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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
OT? Interactive harmonica
OT? Interactive harmonica
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Pomrac
14 posts
Apr 02, 2012
5:30 AM
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Hey guys,
For a university course I am currently doing I have to create an interactive Flash element to be used on a webpage. I have decided to create an interactive harmonica. This is a very rough mock-up of what the final element would look like:
Basically a user would hover over a particular area of the instrument to hear the corresponding note. For example (as displayed above) if a user starts at the 4 hole and moves the mouse up, the green arrow will appear and the corresponding note will play. Move the cursor down and the blue cursor will appear and the draw note will play. Pull down further, hear the bend etc.
I thought that this would be a useful tool for anyone learning the instrument who was unsure if they were hitting the note/bend/overblow/overdraw correctly.
I was wondering if anyone is familiar with, or has come across a similar interactive element. I had at first thought such a thing would surely exist, but had no luck in finding anything, which is what cemented my decision to create one for my project.
Also, I realised that such a tool would be even more effective if the notes that sounded were real recorded harmonica notes. I am proficent in basic note playing and bending, but lack the skills needed to play the overblows/draws etc that would really make the tool valuable. My current option is to use a midi instrument for the notes, but I wondered if there was anyone here on the forum with a solid collection of harps, a decent recording setup and the skill to run through each harp playing the bulk of the avaliable notes who'd be willing to record them to a track? As long as there was a brief break in between each note, the whole lot of harps could be recorded on a single track and I could chop it up as neccessary.
I know it's a bit of a job, but i'd be quite happy to share the final project with anyone here who wanted a copy of the file, and will also most likely have it up on a website somewhere to which i'll share a link.
Either way I think it will still be useful with the midi sounds, but yeah, if anyone was interested in giving it a crack that be great. And yeah, if anyone can point me in the direction of a similar thing, even for other instruments, it would be very much appreciated!
Cheers
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Pom
Last Edited by on Apr 02, 2012 5:35 AM
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nacoran
5482 posts
Apr 02, 2012
10:53 AM
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There is a site, although I don't remember which one, that has a very basic version of this. Bend-o-meter does this in reverse. It's basically a tuner that shows what notes you are hitting on a harp.
I had a thread a while back that discussed some cool features something like this could have, but I lost track of it. (It was related to the topic of experimental tunings. If you made it so you could fill in the notes yourself and the simulator would play them, you could experiment with how different tunings would work without having to file your reeds down!) Seydel has something called the harp configurator, for helping you lay out a custom harp. It's a soundless interaction, but it might be useful for a format idea, if you choose to go that way. Someone on here was talking about doing something like this, but I don't know if anything ever came of it. (Overblow.com has a huge list of tunings compiled by Pat Missin. I don't know if it's in a format that would be easy to port in that way.)
As for playing the notes, I can bend and blow bend, but I can't overblow, so I couldn't record for you. I'm sure one of the overblow players could whip out a recording pretty quickly. I hope someone does.
If you need any other crazy ideas for features, let me know. I've got lots of crazy and a few ideas. :)
(Crazy idea one- mouse overs work fine, but a qwerty keyboard has ten letter keys per line. With a shift thrown in there you could represent blows, draws and bends in a fairly intuitive manner. If the program supported it it would also make it easy to play chords.)
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Nate
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Last Edited by on Apr 02, 2012 10:56 AM
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FreeWilly
138 posts
Apr 02, 2012
11:09 AM
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Cool project. Never seen one that I can recall, and it would be very usefull. I can imagine some companies want to buy something like that if they offer different tunings. For that it would need (1) to be able to provide bends/overblows/overdraws on fantasy harps, (2) be able to play chords. Which would be a bitch to provide in compromise tunings (on which the chords sound better than Equal temperament tunings).
To be able to do chords, you would need somebody to play all the notes on EQ harps, with perfect pitch, so you can transpose them to fantasy harps..
Perhaps the fantasy stuff should therefore be midi, and existing harps be recorded.
I would gladly provide the recording service. All I need is custom harps in 12 keys... (sorry for that) There are probably not too many people out there with the working harp-set to provide all the overdraws on all twelve keys.
Hopefully you'll find someone that has the harps though. It would be a very cool pitch-practice assistant. I'll be sure to tune in to that High F 9 hole overdraw!
Good luck!
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Pomrac
15 posts
Apr 02, 2012
7:46 PM
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Thanks for the input. Nate, I really like the idea of incorporating the keyboard, I think having either option to choose from would work really well.
As for the sound elements from Overblow.com; for the purpose of the project I'm not allowed to use material directly sourced from the web. Basically I have to produce everything myself, though enlisting someone willing to contribute is OK.
The potential to use it as a tool for testing custom tunings is something I hadn't considered, but could be very interesting. At the moment I have only 5 weeks to complete the project for the purposes of the course, but it is definitely something I intend to continue working on, so hopefully in the not to distant future i'll have it up to the task of all these applications.
I still haven't had much luck finding a similar thing but did come across THIS very interesting instrument that is created using the same software i'll be using.
EDIT: not quite the same software.
Cheers
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Pom
Last Edited by on Apr 02, 2012 7:49 PM
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lor
114 posts
Apr 02, 2012
9:34 PM
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Nacoran mentions an earlier thread, in which I proposed writing a program to allow custom harmonica designs.
I just today, believe it or not, finished the code that plays songs in a quasi-harmonica voice. I found the problem that there's not a good Midi harmonica, so I went with .wav files and complex mathematical generation of something similar to harmonica waveforms, but my wife says it doesn't really sound like a live harmonica. It does sound like a robot playing a robo-harmonica.
Thing is, my program can generate any note, in any intonation. Meaning it might not be necessary for you to do digital sampling of live sound. My program can generate the whole shebang.
I can certainly continue the development of more live-sounding product. As of now it is actually pretty good, but lacks the human touch - vibrato, tremolo, slight bending, etc.
Get back to me here if this might help your project.
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Gnarly
176 posts
Apr 02, 2012
10:20 PM
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Harmap does this.
http://www.rougepied.com/harmap/index.html
Doesn't bend pitch tho--just sounds the note.
But you can load in your own crazy tunings--always a plus in my neighborhood . . .
But it's MIDI not samples . . .
Last Edited by on Apr 02, 2012 10:23 PM
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