Please don't cross into personal attack on HN generally, and especially please not in Show HN threads. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
> With all due respect, I'll stack up anything I've ever created against anything of yours at any time
I realize the GP comment was a provocation, but please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.
Hacker News has become weirdly anti-hacker in the last 5 or so years, so please keep building stuff and keep posting it. This is literally what HN is supposed to be. The "AI slop" tirade is just bottom of the barrel bandwaggoning for upvotes because it's popular to hate AI today
I'm normally in the camp of "why flood HN with AI crap" and if you are not a musician then I can see why this seems unnecessary. But as a musician, this is a great learning tool. Every musician should be able to play by ear (and I had to ramp up the difficulty substantially to get a bit of a challenge). AI generated or not, this is useful.
Yeah I've been playing 40 years and did a stint in music school. Other than fat-fingered note entry errors my ear nailed all the ones I did. IMO this seems to start from a pretty advanced level off the bat.
I've been playing piano for 40 years, tend to hate anything with AI-buzzwords anywhere adjacent to it. But I generally think this particularly one is a good thing.
Curious what you mean by no attempt to teach. We learn multiplication tables by rote. Are flash cards a genuine instrument of learning? The only way to learn intervals is to practice identifying them. This is how you do it. You can read about music theory (and should) but the only way to build your listening skills is to practice it starting with basic stuff.
This teaches intervals like Duolingo teaches language rules. You sort of pick them up because you need them to figure out the small melody it plays. But you don't get the concept of a 'fourth' or a 'fifth' and there's never a moment where the actual rules are explained.
That said, I think it's very useful for what it is and highlights that whatever your view on AI, there is a niche here that AI can fill that people otherwise would just not build either because they don't think it is interesting, or because no one would pay enough for it.
The key thing is that you teach multiplication tables in a structured, incremental manner. Yes, it's just rote memorization, but the structure makes it way easier. You don't just dump all tables on the student at once and start quizzing them until they get it.
Imo not being able to select a subset of intervals to train heavily limits how useful this is.
There are plenty of musicians here saying this is useful for them or would be useful while learning.
As meta commentary, those not in a subgroup sometime fail to see utility of a thing built for that subgroup and it's easy to feel a sense of superiority "oh how dumb and trivial this thing is", but it may be better to first have curiosity and see how the intended audience responds. Often it's not dumb or trivial, you're missing context and experience to see the value.
I've played the piano for years. Your immediate conclusion that my dislike must stem from inexperience instead of a more nuanced place strikes me as the exact kind of thing you're lamenting in your comment.
It’s the typical “engineer thinking they’re smarter than everyone else” trope. From my experience, engineers fall squarely in the middle of the bell curve. The AI hate is just used as justification, so I don’t even take it that seriously. And fwiw, as someone that played piano when I was younger, this is 100% a useful tool. In fact, during quarantine I was learning to play guitar and used tools like this to learn which string is which by ear.
I think this is much better as a relative pitch training tool for people with a very basic background in piano and music in general. I would have loved something like this back in high school to use for practicing over and over.
I think "teach" is a high bar, but I do think it's a good practice tool.
My one and only complaint is that sometimes the melodies it generates are tough to play back because they don't really sound like a real melody and I have to fight my brain telling me to play back the one that would actually sound good. Sort of like having to memorize a random string of words vs memorizing a normal sentence.
As someone that like to play piano and guitar - I could see this immediately as something to improve my skills and playing by ear
For me I was thinking a thought I almost never think and is long forgotten "where is that old home button in my browser so I can set this as my homepage, or maybe I have to solve 2-3 of these before I can log in to my computer" xD
"insubstantive" is a nice word - software that is modifiable by the user at run time - I guess like scripting "it's just throw away" or emacs bit of elisp and keyboard macro and move on "insubstantive"
Embrace the insubstantive! Otherwise - enjoy when you have a "problem" sitting down and having to abstract more and find the general and solve for "N" because the time investment was high and the tools did not allow for this sort of sketching, insubstantive, throwaway type thing.
dang|1 month ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html
vunderba|1 month ago
dang|1 month ago
I realize the GP comment was a provocation, but please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes things worse.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
snackdex|1 month ago
I love this response. for what its worth there is some thought here on this app.
dvt|1 month ago
Fraterkes|1 month ago
teiferer|1 month ago
SoleilAbsolu|1 month ago
recursive|1 month ago
Curious what you mean by no attempt to teach. We learn multiplication tables by rote. Are flash cards a genuine instrument of learning? The only way to learn intervals is to practice identifying them. This is how you do it. You can read about music theory (and should) but the only way to build your listening skills is to practice it starting with basic stuff.
cgriswald|1 month ago
That said, I think it's very useful for what it is and highlights that whatever your view on AI, there is a niche here that AI can fill that people otherwise would just not build either because they don't think it is interesting, or because no one would pay enough for it.
ImprobableTruth|1 month ago
Imo not being able to select a subset of intervals to train heavily limits how useful this is.
ianbutler|1 month ago
As meta commentary, those not in a subgroup sometime fail to see utility of a thing built for that subgroup and it's easy to feel a sense of superiority "oh how dumb and trivial this thing is", but it may be better to first have curiosity and see how the intended audience responds. Often it's not dumb or trivial, you're missing context and experience to see the value.
Fraterkes|1 month ago
dvt|1 month ago
viccis|1 month ago
I think "teach" is a high bar, but I do think it's a good practice tool.
My one and only complaint is that sometimes the melodies it generates are tough to play back because they don't really sound like a real melody and I have to fight my brain telling me to play back the one that would actually sound good. Sort of like having to memorize a random string of words vs memorizing a normal sentence.
derrida|1 month ago
For me I was thinking a thought I almost never think and is long forgotten "where is that old home button in my browser so I can set this as my homepage, or maybe I have to solve 2-3 of these before I can log in to my computer" xD
"insubstantive" is a nice word - software that is modifiable by the user at run time - I guess like scripting "it's just throw away" or emacs bit of elisp and keyboard macro and move on "insubstantive"
Embrace the insubstantive! Otherwise - enjoy when you have a "problem" sitting down and having to abstract more and find the general and solve for "N" because the time investment was high and the tools did not allow for this sort of sketching, insubstantive, throwaway type thing.
fxwin|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
gowld|1 month ago
The good news is that this means you can quickly make the same app yourself at home, and improve it to suit your needs.
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
metacritic12|1 month ago