[HN Gopher] Show HN: A piano chord reference tool
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Show HN: A piano chord reference tool
Author : jnkkkk
Score : 86 points
Date : 2022-08-27 19:53 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pianochord.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (pianochord.io)
| boredemployee wrote:
| Nice. Would love to see inversions as well. I struggle a lot with
| rootless inversions :|
| jnkkkk wrote:
| Thanks! Yes, inversions will be there in the near future.
| kampsduac wrote:
| One of my first personal projects when learning how to program
| was generating sheet music for scales. Maybe I'll try to adapt
| some of the logic here to do that, someday.
|
| I love the spirit of this. Simple reference tools for mobile
| devices or tablets, maybe with the ability to print things, could
| be leveraged more in the world.
|
| Share any tools if you know of them!
| jacquesm wrote:
| Hah cool! That is how I more or less discovered 'structured
| programming'. I had already made three tries at that and failed
| miserably. Then 'functions' came along and suddenly I was able
| to write code in the 1000's of lines and not get lost. (Before
| then it was all GOSUB 3300 etc.)
|
| The BBC Micro (the machine I was working on at the time) had a
| version of Basic that allowed for procedures (something that
| doesn't return a value) and functions to be defined with a name
| attached. It's incredible if you think about it from a present
| day perspective that in that sense the original BASIC was even
| worse than assembler, which at least allowed you to attach a
| label to an address.
| S_A_P wrote:
| Love it- was just digging out my old laminated chord chart to re-
| learn them. This is way more convenient! Would love to see this
| expand to scales and modes too!
| jnkkkk wrote:
| Thanks! Yeah, my next step would be adding scales and modes to
| it.
| randyrand wrote:
| How are you rendering the pianos images? Can you show the code
| for it?
| jnkkkk wrote:
| The code is open sourced on Github.
| https://github.com/JNKKKK/pianochord.io
| marvin wrote:
| This is a great reference tool. Something like this must have
| existed already, but I couldn't find it for the life of me.
|
| Something as simple as wanting to play simple guitar pieces based
| on chords, but struggling to figure out simple bar chord patterns
| for each of the less common chord families, and being unable to
| construct them on my own since I don't know enough of the theory
| to do it from the ground up. Thanks!
| mkl wrote:
| Searching [guitar chords] brings up some like this, e.g.
| https://www.all-guitar-chords.com/ which is quite similar but
| shows fingerings too.
|
| For piano, https://www.pianochord.org/ has been around a while
| I think, but doesn't seem to play the chord so you can hear it.
| jnkkkk wrote:
| Totally agree. I sometime also feel struggling to construct
| chords in my mind. Then I realize the importance of having such
| tool.
| Stenzel wrote:
| OK for beginners, but there are lots of nice voicings missing,
| also those where the root note is not played at all.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It looks like it is just out of the oven, and it's a pretty
| good starting point to flesh it out, the hard work has been
| done.
| poisonarena wrote:
| This is very cool but geting lots of clicking/artifacts on
| firefox
| jnkkkk wrote:
| Thanks! It's just out of the oven so I didn't have chance to
| test on all major browsers. Will improve on browser
| compatibility in the future.
| mkl wrote:
| For me it sounds fine on Firefox on Android and Firefox on
| Linux.
| Apfel wrote:
| Can't believe how useful this is. I've been working my way back
| in to learning piano during the pandemic and have been learning
| songs I like mostly through guitar chords websites and playing
| the right hand by ear as my sight-reading is atrocious. This will
| really help my progress with this method for the more complex
| chords.
| chaosprint wrote:
| very nice.
|
| pay attention to the chord that has 4 tones. it seems that you
| simply add up the amplitude so we always get some distortion.
| jnkkkk wrote:
| Nice catch. Thanks for the advice! Really appreciate it.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Awesome. I'm trying to pick it back up and go further, and I
| realized that sheet music bores me and I want to try just finding
| chords of songs and banging them out.
|
| Relatedly, I ended up making a very kludgey tool (in bash, ASCII
| graphics) that would let me enter a few chords and would cycle
| through them with on the same screen-piano-keyboard (e.g. to
| better see the "transitions.")
|
| I'm kind of surprised I've never seen anything like that out
| there done more formally?
| jnkkkk wrote:
| Interesting! The idea to visualize the "transitions" sounds
| very useful.
| moosedev wrote:
| Nice! Couple of minor (haha) issues:
|
| * The label "Rising octave" on the octave-up button doesn't make
| sense. Maybe you meant "Higher octave", assuming the "Lower" in
| the "Lower octave" button is the adjective form of "lower". If
| "Lower" is acting as a verb, however, then "Raise octave" would
| be consistent, but I don't think it sounds very natural. "Octave
| up" and "Octave down" might be more natural based on my
| recollection of music software and hardware I've used.
|
| * As another poster noted, the (FM?) synthesizer is clipping
| badly when it plays chords. It's noticeable on basic 3-note
| triads, but it's much worse on chords with many extension tones,
| like a C13.
|
| Thanks for sharing.
| jnkkkk wrote:
| Thanks for the advice! I totally agree with it. "Octave up" and
| "Octave down" also sound more natural to me.
|
| And nice catch! Yes, the synthesizer does have some issue in
| browsers other than Chrome. I'm working on that.
|
| Thanks again! I really appreciate it!
| moosedev wrote:
| Sure thing! BTW I am using Chrome on Windows 10.
| moefh wrote:
| Really good stuff!
|
| If I can give another suggestion: I think it would be much
| more useful for beginners to see the common alias of the
| chord in the main table (maybe below the name that already
| exists?).
|
| (This is wrong, see the reply below:) For example, a beginner
| may see "G7" in the wild and not know it's a G minor 7 (and
| not a G major 7). They'd have to click the chords and search
| the alias list. If "G7" was written below "G minor 7", it
| would make things much easier.
|
| Also, I think it would look better if the names in the main
| table were a bit more consistent. For exmaple, you have "G
| major ninth" but "Gmaj13". I think it would be better to have
| them as "Gmaj9"/"Gmaj13" or "G major ninth"/"G major
| thirteenth".
| moosedev wrote:
| Nit: G7 denotes a G dominant 7 (i.e. natural 3rd, flat
| 7th), not a G minor 7. G minor 7 (flat 3rd, flat 7th) is
| abbreviated Gm7 or G-7. (In my experience, the "Gm7" form
| is common in "official" printed guitar & piano songbooks,
| while G-7 is common in jazz lead sheets and fakebooks.)
| moefh wrote:
| Right, total brain fart on my part! (And I actually had
| never seen the "G-7" notation)
|
| Still, I think it would be much more useful to
| consistently have the chord abbreviations in the main
| table.
| moosedev wrote:
| I still stumble over the "-7" version sometimes. I grew
| up on "Gm7" :)
|
| Example from Google image search:
| https://www.musikalessons.com/blog/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/0... . At least this one uses maj7
| for major 7, rather than M7 or ^7 :)
| josephcsible wrote:
| Sometimes when I hit the play button for a chord, the notes don't
| all start at the same time. I can't figure out a pattern for when
| this works and when it doesn't.
| kzrdude wrote:
| My favourite way of "chunking" chords (i.e how to think of them
| to remember them) is to "decompose" them to think about them in a
| different way.
|
| For example: Think of Bbmaj7 as just Dm with Bb as the bass. Bb +
| Dm. It turns out that this pattern always works for the maj7
| chords.
|
| Another example: Cmaj7 "is" Em with C as the bass. Think of Cm7
| as Eb with C as the bass. C7 is Edim with C as the bass.
|
| These decompositions are just a different way to see the same
| chords, maybe it helps some people to form
| associations/connections about these shapes in some way. Of
| course, once played enough, a chord is simply remembered as it
| is, its own thing.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Every time such apps are shown on HN, I notice a lot of attention
| by the community. It seems a lot of hackers also play music!
| issa wrote:
| I wish I had a better ear and could tell you what sounds funny to
| me about the piano at the top. Can anyone explain why it sounds
| off to me?
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Mixing sharps and flats? I chose c as root and db (d flat) is
| in the image...but so is f# (f sharp).
|
| I have no problems explaining ie fb (f flat) or e# (e sharp)
| etc, in certain circumstances, but I'm a great believer in:
| don't mix the two (sharps and flats).
| moosedev wrote:
| Taking a guess at what you're noticing but might not have a
| framework/vocabulary for...
|
| It sounds like FM synthesis[0] to me (so either an embedded FM
| software synthesizer or simply replaying samples of FM
| synthesis), so the timbre is quite unlike a "real" piano or PCM
| samples of a real piano. Timbre is a kind of "color" of
| "quality" of a sound - in my head it's similar to how different
| materials feel different to the touch. A violin and a trumpet
| can play the same "note" but their sounds have very different
| timbres. An apple and a ball might both appear red but have
| different surface textures.
|
| The "piano" in the app sounds like the piano patches (presets)
| on FM-based synthesizers from the 1980s[1], where the designers
| tried to approximate the timbre of a piano using the limited
| (but fun!) possibilities of FM, while the transients and
| harmonics produced by a real acoustic piano are more complex.
|
| The pitches and temperament sound OK to me, so I think what you
| are are hearing is the timbre. That is, the app is playing the
| "right" notes, but it's as if you're hearing a "different
| instrument", albeit one that is an early digital approximation
| of a piano sound.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_modulation_synthesis
|
| [1] e.g. the Yamaha DX7; here's one of its "piano" sounds for
| comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3rrjQtQe5A&t=214s
| jacquesm wrote:
| Very nice! Request permission to link to it from pianojacq.com in
| the manual.
| jnkkkk wrote:
| Sure! I'm happy to hear that.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ok, done! Let's hope I didn't break anything because I'm in
| the middle of a huge refactoring job :) I really hope you
| will be successful with this, I love browser based music
| tools.
| jnkkkk wrote:
| Thanks! I like the idea of pianojacq.com. Good luck on your
| refactoring job!
| mkl wrote:
| This is great! It would be really useful to be able to select and
| deselect notes on the top piano to construct new chords based on
| these ones (and it could detect when you've constructed one it
| knows).
|
| Showing the sheet music of the chord in the top info box would
| also be very helpful.
|
| A list of similar chords links in the chord info box would be
| neat.
|
| An "automatically play chord" option would make it super easy to
| find a chord you want by sound.
|
| Possibly out of scope, but it would great to be able to put in a
| sequence of chords and see things about the transitions, e.g.
| notes in common.
| leetrout wrote:
| On ios safari hitting play just causes a clicking noise.
| NonNefarious wrote:
| Playback doesn't work on desktop Safari either.
|
| <unhappy emoji>
| jnkkkk wrote:
| Thanks! Nice catach. It's just out of the oven so I didn't have
| chance to test on all major browsers. Will improve on browser
| compatibility in the future.
| leetrout wrote:
| Awesome. Thanks!
| someweirdperson wrote:
| Aliases seem to be incomplete in a certain sense. E.g., Gm#5 uses
| the same notes as Eb major.
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(page generated 2022-08-27 23:00 UTC)