Hi all! Thanks for checking out the side project my family and I have been working on (on and off) for the past year. We were playing wordle when we thought: wouldn't it be fun if you had to guess musical notes (ABCDEFG) instead of words? And what if the notes you had to guess were actually the first six notes of a familiar melody?<p>My brother and I both have perfect pitch, which has been really helpful when we want to cover a song that we like, or improvise in a jazz or blue grass setting. We don’t promise that this game will help you gain perfect pitch, but it <i>is</i> possible to train your ear to more accurately gauge sounds, and our hope is that this game will help with that.<p>So far we’ve gotten feedback from consistent players that the game <i>has</i> helped non-musicians more easily identify notes based on relative pitches, and helped even musicians improve their ability to remember tunes better, which is good to hear.<p>The game has evolved with different instruments and difficulty modes (easy, normal, hard), but the essence has remained the same:
- One new musical puzzle a day
- The octave moves with the melody, so you don’t need to worry about the octave; you just need to guess the pitch<p>There are a few things we want to improve as well, like:
- improved mobile support (especially Android)
- a “practice mode” - allow users to play more than one game per day, or multiple variations of notes, with visual feedback on how close they were to guessing the note
- making it easier to add new songs to the database (currently it takes 5-10 minutes to code in a new song)
any other feedback that we get here or in our Discord. :)<p>PS. If you already have perfect pitch or want to challenge yourself to the impossible, I'd recommend playing the "bird_tweet" instrument in "hard" mode!
Great work! Had no trouble playing the game, and it's a well thought out concept.<p>I know you're invested in the 'perfect pitch' framing, since you mention that you have it in the family. Since it seems like your goal is to have this be a useful and accessible educational tool for those breaking into music, I would highly recommend pivoting this to have a strong focus on relative pitch, and specifically _intervals_, instead. Knowing how to distinguish intervals is both more accessible, and also much more useful for actually playing and creating music. As is, this tool clearly deprioritizes intervals with the fixed piano-key input and melodies in a key other than C. This will really only help one get better at this specific game.<p>If you haven't already, give Earmaster a try and see how they approach it - it's one of the most referenced and well-regarded training apps on the market. Earmaster, and others like it, start with a focus on relative intervals, then expand out from there to enhance instant recognition and memory of relative intervals across a melody - but the focus is almost never on absolute pitch 'across the piano'.
From your comments, I think I understand why the "choose an octave" thing was such a hard choice, but I think what you settled on was quite possibly the least intuitive option for me. Even once I thought I understood how it worked, it kept jumping around on me every time I wanted to try another note. It was frustrating enough that I wouldn't come back to the game over it, because I can't even practice with it until I do get the hang of it with the "one puzzle a day" limitation. And most of the comments support that it wasn't intuitive for the majority of people.<p>Virtually everyone has at least <i>some</i> relative pitch, enough to know "the next note should be right/left of the last one." Moving the whole octave, and only really showing that with the highlights on a tiny keyboard above is just confusing.<p>I'm one of those people who virtually never puts my phone in landscape mode, but I would rather unlock landscape mode for one puzzle a day so you could display the full range of applicable keys for the featured section of the song than try it the current way again.
An "impossible" mode could remove the sound played when selecting a note. Only those with perfect pitch would be able to get it though (or someone using another piano / keyboard for reference).<p>As a slight aside, I have always wondered (and never really found a conclusive answer) whether it's possible to train your absolute pitch perception. I have perfect pitch so I can't really test myself fairly (although it does make this puzzle very easy for me!). I've read on multiple occasions that exposure / training as a child is the best way to get it for life, and being musical as a kid might explain my ability to detect absolute pitch.
Fun game, cool idea.<p>Being able to backspace and replay my selection makes it too easy. I can just keep changing my first guess until it sounds the same.<p>Hard mode seems a little too hard.<p>Can I have a kinda-hard mode? :)
One a day makes it hard to get better. Why not let us just keep doing them one after the other? E.g. the fretboard game currently on the front page (I prefer the neverending practice mode): <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38407780">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38407780</a>
What is the rule for the shifting octave? The first puzzle I got starts with E4 E4 and as soon as I click that on the keyboard (or type EE), the keyboard jumps to octave 3 and I can't enter the next note which should be C4.<p>Or... is that the game, I should be able to ID the notes irrespective of octave?
I got it in one submission by playing the sample, picking a note and removing it if they don't match what I heard. Was that cheating? It's been a few decades since I last played viola and I've honestly forgotten the tone:letter mapping.
Nice, I used to play "Melodle" (<a href="https://melodle.yesmeno.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://melodle.yesmeno.com/</a>) which seems very similar, but I like that this uses real songs.<p>I think it would be great to have an option that disables playing the pitch that I select, as for me the pitch removes most of the challenge.
Great game! I am not a musician and very far from perfect pitch (I would say I am closer to the tone-death end of the spectrum). I also have no interest in training my ear. Still, I had a lot of fun playing the game.<p>I had to replay <i>a lot</i> of times the tune and my versions to be able to get it right in three attempts.<p>One feedback is that I would like to be able to play more times a day. Unlike Wordle, your game has a few interesting variations. In particular, the instrument options. I would like to keep playing with it to explore those options. I imagine other people would like to test the hard mode as well, to see if they can get it right with the replay limitation. But after playing the first time to understand the game, you can’t explore more.<p>Finally, I personally would like to choose the music genre of the puzzle. I would likely choose classical music, so it would also add some discoverability aspect on a music genre that I enjoy.<p>Anyway, congrats on the well done game!
Nice work! I was initially confused how to enter the notes, as I didn’t realize I needed to scroll down to see the keyboard (on mobile). I kept tapping the white squares but it did nothing.<p>I also wish there was a way to play more than one. Maybe allow me to do the previous days?
This is such a clean, direct way to practice associating pitches with notes. I'm enjoying playing with it and looking forward to learning more about it.
I have no idea about notes or anything piano related. I remember trying some other online game about testing if you are pitch perfect and I was a total failure because I have no idea what any of this is.<p>But I was still able to get it right in the first row by running the sample lots of times, hitting a key and listening if my combination matches the original music. My point is that I don't think this is for checking pitch perfection if it can be done this way be someone who don't understand a thing about music.
I'm using it wrong, but I love it. I've been working on ear training/interval training so I play the melody a couple times, then play it on my piano, then play the game. I don't want to tell "it's perfect, now change everything" but a practice mode would be helpful for that use case.
Maybe I have perfect pitch or just a good ear, but referencing from the keyboard to the puzzle is pretty simple? Or is playing the keyboard as referential to the puzzle kind of cheating? Should there be a lock in or blind keyboard sound?
It’s a fun idea! Sadly, I found it to be trivial with relative pitch.<p>Could I suggest adding some extra challenges? Maybe define notes in terms of intervals to the root. Or maybe removing the sample tune and give us more guesses? I don’t even know if that would work TBH, I’m just spitballing.
That was fun, especially as it convinced me that my pitch isn't that bad after all. I have a suggestion for an option where to choose a different instrument for the melody and the other to play back your guesses. That would help practice your pitch without focusing on the timbre.
I've been playing around in test mode and I noticed that sometimes the first note or two don't play properly when I click 'play the tune' for the first time. Frustrating in hard mode with limited plays!
Maybe make the keyboard contiguous like a piano — this should "just work" on a desktop — it can go below the grid even. On a phone, scroll the keyboard on the x-axis and make it full width of the screen.<p>Just my two cents
Once I've forgotten which colors mean what, I can't figure out how to see the help again. And the grey and green are hard for me to distinguish. Besides that, I can use this (big time).
Have perfect pitch so this is super easy. Maybe the ultra ultra hard mode should be no sounds on tap, only one go for each try (no submit button or delete), song only plays on failure of each try.
How can I choose the blue range on top? It seems on multiple presses of the same key different ranges are chosen, but it is really not clear what is going on there.
I love this!! But you could you please let us manually scroll the keyboard (or just reveal the entire thing), rather than move it around based based on the try position?
That's lovely. Question: what is your take on that perfect pitch can not be learned by adults? Relative is relatively (hah!) easy, but absolute is very hard.
Guitar sound didn't- it stayed as piano.
I think the easy mode could be easier - people without perfect pitch need to warm up a bit first.
Thanks, great idea.
fun idea but "perfect pitch" is a little off the mark imo, as other people have mentioned. i think this sort of exercise would be good for training transcription skills and relative pitch if you weren't able to hear your guesses and the grading factored out global transposition i.e. by always considering the first note correct and applying the offset to the remaining notes
the song referenced in the puzzle is an absolute banger btw <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIIT9hO1EZE" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIIT9hO1EZE</a>