Great project overall, I like it a lot. Please fix it on Firefox. Tested with Firefox for Linux and layout was broken compared to Chromium based browsers.
Additionaly, I also noticed in the mobile version on Android (Chrome) when switching to another app and back it breaks the guitar sound simulation and it gets completely distorted.
Sounds great! As a guitar player: I would expect the fretboard to be mirrored horizontally, so that the low strings are at the bottom, like it is the case in regular tablature. Messes with my brain that way :)
I had the same thought, you can switch to tab or audience view which is a bit more in that direction.
Same here! It took me a while to realize that as a beginner. At first I was thinking that it was left handed or something.
100%. The player view is weird. I'd expect the player of the guitar to look down from above on the instrument and that's not the case here.<p>Aaah, "tab" view is the view that is one I'd expect.
This is great. It also shows how complex it is to play a guitar. I think it would take me ages of practice to play even a simple song.<p>Maybe add an option that shows the finger positioning (with adjustable transparency so you can also see the touch points on the strings).
It makes me wonder how long it will take robots to approach the dexterity of even a six year old child, some of whom can play guitar pretty well.
And guitar is commonly thought to be an "easier" instrument.
Something like an erhu only has two strings and is fiendishly difficult to master.
I’ve sadly stopped being curious about that since I realised that we’re already cyborgs, only the other way around from what popular sci-fi predicted: the internet does the thinking and the meatbags move their fingers. It started with GPS, came for software engineering and won’t stop any time soon. Actuators won’t be critical if humans are ever more fungible.
I like it because it shows how <i>easy</i> it is to compose a song though (if, of course, you first learn to finger a few chords—and everyone knows you only need to learn three chords).
Defaulting what is called "player view" on this page is a very odd choice. All learning material is displayed with the low string at the bottom (or "tab view" on the page). All guitar emulators I have ever used have that view as default.<p>This is also how it looks when you hold a guitar, so I have no idea where this "player view" comes from. If I take my guitar and lay it on the table in front of me, the low strings are closest to me not farthest.
Did you use a mirror? Or is this for left handed guitars? It's because a guitar never looks like that, not a regular right-handed guitar. When you play a guitar, you see the side of the neck, so you need to lean out a bit to see it. Or rotate the guitar so that you can see the fretboard. In this position the headstok is pointing to the left and the thickest strings are on the bottom, closer to you. For the thickest string to be on the top, you'd have to flip the guitar over like a left-handed person would do. But then the headstock would point to the right, and you're in the left-handed position with a right-handed guitar.
Very well done. Looks and sounds great.<p>A couple of UX thoughts I had while using it:<p>1. Since the chords are all within a specific key, have you considered using the numbers 1 through 7 to play the respective chords? That way playing a 1-4-5 or a 2-5-1 would be very intuitive?<p>2. Have you considered using modifier keys (shift, ctrl, alt) to control whether a chord is strummed down versus up (e.g. pressing A would be down, but Shift+A would be up) or major/minor (A would be major, Alt+A would be minor)? I guess Ctrl could be a 7th chord modifier too.<p>Just some thoughts. Great tool!
Holy smokes!!! It has just occurred to me that anyone who can type on a keyboard knows how to play an instrument. Your keyboard is the instrument.<p>With solo mode, I asked ChatGPT to translate the songs to keyboard notes, and I was just typing the notes as if I was doing a typing test, and I was playing songs. lol the easiest "sight-reading" I've ever done.<p>Is this the every persons instrument?<p>Here is Happy Birthday in solo mode:<p>E E T E I U
E E T E P I
E E B X I U T
C C X I P I<p>Crazy unlock!
A small toy xylophone with each note painted a different colour works by the same principle of abstracting melody into a simple system whose mechanics are already mastered. That kind of device has given children a way to learn Happy Birthday (by simply going Red Red Blue Red Yellow Green.....) for many generations now.<p>The full challenge however is that "knowing how to play an instrument" in the musical context is a deeeeep, deep well, and that any musician is only as informed as their experience. Hitting-notes-in-order means you've just walked into the atrium of a potentially lifelong learning experience, no matter what the instrument.
There's plenty virtual instrument that use keyboard as input, you can even modified as simple or complex. I don't remember the name but there's desktop Piano app and browser based virtual Drum.
Musical typing is super fun and is built in to some free audio tools like garage band, but it’s kind of a thing where you’d have to already know about it in order to find it in the first place.<p>I love the idea of treating it like a typing test, maybe it is the new guitar hero.
Am I going crazy? How is this the first time people have encountered a musical keyboard?
Welcome to QWERTY-MIDI, around since the advent of DAWs basically.<p><a href="https://beijaflor.io/qwertymidi/" rel="nofollow">https://beijaflor.io/qwertymidi/</a>
It looks more like 'Old Macdonald had a farm'
You should try strudel.cc
This looks great!<p>I noticed that the strumming seems a bit off on chord changes. A good default is to let strings that don't change on chord change to continue to ring through. Just think about the strings as actual strings and the kinds of things that happen to them when you play.<p>Also, different songs will have different techniques like bar chords that may have less brightness, palm muting etc.<p>I'm working on a physical guitar digital luthier kit right now as part of a project at Toronto Metropolitan University working with disabled musicians. Our aim is to release it so anyone can build one.<p>Here is our documentation of examining an existing assistive guitar built a few years ago in the UK.
<a href="https://www.designingsoundfutures.org/kellycaster-mark-1/" rel="nofollow">https://www.designingsoundfutures.org/kellycaster-mark-1/</a><p>Now we're taking lessons learned from that and working on robust versions for touring musicians, and variations to adapt to different assistive and artistic needs.<p>Great to see others doing nifty work with this guitar based music stuff.
Thanks, great input! Letting the shared strings ring through chord changes makes a lot of sense and I will look at it. Song techniques like palm muting are on the list too.<p>Your project sounds wonderful. Good luck with it, I'd love to see it when it's out.
I would love to have this as an electron package/standalone if/when the website ever goes away. It's great work
Really cool app, sounds good, especially when playing back the demo songs.<p>I am also building a music game/app for learning piano basics:<p><a href="https://ultimidi.com" rel="nofollow">https://ultimidi.com</a>
Impressive, I test on old iPhone, it's works seamlessly!<p>Like other already mentioned, the orientation is bit odd, like you play with guitar facing you.
Thanks for all the amazing feedback, everyone. I really appreciate it, and I'm writing all your notes down.<p>It would really help if you mention whether you tested it on mobile or desktop.
The mobile version completely blew me away. I tried it on desktop first. Extraordinary job, really great work!
Mobile. I love it. I hope it lasts forever.
instantly reminded me of the "c64 bass guitar": <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kDhpFaf4EY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kDhpFaf4EY</a>
I've been playing guitar for 20 years and this is incredible. Impressed by the feat of getting all this in browser, and the quality as a learning tool.<p>My dad had a stroke years ago and hasn't been able to hold a guitar, but I showed him this tonight and he thought it was awesome. Excited to see what he does with it.
If you want to see the difference between vibe coding and masterful AI-assisted coding, this is it.
This isn't about coding. I've been yapping about architecture and design for a decade and I'm seeing LLMs produce significantly cleaner architecture than most developers I've worked with.<p>This, I think, is great product design. More than babysitting the code, it's about hammering the experience until it's as useful, ergonomic and delightful as possible for the user.
I like the strumming part, could you add an option to not auto strum a chord when I do a chord change?
I just spent 30 minutes playing with this. It's incredible, well done to the author!
Looking forward to your acquihire by Guitar Center! Makes me want to dust off my old acoustic after work and practice some more.
Why does it show a left-handed guitar on Player view, and a right-handed one on Audience view?
Hi Rygian, Good catch.<p>Player view does show a left handed guitar. Two reasons:
1. matches what a right handed player sees looking down at their own guitar: low E on top, neck on the left.
2. players without guitar, to lined up with the pc keyboard that is on the left.<p>True Audience view is like you watch right hand guitar player.
That's interesting because I think of Low E on the "top" as meaning close to me, which puts it on the bottom of the screen in this app. That matches what happens when I twist a real guitar face towards me when I've got one strapped. So I just switched it to Tab view and it all felt better.
Thanks for adding Tab view. Much more intuitive.
" matches what a right handed player sees looking down at their own guitar: low E on top, neck on the left"<p>no, it's wrong
Yeah, and I would rather see the “normal” presentation of chords. At least provide a selector to be able to toggle the view.
Yeah, Tab + Player is the right one.
Super cool. This is more towards one who knows to play but any plans to introduce tutoring sessions for beginners?
That's one of the best guitar UIs I've seen on a computer.
Very well done! When adding a chord on a key, I'm missing a small preview of the chords as they appear in the autocomplete list, or would be nice to be able to assemble a chord on a fretboard view. What made you start work on this app? And what is the logic behind how the chords are laid out on the keyboard?
Thanks! Both good ideas, noted.<p>I wanted to play some chords when Im away from my guitar and none of the browser online guitars I found were at the level I was looking for.<p>The keys follow the song's key:
A row = the 5 main chords (I IV V vi ii),
Q row = their sevenths
Z row = color chords
Nice job! The stock arp patterns are a nice touch. I’m surprised no one in here mentioned the original Smart Guitar instrument in GarageBand on the iPad [1]. It actually works in a very similar way, and feels very satisfying to use.<p>It basically gives you the chords for a given key signature aligned verticall, and then you can use your finger to pick or strum - it even lets you do string bends.<p><i>Question: OOC, where did you source the string sample recordings from?</i><p>[1] - <a href="https://imgur.com/a/6jQiUJp" rel="nofollow">https://imgur.com/a/6jQiUJp</a>
I've been playing for years, and so happy to see an app so intuitive. The only thing is that I use several non standard tunings none of them are found in the drop down..... I was so looking to put my own custom tunings into this app, since its the best designed guitar app that I've seen in a while. I would love to use this over OOlimo (which allows your own tunings) I'll have to wait and see if this is actually a feature you would consider here. Thanks for sharing, it's great!
Amazing work! One of those things I wish I’d thought of.<p>I’d love support for multi touch on tablet. Currently zooms out but I expected it to pick multiple strings.
This is awesome. I have no music knowledge. and my dad recently learning flute and was asking me to build something like this for him to practice. You gave me an inspiration and I built this (me asking claude to build similar to yours). I think what I built is absolute garbage but its only decently good because of what you did. here it is. <a href="https://veeragoni.github.io/flutewizard/" rel="nofollow">https://veeragoni.github.io/flutewizard/</a><p>I hope you take it positively and I am hoping community contributes to the flute sounds and make it better and right.
I would pay for this in a VST form
It’s incredible. I tried it on PC and got hooked for half an hour.
The chord names not matching the keys on my keyboard are throwing me off a lot on this, but that's difficult to get anything other than major chords. Maybe it would be playable by using modifiers to shift to minor and 7th etc.<p>Another idea I had was being able to bend by holding two keys like monophonic synths.
Very cool, the "arp" function was a little buggy for me, it either wont let me activate it before strumming a chord, or it will lock itself to "on" until I refresh the page.
In solo mode, there should be a horizontally flipped version, such that such that the 0 key plays open E on the 1st string, and the 9 plays F on the 1st string, etc. That would allow me to hold my wireless keyboard backwards, facing the screen, rely on the muscle memory of my hands.
Hi op, great app. What's a rough time and $ estimate for the Claude cost of such a refined outcome, with all those vector assets, animations, options?
This is very nice. One suggestion based on a guitar related hobby webapp I built myself: fretboard renders in potrait probably makes for nicer ux.<p>My tool does not focus on strumming at all as this one does though.<p>Nice work. Am having fun with it.
Thank you! Yes, I tried that, but since the app focuses on strumming, I couldn't use all the space for a long fretboard. I'm still working on a better mobile UI.
This is very interesting however i don't know guitar. Can somebody give me a couple of tips on which keys to press so I could play well known song? For example Angie by the rolling stones?
Thanks. You can paste any chords (with the lyrics) from any website into "my songs" section and play it.
<a href="https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/the-rolling-stones/angie-chords-1092197" rel="nofollow">https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/the-rolling-stones/angi...</a><p>and switch to A minor
Very nice. A selfish suggestion is to add ukulele.
Will you add lefi hadn mode later?
Had fun with this on my phone! Any chance of calculating velocity based on speed of pick movement? I'm sure some super basic ASDR and maybe a low-oass would get you to a very satisfying place
It's great! As far as I can tell, the toggle for Let ring is not working: when i disable it, notes still ring out after letting go of the key (in solo mode on electric guitar currently)
No MIDI?
This is fantastic, well done and thanks for sharing! Any chance of adding C Standard to the tuning list?
Been working on something similar (a DAW, to learn more about music) - and just wanted to say that your guitar voice is quite good! Bravo
Tapping in a tempo could be useful.
Such an AMAZING idea - as a guitar player I wish I had thought of this. Kudos to the creator...Very well done :)
Before I knew it, ten minutes had gone! good job
Looks great, but recordings are choppy for me, i dont know what is wrong. I am using Brave browser.
10/10 immediately played Hotel California chords. Felt very intuitive, sounded nice. Great fun!
Very nicely done, at first I thought it was gimmicky but it's actually playable
Next steps: add Guitar Hero controller or/and Rock Band interface support
Feels really good!
Really really enjoyable, but how do I turn on drive for the electric guitar?
This looks very interesting, I may finally learn wonderwall.
Why is the guitar backwards?
This is incredibly satisfying. Nice work!
This was much better than I expected. Nice job.
I love that this is a learning tool too.
This is absolutely amazing. Well done.
This is kinda cool, but it's nowhere near as fun as being able to play the real thing. Sounds better IRL.<p>It is nice that it shows the chords.
Sick, love it
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This is excellent. Thank you.
Tastefully done.
This is super fun, thanks!
This is awesome!
This is really good.
This is great, great design, great functionality, TY!
That's awesome!
This is so cool.
Very good
This was a ton of fun! I tried it on an iPhone 13. Worked perfectly. I loved the UI/UX and also it was awesome to be able to select chords easily. Sounds fantastic. Feature suggestion: there's a part of it that on a physical guitar can be tapped with the palm (it's shown visually in the dark/red overlay; you may need to zoom out to see it), pressing there could produce a percussive thud.
Holy shit, this is incredible. As a guitar player this actually feels like playing a guitar. So cool.<p>Only suggestion I would have would be to make all 6 strings strummable independently in the chord instead of just the 4, so you can do finger picking on it.
Nicely done!
Would be lovely to have a faq section about who you are and how you built it (how long did it take you, which tools did you use, how much back and forth did you need to do with the ai agent, what is your background in terms of programming, web, design and music, etc.)
fantastic!
love it!
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