

Ask HN: Review my startup - Chords! - kolis

Winamp plugin that is able to extract chords from any mp3 on your playlist. It is very good in that. You could edit missed chords if needed in plain text file.<p>You could see chords and guitar tabs synchronized to a song and even hear chords mixed to a song.<p>http://chords.fm<p>Thoughts?
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jfarmer
I was really excited to see this, but is HN being astroturfed?

The bottom of chords.fm says "Copyright CBMS Networks, Inc."

Which points to this website: <http://cbmsnetworks.com/>

Is this really a startup? Is this really YOUR startup? Or a project at a
larger company that specializes in technology like this?

Looking at the "about" section it's hard to say.
<http://cbmsnetworks.com/index-1.html#>

Sorry if I'm totally off-base. I just know too many people who see HN as
nothing more than a distribution channel and are willing to take advantage of
the general good will people have here.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Plus the poster's account is like 8 hours old.

Call me paranoid, but I've come to believe in the last two months HN has
started to be gamed

~~~
kolis
I was reading HN for more than 3 years now, without posting, so no need to
register.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
The site has only been open to the public for around 2 years.

~~~
kolis
Before I was reading PG ...

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transmit101
This would be a real money spinner, if it could be made to work. The problem,
assuming you are using an analysis algorithm to attempt to extract the
harmonic information, is that you are attempting to solve the problem of
polyphonic transcription, which is one of the holy grails of computer music
research - and is definitely an unsolved problem, especially when the analysed
song is complex or unpredictable (jazz chords, hendrix tunings etc.), or when
there is a lot of noise, as is the case with almost all popular music.

It is quite straight-forward to use a Fourier transform to discover the energy
contained at certain _audio_ frequencies, but extracting _musical_ structure
from this data is terribly difficult, partly because of the perceptual
ambiguities in the human hearing system, and partly because it is basically
impossible to confidently separate the identity of the constituent instruments
within the audio spectrum. What instrument emitted this or that harmonic at
1800hz? The answer is crucial to identifying the chords, and nobody really
knows how to reliably and programatically determine that, on an arbitrary
recording, just yet...

~~~
kolis
You are right that this task is not solved yet. You may read about our
technology at [http://www.music-
ir.org/mirex/2008/abs/cbms_cover_song_id.pd...](http://www.music-
ir.org/mirex/2008/abs/cbms_cover_song_id.pdf)

Our tests showed that 92% of the time we show correct chords, which is
obviously not a 100%.

If you will have a time, give it a try, it works really well.

------
zandorg
I know from experience that Winamp plugins are hard to make money from. I also
know a guy who put out a CD burning plugin. To distill his email:

X 30,000 downloads and 10 copies sold

X The French don't pay for software

X On average, more Americans pay registration fees than other people (eg,
French)

X Have a time-limit (which you have) so people have to pay

X (my own experience) Cracking groups rarely pirate Winamp plugins

[additional]X There is a store for Winamp plugins (and has been for years). If
you list there, you get a spotlight for a week or two, and you have to make
the most of that - it usually gets a few 1000 downloads and then trails off.

~~~
kolis
Only winamp supports DSP API, so you could mix chords to actual song. Rest
players are less open, but more popular. We are thinking to support other
media players without mix functionality

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jcromartie
Make it an iTunes plugin and you'll have a business.

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chengas123
I really like the idea, but don't use Winamp. Most of the things along this
line that I've tried are pretty bad, so I'm not sure I'm willing to download
two pieces of software to see if this one is different. What about an online
service where I can upload the song in FLAC or mp3 and get the tab back?

~~~
kolis
Could you send me any mp3 to kos@cbmsnetworks.com and I will send you chords
back.

We plan to add online service.

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anigbrowl
Your target market is musicians. As said above, the iTunes model will work -
indeed, so might an iPhone app.

But also, consider making it a VST plugin (VST = virtual studio technology,
free SDK from Steinberg) It's the industry standard for non-pro users and
works with all music recording/editing platforms on both Mac and PC. These
kinds of users have no problem downloading & installing, and are more likely
to pay - your pricing is quite reasonable, and moving what you do to VST
shouldn't involve much overhead, the DSP will be the same. Make an option to
output the chords to MIDI, which should be trivially easy. Better yet, make
lite and pro versions - lite version maybe only does major chords or doesn't
output MIDI.

3 websites (kvr, sonicstate and createdigitalaudio) will reach 90% of the
plugin community. I'm at work so I can't test it out (and gave up using WinAmp
long ago anyway) but I wonder how it copes with techno or orchestral music? I
like making electronic stuff, but I just don't have a very good ear for chords
and would love to have this as an analysis tool. Feel free to email.

~~~
drewcrawford
I'm a freelance music producer on the side, and I've worked on tons of top
albums as well as with random indie people who think they can make it big.
Here's a general overview of plugin formats:

RTAS - this is the Microsoft of the industry. Pro Tools is big, ugly, painful,
and frustrating, but everybody uses it. Every song ever made gets run through
a Pro Tools rig somewhere down the line. The interface and features have
basically been frozen for ten years (I believe v8 changed some colors, which
apparently enough of a deal to be a marketing selling point), because
everyone's learned to use it. Like older MS products, the good people avoid
using it when they can (only real innovative feature is Beat Detective),
although it's extremely stable. Runs on all platforms; requires custom
hardware.

VST - This is fairly well-supported on Windows stacks (Sonar, Audition,
Steinberg, FL Studio). Nobody seriously uses Windows for real-time audio (not
a fanboy comment; actual market conditions), but kids in their garage and/or
that rundown "studio" downtown, or some part-time DJ playing clubs in Chicago
make it work. VST is painful to use on OS X and of my two dedicated mac
recording rigs none of the software I run actually supports it. Steinberg's
DAWs are cross-platform, and I am told people actually use them, but I have
the vague perception that it's used more with TV (network jingles and applying
post-production to commercials, etc). I do largely recorded music production
and occasional movie scoring work, and I've never used a Steinberg DAW. I have
used Audition and Sonar on a few projects from indie clients.

AU - This is the new kid on the block. A mac-only standard, powers GarageBand,
Logic, and DP. Your younger, hipper bands have all switched to Logic for day-
to-day use, which kicks ProTools' sorry behind, although it's less stable.
Most of the "cool" big-name bands that I work with (i.e. write their own
material, actually play things live, actually competent musicians, etc.) run
Logic themselves on some mac portable that they take to band practice (no
external hardware). They take it to me for primary mixing (still Logic) and
then pawn it off to some sound engineer for final mastering (Pro Tools). All
the kids use GarageBand. I've seen DP used both in live settings and in
recording studios although it's kinda fringe. AU is a joy to code if you know
C quite well.

~~~
anigbrowl
What you say is all true, but only for stuff that comes from big-name bands or
artists with the potential to be one. I do think there is quite a large
community of bedroom producers/artists out there that will never get near a
record deal or anything more substantial than tiny sales on iTunes or views on
YouTube - less good musos who can't easily make out the chords (like myself)
and those in the less profitable musical genres (electronic/dance and metal)
where there are many, many more amateurs or hopefuls than successful acts.
Anyway, I think there's a definite market for this plugin among the bedroom
set. AU users (who I forgot abuot because I'm not a mac owner...oops) are more
likely to pay money than VSTers, but a friendly Lite version will definitely
drive sales of an affordable Pro version.

The Pro Tools folk will have little to no use for this plugin - let's face it,
if you're paying for PT, you probably don't need the computer to help you with
working out the chords. I think you're being a little unfair to Windows audio
though. I used to produce on a full-size Pro Tools HD rig, but at home I've
always been a Win/PC guy and don't find it limiting. I think the lean to Mac
is just because they were the leader in that space for such a long time.

I was really surprised you didn't mention Ableton Live in your otherwise
excellent roundup, though of course that's much more for dance than other
DAWs.

~~~
drewcrawford
Forgot about Live. Supports VST and AU (mac version only).

At any rate, my argument was (although I didn't explicitly lay it out) that he
should cover AU for the garageband kids (bulk of the users) and the actual
musicians that use Logic at band practice (sizable minority), and maybe catch
VSTs on the way out for the Windows folks if it's not too hard (I'm not a VST
developer; I can't say). AU is where it's all going though--you've got a
generation of people growing up with garageband for recording, producing, even
taking piano lessons. I would imagine that would be prime market for a chord
detection app. In addition, the GB/Logic family file format is based around
chord notation (and is pretty easy to reverse engineer), so you could actually
export the chord structure back into the arrangement if you were clever. This
has all sorts of interesting implications for chord-aware events like Apple
Loops-- mixing would be drag and drop even for the people who don't know one
chord from another.

Agree that Pro Tools isn't much use for this sort of thing. I do know a couple
of kids who've picked up Pro Tools LE because they think it's what the cool
kids use, but it's not worth the effort to capture.

Another obvious direction for this would be an iPhone app that displays the
chord it currently hears (and does so _accurately_ ). Not sure how good the
algorithm is from a bad source, but that would be worth $50 to me.

------
dc2k08
I'm excited about this and want it to work. I recently paid an online sheet
music service for one piece of sheet music and was miffed to discover that I
could only print out the piece once. I could choose which key I wanted it in,
then the file would no longer be accessible in my account. If my printer
jammed, it would be my tough luck - I would need to pay again.

I had imagined it would be stored there forever - that's what I paid the 3.95
for I thought, but sadly no - the publishers will not allow it. People
complain about digital music but the world of sheet music is even more
bizarro. Hopefully apps like this might shake up the business.

Having played with it for a minute, it looks decent and something I think I
will be shelling out the 19.95 for. I thought that piano/guitar mode would be
tabs/notation but it is to choose which instrument accompanies the song.
Still, I'm impressed. I hope it evolves.

~~~
kolis
Thank you. I am glad you liked it.

------
sepa
Great idea, but I agree with the rest, you should focus on iTunes or have a
web service do it.

------
sgibson12
For better or worse, I blogged about Chords!
<http://slapstart.com/2009/06/chordsfm/>

Now I'm wondering if this isn't a start-up at all, as per the CBMS Networks
comment. I was wondering about that too.

~~~
kolis
Thanks Steve for blog post. I answered about CBMS above.

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kolya3
I just asked a friend to review it for you:

[http://chords.fm/Chords!/forum/topic/53/future-direction-
of-...](http://chords.fm/Chords!/forum/topic/53/future-direction-of-this-
software/1)

~~~
kolis
Thanks. He wrote very useful comment.

Don't know him personally, but based on what he wrote sentence "found it do an
'interesting' job determining the chords of the song" sounds like we are doing
pretty good in chords extraction, right? :)

------
danielrhammond
I would have bought this right now if it existed for mac/iTunes. I'm a music
student when I'm not an entrepreneur. Sounds like a good idea just poor market
selection.

~~~
kolis
This is in our plans to have Mac support.

------
10ren
Does it really infer them using DSP from the mp3 - or does it look them up? If
the former - that's very cool, though I wonder about the accuracy. It would be
good to have way to try it out online.

Making it a webapp would make it _much_ easier to trial, it wouldn't be
narrowed to one app (winamp) - and piracy goes away. On the downside, you'd
doing all that DSP on the server instead of spread over the clients.

~~~
kolis
We actually analyze the mp3, no need for Winamp DSP at this stage. WE need DSP
to mix chords to song, so you hear exact place.

we are working on some web based application, down side is that you have to be
connected.

~~~
10ren
Cool. I was thinking you sell both a webapp (free trial + normal price) and
download (super-premium price!).

Uh... why don't you make your own webapp player? For the download version, you
could setup a server on the user's computer, thus reusing the same server and
client code (but the user doesn't have to be connected).

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cubedice
At work so I can't actually demo. However, the video looked nice. One thing I
noticed is that the tabs correctly displayed minor chords while the text
simply said B or F# (implying major). Additionally, how good is it at picking
up alternate tunings (i.e. down a half step a la hendrix) or obscure jazz
chords? I suppose I can just wait until I get home to try it out, so maybe
I'll report back then...

~~~
naish
From what I can see, major chords are displayed in uppercase, minor chords in
lowercase. e.g., E for E major; e for E minor.

~~~
kolis
Correct

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sharpn
Good start on a great idea. You could add a signup for email updates option on
your homepage to keep those of us who would definitely buy a more developed
version (ie more exotic chord recognition) &/or different format informed
about new releases - I'd signup to that. I actually browsed the apple app
store in vain for something like this yesterday.

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tlrobinson
Neat! I agree with others you should make an iTunes plugin, or perhaps even a
standalone app with more features to help learn songs, like
<http://supermegaultragroovy.com/products/Capo/>

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mstefff
just chords or notes? just chords seems pointless in my opinion. plus anyone
who really plays the guitar will use something like guitar pro and just
download free tablature - which is probably the best solution out there.

~~~
kolis
This is not solution to pro, rather to beginners. It might take a while
(forever?) to find chords for not so popular song.

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Chickencha
This sounds like a really cool app, but I run Linux so I can't try it out. At
least, not without messing with Wine, which I don't really want to do.

Hook it into something I can use without hassle and I'll try it out
immediately.

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mitechka
Requires software install? XP only? WinAmp only? 15-days trial? Guitar only? I
don't think so. 90-s called, they want their software development business
model back.

