Show HN: Musical Interval Trainer | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Musical Interval Trainer

valtterimaja.github.io

22 pointsGravityloss13 comments

I was also initially confused by the scale A3 to A4 until I realized that the musical interval trainer starts you on "A Minor Pentatonic". This might be a bit confusing for non-musicians so I'd suggest starting with a more standard C Major scale and a set of easy intervals (perfect 4th, perfect 5th, octave, etc) or even a quick question to allow a user to indicate their musical familiarity.

Thanks for the comments and suggestions everyone!

I'm foremost a guitar player which probably shows, so this was something I assumed could be a problem indeed. I'll have to think about it, but many of the suggestions sounds good. It's really easy to do feature development with the automatic deployment after pushing.

I also on purpose built this without checking what other pages are out there. I only checked afterwards, and it turned out at least sampling the search results a bit, every page seems to have somewhat different focus so I didn't end up creating exactly what already was done by very many others.

The exercises are fun (and easy for now, but I'm only on stage 3)!

I must say I was briefly surprised at how disorienting it is to see a graphic of a keyboard from A3 to A4. When you don't see the set of 3 black keys consecutively and instead see what looks like 2 sets of 2 black keys, it really takes a second to orient yourself!

It would be good if it used interval names rather than relying on absolute notes. Eg minor third, fifth etc. Also notes played together and more and more complex chords as level gets higher. keyboard shortcuts would be great too. And a fully hands-free mode with voice input for practise while doing other things.

If you need a variety of trainers, I recommend the Tenuto app. I train with it most mornings, but am currently only using 2 of the 24 - interval and fretboard note identification.

I did not write a single line character of code directly, everything was by instructing Claude Code.

How does that influence how you feel about the result? As you more proud, or less (than if you hadn’t used AI)? If the app has a problem, do you care more or less?

I guess I have a lot less emotional attachment to the end product. But it was fun building it, as I didn't have to deal with all the not fun stuff like learning syntax and libraries and compatibility issues etc.

That’s similar to how I feel. Less grind, less unfun problem solving, more results, but I care about them less. It feels like empty calories.

I’ve been building something in this space as well, but with a broader toolkit [1] approach rather than a single-purpose interval trainer. The thing to me that's a bit jarring is the keyboard itself. Also, when it comes to ear-training (and while I've included this as well), without context it's not quite as useful. It's an area I plan to revise and really work on, but want to find a better approach. Good luck.

[1] https://www.umaro.app

am i the only one who find the a-a part of the keyboard an odd choice of keyboard?

MusicTheory's interval ear training app is free and has a bunch of extra options: https://www.musictheory.net/exercises/ear-interval

Lots of slightly different apps/pages exist indeed!

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