
Practice Sight-Reading Music - disqard
https://sightreading.training/
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ssttoo
I started taking music theory classes in my local community college (I can now
highly recommend this for self-thought musicians) and created a quite a few
exercises to help me along the way. E.g. I couldn’t trust myself with stuff
like interval identification and needed a computer to tell me if something’s
wrong. These exercises are mostly of the flashcard type. I hope people find
them helpful
[https://www.onlinemusictools.com/](https://www.onlinemusictools.com/)

The code is quickly hacked create-react-app mini apps. Since I mostly wrote
them while preparing for tests. Some of them are even on github. One of these
days I’ll sit down and refactor the disparate little apps into a coherent
whole. One day.

~~~
palerdot
FYI ... The site uses development version of React. You might want to build
the production version and deploy it ...

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Transfinity
As a programmer, I love this app. As a musician, I think it would be good for
novices who are still in the "note identification" phase, as others have
mentioned.

However, I'm not sure how useful it would be for an advanced student. Much of
becoming truly proficient at sight reading is context-dependent chunking. In
other words, given the key, style, tempo, what was just played, location in
the form, etc. what patterns are likely to appear? Training yourself to
identify and predict longer and longer sequences of notes as single "chunks"
is key to professional level sight reading. An app that generates random notes
can't simulate that stylistic context.

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chillydawg
It would be very simple to feed in some midi from real pieces of varying
levels to replace the random generation.

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pishpash
It wouldn't even need real pieces, just real transition probabilities.

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Transfinity
So long as those probabilities are aware of context (style, form of this
piece, location in the form, etc.). I've played around with Markov models a
little, but I don't think they would quite cut it. This problem is probably
slightly less difficult than generating prose from scratch, but it's a similar
type of difficulty.

Getting solid curated input data would also be tricky, unless there's some big
and well-annotated library of midi recordings sitting around somewhere.

For building a good app today, your best bet is almost certainly to use
existing sheet music, pieces and etudes in the given style.

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BXLE_1-1-BitIs1
Perhaps useful for early beginners, but visual keyboards lack the tactile
feedback from the sharps.

Much more value having the fingers on a real keyboard and hearing each note's
pitch.

~~~
abraCadabstrax
I think there's also a lot to be said about having a real score in front of
you. I used to sight-read for a living (guitarist on cruise ships) and thought
that the first grok of the visual where you take in the form was more
important than the up/down of a melody.

By the way, this guy is a monster sight-reader:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZMroQOtS_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZMroQOtS_U)

~~~
andrepd
Before clicking the link I already knew you were referring to Tom Brier :)

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Sendotsh
I was impressed how well it works on mobile (although that’s becoming expected
these days I guess), until I got to a higher note and the “Hide Keyboard”
button covers them, making it impossible to continue.

Considering it works with midi keyboards though, I might get my kids to play
on it a bit.

~~~
alaithea
Was bothered by that myself, but found that going fullscreen gets rid of the
hide keyboard button, making the experience much better on mobile.

~~~
uglycoyote
For me even in full screen there was my Android soft keys covering up the
highest E note

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shekhar101
Thank you for making this! This is the best find for me this whole week. I
have been learning keyboard and one things I really missed was having a place
like this to practice sheet music and learning to sightread music. There are
tons of expensive/paid service but nothing beats this. This is perfect. This
along with
[https://www.musictheory.net/lessons](https://www.musictheory.net/lessons) is
enough for me to learn most things I need. :)

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alaithea
I would love to know if the creator has plans to use different note forms.
Sometimes reading only whole notes has a similar effect to reading all caps
lettering... There's less signal coming from the overall shape. The direction
of the stem on e.g. a quarter note provides some signal as to where on the
staff the note is.

Otherwise this is pretty great! It's akin to something I've wanted to build
for years. As a sight-reader akin to the linked video in another thread and
former piano teacher, I used to dream of sharing my methods through
technology. Nice to see somebody else is doing it.

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disqard
While exploring web frameworks, I saw this website built using Lapis (lua),
and had to share it with the rest of this community.

~~~
jacquesm
Interesting, I've been using it for a couple of months (this and
pianobooster). It works quite well but there are countless improvements one
could make. It is open source as well, but the software is written in an
obscure language. ('moonscript').

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meowface
MoonScript isn't too obscure. It's to Lua as CoffeeScript is to JavaScript. I
personally think it's a nice improvement over Lua. (Except for the use of
backslashes...)

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aikah
This is exactly the sort of content I browse HN for. Thank you for the link.

~~~
disqard
You’re welcome!

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oriolid
The "easy" notation for play along is pure horror. If this is expected to be
helpful in practicing reading music, it should at least use standard notation.

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DenisM
I recommend "Notes Trainer" app for the iOS, it can connect to a digital piano
over bluetooth or USB and then you can practice recognizing notes.

On the upside I became better at it over time, got it down to 2 seconds per
note on average... On the downside the skill did not translate into actually
reading sheet music any better outside of the game - it still takes a lot of
time for me to recognize the next note. Go figure.

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Graziano_M
This is great. I am new to Piano and have a rough time reading music (I
basically count from middle C, G, or B on the treble clef or from D or G on
the bass clef). I plugged in my keyboard today and spent about 20 minutes on
it and already feel faster.

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mdturnerphys
If you're interested in learning or practicing piano with something like this
and have a MIDI keyboard check out Piano Marvel [0]. My son has been using it
for the last year to learn to play. It monitors both notes and timing and has
a large library of exercises, original pieces, and popular music.

[0] [https://pianomarvel.com/](https://pianomarvel.com/)

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Wistar
It seems it is more an "identify the notes" rather than sight-reading.

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dmje
Fun, but the hard bit about sight reading isn't the notes but the rhythm...

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beagle3
For me the hard part was getting the pitch and remembering the modifiers
(repeat/sharp/flat) from the beginning of the line. The rhythm was always
trivial.

Mileage does vary....

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shiro
Unless you're dealing with contemporary pieces, atonal or with wild harmony,
modifiers are largely the result of tonality, mode and chord progression,
aren't they? I hardly need to make me "remember" them...

But yeah, I'm terrible with rhythm. I'm curious that there are different types
of brain to perceive the music.

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justinfrankel
Very cool but Bb doesn't seem to work right here:
[https://1014.org/_/sightread_bb.png](https://1014.org/_/sightread_bb.png)

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blondin
i am so happy to see leaf's work here on hn. he started itch.io! check out his
other amazing projects at [https://leafo.net](https://leafo.net).

he is one of my favorite programmers of all time and a great inspiration. his
ability to start and actually deliver projects is what amazes me much. i saw
the beginnings of itch.io, this very project, that lua spin-off, that custom
nginx thingy. it's so amazing when you look at what these projects now. i mean
when does one have time lol

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mrfusion
Neat. On the iPhone I don’t hear sound and the hide keyboard button is on top
of the keyboard.

