They have guitar samples as well, but it was a bit more complicated because with a piano you have one key per note, there's exactly one way to play C4♯ or whatever, but with a guitar the notes are overlapping, so C4♯ might be played on the B string or up on the G string, and I didn't really know how to choose samples for interpolation.

> Maybe also an "identify the root of the chord" mode could be helpful to bridge from the chord sounds to single notes?

There is already a mode (it might turn on automatically for "white" chords after you reach black chords, I forget) that follows on to identifying one of the three notes, chosen at random, from the chord you just heard. That is what I'm doing with my son now and it seems to be bridging the gap, but I think a direct "which note is this" thing might work better for him.

That said, we're pretty far afield of the original Eguchi method at this point. According to the book, kids are supposed to just naturally understand the nature of notes as you improve. The book also mentions that the advanced students are doing stuff like listening to arbitrary combinations of up to 6 notes (not chords, just random combinations), but they don't really explain how that works. There's a decent amount more to do, but given that I'm not 100% convinced that it even works, I'm not sure how much it's worth it to do it.

1. Did it (the chord trainer app) help my son when he was studying music? Not as far as I can tell. He has also been taking piano lessons and sometimes it helps a little with music theory to tie it back to the chords, but I don't think there's much transfer learning going on. He seems to have a good ear, but my other son is not picking up chords nearly as quickly, and I know a bunch of other kids have bounced off this app, so my older son may just already naturally have a good ear.

2. Did it (studying music) help my son (with identifying chords)? I don't think so. He made pretty steady progress in the chords before he started piano, and after he started piano it didn't get any easier. He also mentions things like, "The chords sound different on the piano", which makes me think I need to have more varied samples (even though the book says that consistency is key and you should practice on the same piano holding the chords for the same duration every time).

Modern software does, but there's always the risk of introducing artifacts, and I like older music that's usually mixed with pitch shifting.

I'm currently practicing for a show with my cello tuned down a half-step, and it strongly conflicts with my ear<->muscle memory. Similar experiences when jumping between standard tuning and the Bach 5th Suite (A string tuned down to G) or Kodaly Solo Sonata (lower two strings tuned down a half step).

That doesn't require perfect pitch. Most of the YouTube musicians noted for making videos of going on sites like Omegle and its successors and taking requests which they the then play perfectly after a short listen to the original if they don't know the song do not have perfect pitch for instance. Examples include The Dooo (guitar and piano), Frank Tedesco (piano), and Rob Scallon (violin).

There's also an element of violin-specific pitch detection; if you play violin for long enough, you can recognize the specific timbre of different notes on a violin (particularly easy for open strings) which helps ground you while listening to a tune.

The tonal speaker hears a much wider and more precise range of tones, but that precision also kind of hinders them in a way because they can't not hear it. On the other hand speak with a tonal native speaker who's also learned a non-tonal language and they can understand your mistakes (in their native tongue) perfectly, because they essentially have already untrained the tonal instinct. But I'm sure hearing those tonal mistakes feels quite jarring to them nonetheless, like when you're listening to a musician who gets a chord wrong - it just hurts.

I learned this is especially valuable when switching between instruments with different constrained ranges (you can just adapt), as well as your voice changing over time.

In reality, you put your fingers in the position for a C on that specific instrument and you get a C. The name "transposing instrument" is misleading; the instrument itself does not transpose. It's purely a notation convention, intended to give you a consistent mapping between notation and fingering so it's easier to switch between instruments. If you only play one instrument there's no need for it. And even if you do, it's not strictly necessary, e.g. recorders are commonly available in both C and F and are conventionally not notated transposed. Professional players routinely switch between them for different pieces.

I expect it would be possible to train an image-processing LLM to OCR sheet music so it can be automatically transposed and re-engraved for compatibility with absolute pitch.

Nice website! I will have a look. Unfortunately, their mobile version is for iOS only ;-(

>why your flute's FFT visualization has multiple bumps

I am not surprised it has multiple bumps, I am surprised that its dominant frequency is not at the expected note. I suspect that it's just because I am holding my fingers in a wrong way, but I don't know how to tell.

>get a copy of Curtis Roads' Computer Music Tutorial

Thank you!

It does teach a little anout scales. It wont teach chords. It doesn’t go very far into time signatures. It only has you play a virtual keyboard so it’s useless for learning how to feel your instrument.

It’s quite fun. My kid plays it every day and it’s helped get them feeling more confident to sit at our piano and noodle around. As a noodler myself, this seems valid.

It wont get you good enough to play pieces with other musicians, or to compose with weatern harmony. You’ll need extea tutorials for those.

Not even close to being true!

- There's not been any real convention for most of the history of western music (and no tuning fork anyway) and pitch varied hugely between regions, people and time. Different musician groups in the same church would likely be on different pitches. 415Hz is often used for baroque music but that's just a modern convention, there was no such standard in baroque times. - 432Hz was somewhat conventional at the end of the 1800s, start of 1900s - 440Hz is the "official" standard since then - Many orchestras are tuning to 442, 443, or even 445Hz nowadays

So there's not been any such thing as hundreds of years of tradition, and even now that we do have standards (and ways to measure frequency precisely), pitch inflation continues to be a thing.

- Check "Show chords on piano?"

- Check "Play chord sounds"

- Uncheck "Play feedback sounds"

For the "Chords", start with just Red and Blue. Then add Yellow.

I don't have perfect pitch, and I could not distinguish between Red and Blue, when Yellow was in the mix and the feedback sounds interrupted the trials.

Black and Green were much easier for me to differentiate, but Red / Blue is really difficult.