F(OS)S for Learning a Musical Instrument ? 120
Anonymous Musician asks: "Recently I took up learning to play the violin (at age 37) and it is great fun. I found two little software tools to be of good help: Wired Metronome (Windows binary, free to download) to keep a steady beat, and TS-AudioToMIDI (Windows binary, shareware, 30 days free trial), using a microphone and built-in sound-card to detect in real time the note I am playing (I admit, sometimes it is more like a noise) and have it displayed on a piano keyboard to check and train my tuning.
What tools, freeware or FOSS, are you using to assist you with learning to play an instrument?"
guitune (Score:4, Informative)
There's loads of metronome free software around [freshmeat.net] too.
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OLGA (Score:1, Offtopic)
Also check out Audacity (audio editor) - runs on Windows, Linux and Mac
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I need a metronome..... (Score:1)
I know I am supposed to be the timekeeper, but what I really need is something to help me keep time untill I can get the timing turned into muscle memory.
I need something that I can load onto an mp3 player, because simply using a mechanical metronome doesn't work because I drown it out.
Any suggestions?
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Any suggestions?
Download a metronome program, set it to the beat you want & redirect the sound output to a file, convert that file to mp3 & bob's your uncle!
You could batch up a whole bunch of different BPMs too.
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That said, for time keeping
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You will accomplish 2 things:
1) Your timing will improve.
2) You will pick up technique from what you hear by tring to recreate it.
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If you need to put together click tracks, try Hydrogen, a free software drum sequencer. Its overkill, but it should work fine. (Don't get too loud though, and wear hearing prot
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Another good idea to start to internalize tempos is to find songs that match different tempos. For example, any Sousa march is at approx 120 BPM. They're easy to remember, and are good for kick-starting your internal timekeeping.
Hydrogen (Score:4, Interesting)
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Not only that, but I also find it useful when practising drums; create a beat to which I can play along, then slowly add in more complexity and try to keep up.
Hardware Tuner is ~$20 (Score:3, Interesting)
For stringed instruments, I've found it really really helpful to have a hardware tuner, and most of them run about $20-30, and they're pocket-sized and last forever on a battery and fit in the accessories pockets of instrument cases or music folders. You _can_ also use them to find your note on a continuous-pitch instrument. The Korg model that I use has a meter (well, an LCD simulation of one) that shows how far above or below the nearest note you are, as well as red and green LEDs that tell you if you're sharp or flat. There are other shapes of tuners that clamp onto instruments, and some of them have backlights which can be helpful.
I've used PC software versions in the past, mostly with names like "Guitar Tuner" or whatever, but dragging a laptop around was more trouble than spending the $20 for the tuner - your mileage may vary. On the other hand, with a dulcimer you tune it once and it stays in tune for a whole session until you want retune to change modes, and with a uke you tune it once and it stays only slightly out of tune for at least a little while, so either way you're not trying to get the feedback while you're actually playing, so you may need something different.
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Obsession with the "right" pitch (Score:2)
The pitch indicated by a tuner is going to match the location of a note in 12-tone equal temperament [tonalsoft.com] (aka "12-TET"), and this is probably exactly what you want if you are playing bass, and it is almost certainly what you want if you are playing a fretted or keyboar
Firefox (Score:3, Insightful)
Who uses their computer to learn a musical instrument?
Get Firefox, and use it to order scores and a real metronome---and to find yourself a real music instructor---online.
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Of course there is also educational software for instruments as well, though I've never used any.
Audio editors are GREAT for learning to play, cut the tempo in half and retain the pitch to get those fast licks nailed and refine your technique. Record your playing and listen to what you thought were tiny mistakes become glaring errors.
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Tuxguitar (Score:4, Informative)
ignore the name...
it's a crossplatform java program that funtions almost as Guitar Pro. It can read and write several available formats so there's plenty of stuff out there to load up and examine/play back. I use it to examine the Bass score for pieces. It does Tab input and conventional music notation (conveniently on the same window) and there a fretboard display as well which shows you where to stick your finger (unfortunately it don't show you which one is best though)
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Exactly right! The failure of one Open Source program has ended the debate regarding the superiority of proprietary vs open source software.
May's well close slashdot down now - you've settled the argument.
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--
Evan
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Learning an instrument... (Score:4, Funny)
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The summer of '69 was almost forty years ago.
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V&X stores (Score:1)
V&X stores are still around, except after inflation they're called Dollar Tree [wikipedia.org].
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Neither of the above. (Score:4, Informative)
Tuning software/gadets I'm against. I've known lots of people that learnt with them and I think they harm not help. You need to get used to *really* listening to what you are doing. Looking at notes on a screen actively hinders this IMO.
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There are too many "Moosik 4 Dummies" approaches and beginners books these days that do nothing but cradle you and never teach how to actually PLAY. This may, perhaps, be seen as a positive thing as to get people active
Re:Neither of the above. (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not talking about a teenager learning guitar... this is a older person learning to play, quite possibly for the first time in their lives. If so, they've been ignoring the basic things about music since Lyndon B. Johnson was president and Woodstock was just a bird in a comic strip. There's no problem with that, but things that "cradle you" are often needed just to relearn and slowly internalize what a teenager or child can pick up very quickly right from music.
--
Evan
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If a violinist
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It could also be that the guitar is an instrument suited to be taught by book. Violin, on the other hand, is NOT.
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Re:Neither of the above. (Score:5, Interesting)
Tuners are going to be the death of string playing, particularly with regards to traditional and baroque music.
I've started to see electric fiddles with frets on them. People, there's a bloody damned good reason that violins don't have frets on them in the first place; and it isn't just to annoy you.
It's so you can play the right pitch, whatever that pitch is; and it often isn't the one that the tuner tells you it is.
Learn to hear intervals, not notes; and learn to tune by fifths. Then go out and get yourself a shitload of the oldest recordings of solo Irish and Old Time fiddle music you can find and learn to hear the microtones.
This may rankle at first, but that's only because your ear has already been corrupted by the tuner/equal tempered piano. There's a whole lot more, even in western music, than the over rigidly defined 12 notes of the equal tempered chromatic scale.
Like consonant intervals that are actually consonant and not merely almost consonant. When I've been playing solo violin for a few hours and then move to piano the piano actally hurts my musical ear. It takes some time to be able to not hear it as slightly out of tune.
This doesn't, of course, mean that you shouldn't learn to play along with a piano and match its musical tones, but you should be aware of the fact that when you do so you are making a compromise with the music.
And the best way to learn to play along with a piano is to play along with a piano, not using a tuner. In fact you should learn to play along with several different pianos, as in practice they'll actually all be in slightly different states of tune and you should be able to hear that and adjust for it.
Music is sound and thus about hearing.
KFG
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BTW, most fiddles _had_ frets on them before the days of old Johan Sebastian, if I'm not mistaken. (i might be, I may play fretless bass & upright but I'm no expert)
All that medieval stuff that never leaves the one key drives me barking mad after half an hour, mind you, and the same goes for Irish music ev
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That's only an issue for instruments with fixed intonations: pianos, harps, fretted guitars. Other instrumentalists--wind players, brass, fretless strings--are easily able to change intonation by adjusting embrouchure or finger position.
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No it's not. (?)...I remember that if you keep playing perfect fifths you end up half a note sharp when you get back to your starting note.
The trick is to spread that difference out without it becoming too annoying (granted: this way you are always playing slightly out of key).
Does it matter if you do this by ear on your fretless or leave it to mr. piano tuner? (BTW, on a bass it ain't all that critical, but on the high notes you'll notice imme
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Yes it is. Two good trumpeters (or violinists, or flutists, or singers, etc.) can play a major third in perfect tune if they listen to each other and adjust their intonation. But a pianist *cannot* play play a major third in perfect tune on an equal-tempered piano, period.
This is true, but it's a non-issue
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Yup, you re absolutely right. But my line of thinking is that we may be so used to the equal tempered tuning that we will intonate the same way on our 'fretless' anyway.
And the sense of 'perfect' seems to vary with culture as well....
the performers aren't stuck with whatever frequency the instrument gives them
Like I said: you have to leave it to Mr. Piano Tuner to pre-intonate your instrument for you. Th
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Not if you have a decent ear. You should hear the intonation problems and correct it. You can only tune an instrument so well, and the rest of it is on the fly adjustments.
Yes and No. Yes, the traditional tonality set down by Bach that western culture is based on is ve
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It doesn't quite work like that. Musicians adjust intonation to slow down and/or eliminate the audible "beats" that occur when an interval is out of tune. All equal-tempered intervals, apart from the octave, create audible beats. We tend to resist playing them.
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pages 248 to 251 of Bass Guitar For Dummies... it's an easy job once you see how and can play harmonics. Set the action up correctly first, then go for the intonation.
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You're right. I cant find the mp3's anywhere. I was referring to the stuff that i _did_ hear (the typical stuff with the draailier [slashdot.org] (sorry, can't think of the english word)
But don't take it personal man, lots of music drives me barking mad after 30 minutes. Charlie Parker, Frank Zappa, Phillip Glass, Milt Jackson, the Ramones, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Scott Joplin, Barry Manilow, Jimi Hendrix. Guess I have a short attent
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I meant this instrument : http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draailier [wikipedia.org]
I meant _that_ sort of medieval music...
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The English word you were looking for is "hurdy gurdy." Don't judge all medieval music based on that one instrument. Very little instrumental music was notated before the Renaissance and what has survived isn't typically solo material. Certainly not with the hurdy gurdy, which was (and still is) used more as an accompaniment drone. For something more interesting, check out ensembles like Anonymous 4, Sequentia, or David Munrow's Early Music Consort.
Lots of musi
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And tell you what: when I wrote 'man' I was thinking : what if this is one the 2 non-male users of slashdot? Ain't that something....
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Not if I'm not playing an acoustic piano I'm not.
how do you deal with that?
Through the simple expediant of varying my pitch so that it sounds right. Most instruments other than pianos can do this (and most modern digital pianos can as well). Go listen to a "fixed pitch" harmonica player wailing the blues. Go listen to Hendrix, Stevie Ray,
Human ability.. (Score:2)
The learning process you describe is exactly that of martial arts as well. First you go through the moves, and especially in Tai Chi are you very quickly introduced to the idea that it's not the move that matters, it's what your mind does with it (I mention Tai Chi because it's one of the most potent forms using the mind).
It then takes years to make your mind and the moves "one" - but at least you know early what you're aiming for
[email enabled] n/t (Score:2)
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I've started to see electric fiddles with frets on them.
I'd be as shocked and outraged over that as you seem to be, except I can see that an "electric fiddle" is not the same instrument as "a violin". You're not going to see Jean-Luc Ponty playing Vivaldi with the London Philharmonic.
Learn to hear intervals, not notes; and learn to tune by fifths. Then go out and get yourself a shitload of the old
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The difference is an interval of a half step.
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My experience is that it is generally best to start noobs with "Do Re Mi."
If, in the process, you can impart to them what Do, Re and Mi are they have knowledge that they can build on for the rest of their lives. Otherwise all they learn is some particular fingering by rote.
In my previous round on this topic I was criticised for claiming that anyone can learn to play a musical instrument
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Actually, I'd have to claim guitar as my primary instrument with my classical training almost entirely focused on piano (I had a handful of violin and flute lessons as a child). I do love my fiddle though, perhaps because I'd have to claim my primary musical "talent" is as a singer, not as an instrumentalist, and fiddle is the most "vocal" of the instruments.
Those of us who play woodwind instruments are very thankful western music evolved beyond just
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Play what you want on what you want. I play the Mozart horn concertos on keyless flute. Of course if you are playing at the behest of someone the piper plays what the piper is paid to play.
That has nothing to do with my suggestion, which was about learning, not performing.
If you don't mind the expense try getting a hornpipe. There's actually a fair amount of late baroque early classical music that was orginally scored for
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You're asking too much from most people, who may or may not be moderately musically inclined, but frankly, just plain can't hear that shit. (hell, at my age, I'm lucky I hear anything higher than 10,000 Hz anymore).
Ironic that you cite "folk music". What you call "folk music" plainly has it's origins and style in actual folk music, taken over by virtuosos.
Nothing wrong with virtuosos, mind you.
But not everyone can be one.
Most people don't eve
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Because they haven't learned. You learn things by doing.
I'm lucky I hear anything higher than 10,000 Hz anymore
You are speaking here of range, not pitch sense. The two are unrelated.
Ironic that you cite "folk music". What you call "folk music" plainly has it's origins and style in actual folk music, taken over by virtuosos.
I did not cite "folk music." I cited field recordings of actual traditional muscians who learned to play music before the advent of such recording
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It's probably true for a significant portion of people that a lot more hard work and dedication is required to master a skill.
However, there's probably another significant group for whom no amount of "practice and work hard" will produce skill mastery, let alone virtuosity.
I had an illustration teacher who thought that way too.
He figured that it was all just a matter of having a good protestant work ethic, and drawing 10 hours a day for 5-10 years.
(the lazy were punished by failure, of course).
Didn't work f
I'm rather impressed by your answers (Score:2)
Incidentally, you mentioned some issues that seem to be neurologic in nature. Ever looked at neurofeedback? I've seen some frankly amazing results with that: a little kid (9 years old) with dyspraxia finally be able to cycle, and the scientific basis of it makes lo
some exemples (Score:3, Informative)
GNU Solfege [solfege.org] - Eartraining program for GNOME
Gtick [antcom.de] - Digital metronome
MusicTheory.net (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.musictheory.net/ [musictheory.net]
It's a free bunch of good flash-based music trainers (downloadable for offline use).
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My suggestions (Score:1)
I'd say the fastest way would be to get a teacher, although I came to music late and never felt comfortable with that (although I did try it).
If you're not going to get a teacher then get a mic and some recording software (there's loads of free stuff out there - audacity for example). It really hard to hear what you're doing wrong while you're doing it.
On the tuner front, I'd go with a hardware one - the best ones IMO are the clip on ones that sense vibration. I have an Intellitouch one but there are o
There is none! (Score:2)
Sibelius is simply devestating all the other notation programs in particular, and even Finale and some of the others are eons and light years ahead of any of the FOSS alternatives.
He
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Here's one...
Denemo [sourceforge.net]
and another... noteedit [berlios.de]
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rhY
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I picked up Lilypond very quickly, but I'm used to TeX and RTTTL so it was kind of natural. I like Lilypond in that it's the 'TeX of music' and I couldn't stand using some graphical abomination, much like I despise Word-like programs for writing text.
What also helped is that I started off with a MIDI file from a sequencer, and polished the details in Lilypond format later. To be exact, I used my Korg Triton Le's builtin sequencer and turned it into a Lilypond file using Rosegarden. There are probably ot
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rhY
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Yeah, seriously eh? Take note, people, you do not know just how much free software exists if you've only seen the stuff that runs on Windows. This from someone who only switched about a year ago.
Don't assume that just because you can't find a good FOSS app running on Windows that the type of app you're looking for doesn't exist, there's a lot of free stuff that only runs on *nix.
Technical skills... (Score:5, Informative)
Also, as a clarinetist, I can tell you that it's easy to develop bad habits early on, which will be difficult to overcome later. With any musical instrument, bad habits can lead from poor technique at best to debilitating injury, but violin (and viola) are particularly prone to this. While I've never played a string instrument for any length of time, many of my friends who are string players have told me that the first two or three lessons for beginners can be devoted to just _learning to hold the instrument_. Sometimes, the bow doesn't even come into play for weeks after that.
For this reason, I would say that the most important thing you can do as a beginning violinist is to find yourself a teacher who can show you the basic technical aspects of playing. Even if money is tight, it's worth taking just a few lessons to save yourself a lot of mental (and likely physical) anguish down the road. And of course, if money isn't really an issue, then you'll benefit from continuing lessons. There's no substitute for having a master standing over you and helping with individual issues. Many teachers love to take on adult students, so it shouldn't be hard to find someone in your area willing to teach you.
That all being said, welcome to the music world! The violin is one of the most challenging instruments to learn, but it's also one of the most versatile and widely used throughout the world. The rewards you'll reap from the experience will be well worth the investment of time and energy.
not a substitute (Score:2)
Go to your local music store or the music department of a local college; both of which are excellent places to get in touch with someone who'll be eager to teach you how music works.
MIDI learning tool? (Score:1)
came with a keyboard and various software 'games' to teach children/interested
folk to play the piano. can't recall its name.....anyhow, the musical
equivalent of mavis beacon touch typing (or tux-typing, or typing of the dead
if you will....
so...are their OSS equivalents of THAT type of tool?
The MIRACLE piano system (Score:2)
Your description of it as "the musical equivalent of Mavis Beacon touch typing" is excellent!
gnu solfege (Score:1)
It's ear-training software, it's OSS, it works when you don't have someone else to train with. Ear-training is the musical equivalent of kung-fu training, regardless of instrument. Sing the intervals while you play them; it's not so important that you know it's a fifth or a fourth or a b-flat etc as that you can sing the note/interval/line AND play it. And if you want to be a music ninja, do the ear-training WHILE you're doing your kung-fu forms.
Here's how it works: your goal is to be
Try RPitch for ear training (Score:1)
http://rpitch.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Not for muzak n00bs, but it's worth checking out.. (Score:1)
And as far as seqencing and arrangement goes, I've been using Rosegarden
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Once I discovered Tuxguitar, I dropped kguitar and dguitar...