support my inputs using microphone. I think there will be several noobs like me with the same problem.
This looks great. Just started learning piano and ear training has been on my list and this Simon-style approach seems way more engaging than traditional exercises.
The MIDI support is a nice touch. Haven't connected my keyboard yet though. Gonna try this out.
Fun app! One of the things I wish it had if it can record the ambient notes and match it (like one of those guitar tuner apps). Playing by ear is something I've done all my life and any user can have any instrument matching the notes
Nice project! I'm not very strong at note recognition, so I see the “Wrong note” message quite often (which is totally fine), but the frequent blinking feels a bit distracting. You might consider making the feedback a little less visually intense.
Great idea! Small nitpick, on my phone the last played key remains highlighted after the "Wrong" message. That got me quite confused in the beginning.
There's a question mark button right on top of the high C key. Otherwise, love it.
I feel like Bugs Bunny trying to play "Those Endearing Charms". (Mind I can't play, well, anything. I play the radio off key.)
Just waiting for Yosemite Sam to run in and blow himself up.
I read that line by Mark Antony from Julia Caesar to my 3yo yesterday morning. He usually shushes me by putting his hand over my mouth while I am speaking, but this time he did not. It felt good.
I have a really niche use case that this fulfills. I have perfect pitch, but terrible working memory (can't remember more than 4 notes at time). This is a nice way to try to improve it.
For those starting out, I recommend going into settings and only choosing the key of C major, which is all the white keys. Then advance onto more keys after that.
This is as much a sight singing app as it is piano by ear. I did a lot of these kinds of drills studying for the Music Theory AP exam in high school. Very useful
This is absolutely amazing! What a fantastic way to engage kids in particular. Big fan and will be telling anyone I can about it.
This is great, and fun, and rewarding, thanks!
I suppose the thing you're learning with musical instruments is hand-ear coordination. The eyes are optional.
Bug? It shows me the note and I just have to mash it and then it shows me the next note.
This is excellent training mode! Thanks for sharing
Maybe add microphone support and listen to what people play on keyboard piano ?
The help question mark over part of the keyboard isn't great.
This game is amazing
Don’t seem to get any sound on iPhone 16 even after clicking :(
The starting difficulty is too high for your average beginner. Start with just one interval, then increase. Also, you should let people try a few times rather than just allowing one attempt.
If you could see analytics you would see I am the worst player at this game. But it is cool - can you actually plug in a keyboard to your laptop and use it? If so, what would HN recommend I get? As mentioned I suck at musical instruments but it could be a cool hobby to see if I can learn anything.
Great work!
I’ve tried quite a few of these apps/sites, and I like the simplicity of this one.
It's a very cool little game! One suggestion: could you make it so you can noodle around on the keyboard without submitting the answer and then once you've worked it out, have a submission mode? Right now, it's frustrating that if you enter a wrong note, it shows a message, so you can't experiment on the keyboard to try to work it out.