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This is actually my side project. It's very much unfinished but if anyone has any feedback I'd love to hear it.

• davesque 10y ago
  I majored in music and I like what I see so far. The interactivity is nice. Looking forward to seeing more. Pretty solid on the concepts that are covered but I could do with a review on part-writing and other intermediate/advanced topics :).
  • nspeller 10y ago
    Thank you! Definitely. There's a lot more I'd like to add.
• plainOldText 10y ago
  UI: The webpage is not usable on my iPad. The menu and main content divs overlap. I thought you should know.
  • nspeller 10y ago
    Thanks. Yeah, the experience on mobile devices too is admittedly pretty poor right now. I wasn't ready yet for the traffic but I'll get this fixed.
    • iambateman 10y ago
      It's not optimized for mobile but I went through it on an iPhone 6s and thought the experience was pretty dang good.
  • mikestew 10y ago
    Hmm, odd; works on my machine. iPad Air running iOS 10. Haven't spent a lot of time on the site, and I see the occasional alignment glitch, but a long way from "not usable".
• jng 10y ago
  Keep up the work. If only a few people get their start into understanding the physics of music through this, it will be worth the effort. Plus I think this kind of education will be a lot more prevalent in the future. Congrats & thanks for the huge effort!)
• zengid 10y ago
  I've been wanting to do something like this a while now, and I think you've done a great job! I really appreciate how you used the sine waves to demonstrate consonance, and the pentatonic section is a great intro into the world of 'just-intonation'. Cheers!
• jcurbo 10y ago
  As someone just getting into music theory the interactivity is extremely nice. The visualizations and sound just click for me.
• kaik 10y ago
  I think this is fantastic. Awesome work. Looking forward to seeing the missing chapters!
• abannin 10y ago
  Looks good, I think there is a great foundation. The Pentatonic Scale feels out of place; but that's probably because I feel that pentatonic is just a mutation of other modes. Chords are really just stacked intervals, it might make sense to move them immediately after the 'harmony' section? The interface is really nice, but I don't think it clearly communicates or reinforces the idea of 'tonic', which is fundamental to understanding music theory. Please keep working on this, there needs to be a good interactive explanation of music theory! EDIT: You might benefit from filling out the intervals section. Clearly articulate each interval, which are classified as consonant vs dissonant, etc. That would get the user/student thinking about 5ths vs 7ths, etc.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• sabertoothed 10y ago
  Well done! Exactly the way I would want to and could actually learn this.
• pcsanwald 10y ago
  Nice work. I love that you included the pentatonic stuff first, actually. it's a great starting point for music. If I could change one thing, I would put the chromatic scale section more towards the end; I would teach it by starting like you did, but expanding pentatonic into diatonic, then harmony, and finally dealing with chromatic scale.
• floatrock 10y ago
  It's very western-focused, especially when you describe the chromatic scale as "modern music". I would also lose the "from first principles" by-line. The pentatonic scale description was neat in that you talked about how frequencies that sound good together have certain clean ratios, but when you jumped to chromatic scale, there was nothing about how that was derived other than "filling in the blanks." I love the site in general, but the "from first principles" by-line implies a few things that are kinda missing. It's more accurate to call it a visual introduction to western music theory. A while back this article popped up on HN: https://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v2 https://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v2 That one dived more into the physics and math that derive different music systems. As I was reading it, I wanted some interactivity like this. So well done! There's a lot of detail in there that could give you ideas for additional visualizations. It was also criticized here on HN a bit for also failing short of it's "first principles" promise, so worth finding and reading that discussion too. The other thought I have is make the notes keyboard-playable. A lot of the examples are around playing notes together, and shifting between them using a mouse is too slow. Awesome site overall!
  • floatrock 10y ago
    Here's the HN discussion on that one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12085844 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12085844
  • tiglionabbit 10y ago
    Yeah, it would be nice if he mentioned the ratios the chromatic scale is based on, as well as the difference between Pythagorean tuning and equal temperament. Honestly, I thought even the pentatonic scale should have been explained.
  • cuchoi 10y ago
    While the name that you propose might be technically correct I would recommend sticking to the "from first principles" kind of name. This introduction was created for beginners (like me), and the name was attractive and was what I expected. Maybe a footnote with this information could be useful.
  • 10y ago
• WillEngler 10y ago
  This is just lovely. Thanks!
• bluetwo 10y ago
  Out of curiosity, what's your day job?
• pravda 10y ago
  Everything clickable (the sounds) before http://www.lightnote.co/music-theory/pentatonic/ http://www.lightnote.co/music-theory/pentatonic/ did not work for me (on Chrome). Still really liked it. Await the chord progressions stuff.
  • TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    Same problem here. No sound or interaction on Chrome.
• combatentropy 10y ago
  I think you explain things very well. I've tried several music theory courses and quit all of them partway through. They were too fast or too tedious. It's hard to strike that balance, but somehow you did. One thing that you did that helped me get further is sticking to that rainbow row of notes, as you explained notes and chords. I think most of the lessons I've tried move quickly to piano keys, where the relationship among the notes is more cluttered, because of the black and white keys. Also the interactive little things, simple as they are, are very helpful. I know even these simple things took quite a bit of work to throw together. I think they are critical to how engaging your lessons are.
  • developer2 10y ago
    >> I've tried several music theory courses and quit all of them partway through I feel like I'm a musician at heart. If I could delve into music with a purely exploratory and child-like fascination, I think I would enjoy it immensely. But I can't fathom beginning. Every. single. intro. into. music., is a lecture forcing theory unto you as though "theory" is the very definition of "music". The consensus from experienced musical folks is to shove theory down your throat; you should not be allowed to even touch an instrument until you've drunk the "super serious music cool-aid"! Music is supposed to be one of the most intimate ways we express ourselves, and yet Western culture dictates that there is a singular method to begin exploring it, and it's far too serious and far removed from any kind of natural process. Had my introduction to programming, starting at the age of 7, been the shoving of books down my throat about Object Oriented programming and how to write 20 different sorting algorithms, I never would have become a software developer. It took me 5 years of accomplishing nothing - and enjoying that exploratory process - just to figure out the basics. Another 5 years to begin digging into the core things that make a developer a developer. And then another 5 years (and counting, a decade later) actually learning how to tie it all together and use the acquired knowledge as a set of skills. Music in the Western world is taught in such a way that they're trying to cram 10 years of knowledge - that you should be picking up along the way - as pre-requisite knowledge. It is taught as a job aiming to produce immediate ROI rather than skill/talent that accumulates over time. Sample phrases from the OP that are spreading the all-too-serious cool-aid - the same things you hear from every music professional (italic emphasis mine). >> A lot of music theory is about limiting which notes to use in your song to a small set that sound good together. >> not all of them sound good together... Lets listen to some garbage >> Because not all of the 12 notes sound good together, we must select a set of notes to use in a song. >> start exploring which chords are safe to use in each Key Why is it deemed necessary to instruct first-timers about "limiting" the notes we might use (some notes are not "safe" you know!), and telling me what does or does not "sound good". Music should have absolutely no "must"s attached to it. Let alone labelling certain combinations of notes as "garbage" - the use of that term is horrifically off-putting to someone who is looking to explore. This method of teaching completely destroys the discovery process. You tell me that "XYZ" chord is garbage, so I avoid it from day one. What if, left to my own devices, I were to discover that chord - and wind up loving it? tldr; Teach me to play an instrument without teaching me anything about theory. Don't even teach me how to read sheet music. Just teach me how to play a few songs I enjoy. Once I can actually play with some confidence, then - and only then - bring in the information that ties together with what I have first learned hands-on. Basically, how any 3rd-world child with instruments carved out of wood would learn. No books. No sheet music. Just an instrument and a patient MENTOR, rather than a classroom teacher who's trying to make a classical prodigy out of me in record time.
• rguzman 10y ago
  I haven't read it, yet, only did a quick search to see if I could fine the words "tonal center" somewhere. I think that concept is under-emphasized and resolves a bunch of common confusion about music. e.g. this post[1] that was on the front page a few weeks back in which the author did not understand what's the difference between C major and A minor. [1]: https://eev.ee/blog/2016/09/15/music-theory-for-nerds/ https://eev.ee/blog/2016/09/15/music-theory-for-nerds/
• Jun8 10y ago
  Looks great! One question: "This is known as an Octave and is not considered a new note. An Octave is the same note with a higher pitch." Why is this so? I guess I'm totally tone deaf since I get no understanding of the sameness of notes separated by one octave by listening to them. In the same vain the good sound/bad sound example that opens the harmony section sound both good to me.
  • tiglionabbit 10y ago
    For the octave, if you heard them at the same time they would be a bit harder to distinguish than most other ratios, so it would be nice if the example let you do that. And yeah, the "bad" example is not really very bad. It's a little bit tense, but there are much worse ratios they could have chosen.
    • nandemo 10y ago
      Agreed. Saying they're the "same note" is an oversimplification. They're "equivalent" in certain contexts, which is an important distinction. They aren't the same note: if someone plays A3 (fundamental is 220Hz) and then A4 (440Hz) you can easily tell them apart! In contrast, if they play 220Hz and then 221Hz an untrained listener will most likely hear them as the same note. In some contexts a note and its octave can be thought of as equivalent: if you are playing a chord you can often replace A3 with A4 (and vice-versa) without changing the chord's feel and function. However, that isn't always true. For example, playing G#3 and A3 at the same time will sound more dissonant than playing G#3 and A4 (a minor 2nd is more dissonant than a minor 9th).
  • wyldfire 10y ago
    IIRC octaves are what's referred to as harmonic frequencies in physics/kinematics/etc. "Why is it the same note?" AFAIK it's because the higher ones are multiples of the base freq. But TBH I know next to nothing about music so I could be off.
    • rspeer 10y ago
      Close. Each shift of an octave doubles the frequency, so octaves are specifically harmonics that are powers of 2. Other harmonic ratios make other intervals (including intervals that aren't in our scale, when you get to bigger prime numbers). Most instruments produce harmonic multiples of the base frequency. (Percussion instruments don't.) So if you play a note at 110 Hz, there are also pitches at 220 Hz, 330 Hz, 440 Hz, etc. contained inside it. If you play a note an octave up, at 220 Hz, it contains pitches at 220 Hz, 440 Hz, 660 Hz... which is similar enough that it sounds like "the same note". (This doesn't explain why 330, 660, 990, ... sounds like a different note, though. Maybe it doesn't to an untrained ear.)
• elihu 10y ago
  I like the demos. The transition from ratios to equal temperament was kind of jarring. It might help to not jump straight from the pentatonic scale to a chromatic scale and then go back to the major scale later, but to introduce the pentatonic scale, and then describe major and minor chords as 4:5:6 and 10:12:15 ratios, and then show how the major scale can be constructed simply by trying to get as many usable major and minor triads out of the least number of notes (while emphasizing that the major scale isn't the only solution, and that other "modes" exist). Once you've established that the major scale is useful and in no way mysterious, then you can point out that if you divide the octave up in 12 logarithmically equal parts, you end up with equal tempered notes that almost line up with the ratio-based major scale. (I once threw together a diagram to illustate this that you can find here if you scroll down a bit: http://jsnow.bootlegether.net/cbg/justintonation.html http://jsnow.bootlegether.net/cbg/justintonation.html) From then on, you can treat equal temperament as an approximation that implies the ratios you described at the beginning. (Side note: One idea I try to impress on anyone who demonstrates the slightest inkling to write about music theory is that I really wish there existed something like Christopher Alexander's "A Pattern Language", but for music. Music is full of lots of little "tricks" that you can find scattered about in books, but I haven't ever seen anyone try to systematically collect as many of those as they can in one place, with a clear dependency graph.)
  • dainichi 10y ago
    > The transition from ratios to equal temperament was kind of jarring I agree. I'd like the course to comment on the fact that the ratios used in the pentatone scale and the 0th, 2nd, 4th, 7th and 9th powers of the 12th root of 2 don't match exactly.
• bobwaycott 10y ago
  Please keep going. I've been dabbling with instruments for almost 30 years, and this is the first time theory started to click with me. Look forward to seeing more. Thanks!
• zer0gravity 10y ago
  It would have been so much easier and fun if the notes were played on hoover not on click. Or even using the keys. And you could activate a specific section by clicking it, or parking the mouse in a certain spot.
• korethr 10y ago
  Poking around on this, this strikes me as a good, simple introduction to the basic concepts, without burying the newcommer under a ton of jargon, which has been been a recurring frustration of mine. Some suggestions: I might include a bit on the diatonic scale between the sections of the pentatonic scale and the chromatic scale. Anyone familiar with Western music should recognize quickly, as a great deal of well-known music has been composed using it. It should also serve as a nice half-way point between the pentatonic and chromatic scales -- introducing more notes from which to compose melodies but all of them still mostly sound nice with each other. I suspect the reason you covered the diminished chord in addition to the major and minor ones is because that's the chord that works on the 7th interval of a scale, as you cover in the later section. But you might want to cover the augmented and suspended chords as well (perhaps in a later section). I'm probably not the only one who, when attemting to finger a chord on a piano or guitar, missed the 3rd or the 5th, and discovered another triad that sounds interesting.