
Show HN: Fiddlewax - akumpf
http://news.fiddlewax.com/
======
fidotron
Very interesting. I was ready to hate it, but the walkthrough video was
actually really good too.

My only real point would be to try to bring the user sound feature in earlier,
since some of the built in sounds are a little disappointing, and that might
put people off before they realise you can record your own. That might be
resolvable by adding some effect dials too.

As an Android person it annoys me to think you probably couldn't do something
like this so well on Android, as the highly variable touch input and audio
latencies would kill it.

~~~
akumpf
Thanks. I think you're spot-on about getting to the user-recorded sound
quicker. I'll definitely keep that in mind for future videos.

Yeah, we've been trying to make Android happen, but it's exactly as you
mentioned -- the wide range of device capabilities in general, and the audio
latency in particular, makes things quite a bit trickier.

Who knows, maybe KitKat or beyond will prioritize the audio/interaction a bit
further and help us out. In the meantime, we'll keep trying just in case we
stumble across some magic. :)

~~~
fidotron
They gave a good talk at I/O on just audio latency:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3kfEeMZ65c](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3kfEeMZ65c)

The touch latency alone is generally in the >80ms ballpark as well though, and
varies a lot between devices.

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crazygringo
I know I'm in the minority, but I went to buy and download it after the
awesome video, only to discover it requires iOS 7.0. :(

iOS 6 is still at 13% usage, and is basically staying there (until iOS 8 comes
out, presumably). It would be really nice if you could support just one
operating system version back.

~~~
dchuk
That number is at 13% probably because of people using devices that can't
actually run iOS7, not because they choose not to. iOS8 won't change that.

~~~
balbaugh
I know a few people using a iPhone 4 that choose not to upgrade to iOS7
because of performance issues.

~~~
rbritton
One of our iPad 2s is on iOS 6 for that reason and also because after updating
my iPad 4 to iOS 7 I can almost never successfully send an email the first
attempt.

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PabloOsinaga
Really liked the app!

Couple of feedback points:

1: it'd be nice if the instrument sounds were much better - they sound too
synthetic to me.

2: I had a really hard time using the 'fretless' UI - i.e., everything I did
sounded horrible (see my recording below). Maybe you can snap-to-note if I am
close-by the actual note?

Here is the 4 tracks recording with BandHub:
[http://getbandhub.com/s/52fce1e87fa2ce0443000002](http://getbandhub.com/s/52fce1e87fa2ce0443000002)

~~~
akumpf
Awesome! I totally dig it.

But yeah, I get your point about the fretless UI. I'm churning a bit on how to
keep it analog; maybe giving notes gravity so things stay more in tune, but
that would make the sound waver on the longer slides... hmm. Definitely a
tradeoff to consider.

Thanks for sharing your tracks. You rock.

~~~
PabloOsinaga
Here is an idea: you can make it "slide" from wherever you were with your
finger to the actual note whenever you enter the surroundings of the note. And
you can even light the note a bit when that happens... I think that'd work
without making it sound like a step change.

~~~
akumpf
Nice. Seems like a good way to go for most slide guitar style riffs.

The real tradeoff is when you do want to purposely play all of the notes in
between (microtonal scales). Of course, the way the UI is built, different
sliding styles could be different view modes, so it's just a judgement call
for total number of modes and what those modes should be.

You've got me thinking, so thank you :)

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akumpf
This has been a 3-month venture so far. Would really appreciate any
feedback/thoughts.

Video walkthrough here if you're interested:
[https://vimeo.com/86297286](https://vimeo.com/86297286)

Thanks!

~~~
jarmitage
Have you tried Polyplayground for iPad? It's the same ball park but has more
depth (synthesis) and versatility (mappable grid, MIDI output) and also
implements some really interesting music pedagogy research.

Your app has a nice feel and UI. How are you synthesising your sounds?

~~~
akumpf
Thanks for the feedback. Polyplayground looks interesting, but definitely a
different approach in terms of UI complexity and entry-point.

I'd love to get MIDI into Fiddlewax. Hoping we can do that for the next
version.

As for sound generation, we built our own module that can handle recorded
samples, synthesis, envelopes, filters, and effects. Since Fiddlewax Blue is
focused on being accessible for new musicians it doesn't expose much of it in
the high-level UI.

There's a lot of ways you can hook things up and generate sound on the
backend, so hopefully that'll be a fun thing to work on next (especially synth
configurations) to give the experts a little more to chew on. :)

------
astalwick
Very cool. I can see how this really would make it a lot easier to learn
chords and chord progressions.

Actually, this is probably a great 'prototyping' app, too. I'm not sure I'd
use _this app_ directly in a track, but I could see myself toying around with
this until I got something that sounded interesting, and then jumping over to
a real synth to record.

Anyway, very nice! Congrats on the launch!

~~~
akumpf
Thanks for kind words and congratulations. It feels great to go from
experimenting for fun to really putting something out there and seeing if
people actually like it.

My hope is that it really does open the door for more people to create their
own music and not be intimidated by it. Your response makes me hopeful.
Cheers.

~~~
mej10
This app looks amazing, great job.

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jack-r-abbit
App looks cool once I found the walk through. I almost gave up before I had
any idea what it was. I think one mistake people make with Show HN posts is
that they don't link to the right page to actually _show_ it. I would have
linked straight to the walk through and not the landing page for news. Good
job. Not for me though since I don't do Apple.

~~~
liam_ja
I was really frustrated when I clicked the link. It looked like something I
might enjoy (it looks music related!)

Is it an ear-trainer? Synth? Song-learning tool?

Haven't seen the video yet (which I only found after I managed to hunt down a
link to the homepage.)

------
54mf
As an avid iPad music hobbyist, this is _really_ cool. Reminds me a bit of
Polychord ([http://polychordapp.com/](http://polychordapp.com/)), but
Polychord's UI is a bit awkward and the app is incredibly crash-prone. Looks
like Fiddlewax has significantly more to offer in regards to melody
exploration, which is exactly what I'm looking for. Bought and downloaded.

As if you haven't heard this enough already, throw my vote for MIDI support on
the pile. I use iPad synths like Animoog and Sunrizer for writing songs, and
being able to combine Fiddlewax's tools with Animoog's sound would be
glorious.

~~~
akumpf
Glad to hear it!

MIDI is now on the roadmap :)

~~~
MattBearman
Awesome! As soon as MIDI is in I'll be buying!

~~~
interstitial
as an in-app purchase, or free update, lol

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balbaugh
Downloaded it and I am really enjoying the app. Keep up the good work.

Just a comment on one thing of interest which I ran into upon first messing
around with the app... While moving my fingers about, the four and five finger
gestures kept taking me out of the app and into the next in my multitasking
queue. I did not know until now that these gestures even existed. But, I know
now that I can turn such gestures off in the general settings.

I wonder if an app is allowed to automatically disable/enable these gestures
for a user upon entering and exiting the app. Could be useful for music apps
such as this.

------
interstitial
As a member of the 78%, it looks interesting (and I just bought it). However,
the video seems to provide the only real tutorial. There needs to be a walk-
through in the app (perhaps there is).

Also, I'd like to see some sort of visual/tracer feedback as you press the
keys (and apparently, you can even able to vibrate them). I don't know if the
processor can handle it, but you could use the sound wave in the key itself.
But even color changes or a sparkle (users could turn off in preferences).

Good luck!

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scrumper
Congrats on shipping an interesting app. I really like the name too. You've
joined a fairly small group of apps which seem to make good use of the touch
interface for creating music in novel ways. I'll be checking Fiddlewax out
tonight.

BTW I released my more traditional iPad synth[1] a couple of years back and
all the cries here for MIDI support take me right back :)

[1] [http://omnivoresoft.com/](http://omnivoresoft.com/)

~~~
interstitial
Ouch, that top 1-star review is pretty damning, and right at the top. That's
got to be a major buzzkill on your DLs. I wonder if you could address that
somehow in your description. Actually the CA seems interesting to me.

~~~
scrumper
Yep. A bit annoying to say the least, plus he clearly hadn't used it as all
his suggestions around looping, pre-made automata patterns etc. are in there.
For one thing, it has the concept of 'immortal' cells which have a
surprisingly big effect in making repeating patterns - perfect for LFO-
replacement duty.

That review was a huge buzzkill personally, and it had a very big effect on
DLs. 2-3 a day, down to 1 a week or so. Prior versions had a good number of 4
and 5 star reviews, nothing lower, with some good comments.

Easiest way to address it would be to push out another update, but that review
was months ago and it kind of knocked the wind out of my sails (not to mention
my sales!)

------
notdarkyet
For an audio app, I would really try and get a better microphone for the voice
over and the demo audio. It would definitely help sell it.

Also, midi output would be a great feature.

------
midgetjones
Looks really cool.

I'm not sure if introducing inversions in the more advanced mode works for me:
without a piano keyboard in front of you the concept wouldn't make much sense
to a beginner. So the basic mode sounds kind of jarring as you jump around
first inversions, I think I expected to hear a bass note and then the triad
being the closest inversion to the root chord.

Just nitpicking though, congratulations on building this :)

------
donutdan4114
I'm not a music guy, just came to say congratulations on getting a product out
the door, and I hope it's a success. Looks like it provides a lot of cool
functionality. Changing the sound when the user vibrates their finger over a
cord is cool, not sure if other apps do that, seems pretty unique.

It would be cool to see a demo of like, 5 professional musicians playing a
song using only this app.

Good luck!

------
steamer25
Looks fun. I especially think the multi-touch portamento/"analog" function
looks really expressive.

Another thing that could be cool is a mode that finds the most efficient note
changes/inversions between chords. E.g., from C to Em, you can keep the E and
G and drop the C down a half-step to B.

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pawelkomarnicki
Sorry to admit it, but before I clicked "play" link on your homepage I had no
clue whatsoever what is this page about, there were some weird news about like
everything... You could make it clear that it's some kind of musical app right
away...

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frik
Wow, I thought about almost the same app idea yesterday (the first 2 and last
screen). It would be useful find a good "music texture". We live in a small
world.

Nice work. Is there a special reason that it is iOS7 only? (no iOS6?)

~~~
akumpf
Thanks for the feedback. I totally agree on tweaking the sounds more.

We decided to go for iOS7 as the base since the audio support runs a bit
deeper.

Capability-wise, it seemed to make the more sense to start from higher ground
where possible, and the iOS7 adoption rate is already around 85%.
[https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_7](https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/ios_7)

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holychiz
just downloaded and fuzz around a little. Can't replace my guitar but good
enough to accompany some impromptu singing. Now when I travel, I'll always
have a handy instrument. Does what it said. Recommended.

@akumpf: guitar & electric guitar sounds too synthesize, not sure if it's even
appropriate to label as such. I know it's tough but if you guys can tighten up
on the guitar sounds and add strummings patterns, eg. Jam with Chrome type,
that'd be awesome. Great job on your debut version.

~~~
akumpf
Thanks for the feedback.

I've seen a handful of comments here about dialing in the sounds. Definitely
going to be a big consideration for future versions. I also like the idea of
working in strumming. Cheers. :)

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nir
In the about page there's a list of JS libs - are you using PhoneGap or
similar to package it as an iOS app? What was your experience with the audio
API?

Truly original, well implemented concept. Neat.

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chrissnell
How about adding a feature to campfire mode where your app listens on the
microphone to determine the chord or dominant note being played and highlights
that on your display?

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beaker52
Android version please.

~~~
akumpf
We're looking into it. :)

Initial tests gave us some issues with audio latency that made the interaction
feel sluggish. I'll keep noodling and see if we can connect the dots.

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Void_
This looks like an amazing educational tool for music. Of course, I would feel
silly "Oh you play piano? That's cool. I play my iPad here."

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coherentpony
Looks cool.

Might I suggest switching from a 3 column layout to a 2 column layout? 3
columns looks a bit squished.

~~~
akumpf
Just to clarify, are you talking about the way the news/blog posts are
organized? or the Fiddlewax Blue app itself?

As for the news/blog posts, they should reflow to fill your screen. I'll see
about giving them a bit more breathing room. :)

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MattBearman
Can this act as a MIDI Controller?

~~~
mej10
Also curious. That would be totally awesome.

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michaelmior
Looks really cool! Hope you're planning on an Android version :)

