Hi, This is a quick plug for my new app Harmonica training app HarpNinja which is now available.
The 10 second summary is: Learn harmonica faster! Real time pitch recognition shows you what you play. Play a game to learn Songs, Scales, & Riffs. Interactive Circle of Fifths makes music theory easy.
The HarpNinja Press release explains in a lot more detail, complete with links and special launch price offer. First update with chromatic harp support is in the works already, and I'm in the process of making some short "how to" videos as well.
Hey Paul, Are user configurable tunings something you are considering? I for one would like to see Power Chromatic (a tuning I sadly referred to as "Magic Bop tuning" for many years) implemented. It's like Power Bender only the same in all octaves.
Hi Gnarly, >>Are user configurable tunings something you are considering?
Yes. It's on my todo list but didn't make the cut for v1.
I'd like to give the initial release a little time for people to play with it and if they are interested enough to push for certain features I can start prioritizing enhancements. There's a lot of cool things to add beyond the basics.
I am currently looking at how best to deploy an android version.
I can easily generate an android version now, but it's not that simple testing for android devices due to the huge number of different configurations.
That's why I just went with desktop/iOS in the initial release.
At some point you have to set a minimum cpu/screen size/gpu combination in order for it to work with good performance. Real time pitch recognition by software can be pretty intensive on mobile devices as well.
Post your phone spec though, it's all good info for me to scope it out.
Iam not gonna buy it cause i dont play Richter tuning. But if You add custom tunings iam gonna buy it.
I think the price tag is a bit high. And that scares potential customers. But if more features custom turnings etc gets implanted I guess the price is not a problem.
I'm not quite sure how I'd use it. Maybe I need to read the blurb more carefully. Is it gonna work on my iPhone? How is it better than old fashioned practice, scale exercises and such? I'm gonna go read the stuff again. Ok, I read it again. I think I sort of understand. Does it have any advantage over other methods? Is it faster or just different? ----------
Last Edited by on Sep 08, 2012 6:23 AM
They say out of all people that start to play a music instrument, 85% quit before they reach a reasonable level.
It's easy for some musicians to denigrate people who don't "stay the course" to become even mildly proficient in an instrument, but as educational technology evolves it's incumbent on us to continually revisit teaching techniques and tools to see how we can retain more people - harmonica being one of the harder ones imo.
>>Does it have any advantage over other methods? >>Is it faster or just different?
I don't think of it as "advantage over" existing methods but more as "in addition to" with the additional benefit of "saving time" - so you can spend more time playing and experimenting.
For example: Harp players have used guitar tuners for years to check their intonation and bend accuracy, but you have to visualize the harp layout in your head if you want to do this when learning position, scale, and chord runs. Why not close the learning loop and go direct to an audio responsive visual representation of the harp layout(s) to "build a picture in your head" of layouts faster? I think this is particularly hard for beginners/intermediate harp players, so think of it as bringing all those diagrams of harp layouts to life.
It's also the Harp players equivalent of a fretboard visualizer to visualize different tunings to learn chords, scale runs, etc for different keys faster.
Ditto, more or less, for basic music theory and learning tunes, riffs, and scales.
I'm the first to admit I'm also not the first to do this with Harp (or other instruments), this is just my particular jam on it - and I have a few more jams in the works;-)
If you have access to a PC or Mac there's free demo downloads so just have a play with it and see if it works for you. It's only V1, there's an awful lot more that can be done in this space.
ps: Here's a great video I came across the other day on Music Education from Victor Wooten.
@Arbite I hear you on that one. I wanted to do custom tunings for V1 but had to make some hard choices as to what to go with for V1. My rationale being that custom tunings is really for more advanced players. So I just went with Major/Richter, Natural Minor, Harmonic Minor, Melody maker, and Country initially.
But..good news is that custom tunings by user (and sharing them) is on the design board for an upcoming release.
Well, Melody Maker has the Power Chromatic tuning from holes 3 thru 6--same arrangement of tones found on the Power Bender on holes 5-8, so this app would at least give me personally some clues, if I stay in that range. I will check out the demos!
Diminished is a good suggestion. Will do. Extra tunings is an easy add, so if there's anymore urgent ones people would like to see let me know and I can do an interim update before the new additions under development.
Instead of 'including' new tunings, maybe a way to custom configure tunings. That would let anyone configure whatever tuning they wanted. If you made it so people could share their files, either of tunings, or tab or whatever, that might be a useful feature.
@nacoran Custom tunings (and sharing/rating of them) is currently in early design, but is more complex to implement (some cloud synch code etc) - which is why I left it post V1. Working on it!
In the short term I can quite easily add some of the more common alternate tunings that people use and deploy a quick update (at least for desktop, appstore process is a little long winded), if the demand is there.
Thanks for the Beta testing btw, you still have to reply to the email I sent if you want your ty license! (and ty for the +ve feedback/plug in the other thread)
There's no way in blue hell that this app is worth anymore than 2.99 I've seen apps that do much more for less.
Get realistic if you want people to try this.
I'd be surprised if anyone on Hess boards was dumb enough to pay 19$ for that what a rip off. You can always increase the price as more features come out. Right now though, it ain't worth it
---------- I could be bound by a nutshell and still count myself a king of infinite space
I do think the app is way overpriced but bought it anyway, in the hope it would encourage development. I am using the iPad version.
Here are some comments: It is a little slow to start and respond sometimes. When playing scales sometimes the note key looses colour after it is pressed. It would be great to have a metronome feature with scales The tune selection is geared towards children..... Needs reviewing. The dojo/ninja references could easily become tiresome. Again this is more aimed at children.
It would also be nice to be able to play scales automatically, so you could select one and play along with it.
It will be interesting to see how it develops. The underlying technology has great potential.
It's actually $14.99 for the first week as a thank you to early adopters, but anyway...let me explain my pricing rationale fwiw.
Pricing is always a tricky thing, and the app store .99 cent deluge has done to software development what the mp3 & internet "distribution" has done to the price of music for both indie, semi-pro and pro-musician's who relied on product sales for large portion of their living. It's gone, more or less.
This is especially tricky when producing an app for both desktop and mobile markets, as unless they differ in functionality you cannot charge different prices. As such it makes desktop prices look out of whack on the appstore. There is also a small but growing sector of productivity apps that are in the price zone I am pitched at.
I'm sorry you feel the app is lacking in functionality or too expensive for you, but bench marked against competitive products and harp instructional programs (for which I see it as an add on) I think it is reasonable enough. eg: Hohner harp tuner US$65 - tuner only. Instruction courses anywhere from free to $19/6 months to $19/month. A single quality harp will set you back minimum of ~US$30. Yes, the other harmonica apps on the appstore are much cheaper, but are targeted at the novelty market not the professional education market.
More features, as noted above and on the website, are already in design stage. To be honest as a professional developer there is a price point below which it's not even worth building the app at, especially if it is to be developed further. I think any sensible professional developer would agree with this once they scoped it out and looked at time, skills, and resources needed to do it. If you are wondering why efforts like this have flamed out in the past, I just gave you the answer;-)
I may release pieces of HarpNinja at a lower price if it looks viable and there is demand, but at the moment it's an all in one due to overheads in doing split product development. Multi-platform is a big enough headache.
>>On the other hand, in 3 months you might be a rich man.
I'm not a multinational corporation, I'm a one man band with a family and development costs/expenses you probably don't want to know about. Appstore also takes 30%, and my eCommerce store also a chunk.
If you thought being an indie musician was hard yakka you should try your hand at indie software development. It sucks and blows in alternation, with hardly a rest in between.
I do listen to all feedback, however, and you're always welcome to try the desktop demos to try before you buy...or not!
I hope you also understand my position. (I like them all, but Harmonic Minor has something about it...)
Bottom line is you have to go live at some point, and I judged it "stable enough" and "featured enough" to be usable for the basic goals. Then the dev cycle begins again, as you noted.
Only for iPad/Desktop at the moment. I was concerned about performance, as pitch tracking and other functions are quite intensive.
The other issue is design. The small screen of the mobile smartphones means a different design is necessary for a good user experience (to avoid squinting, gui control selection etc).
Currently it's more a tablet app, probably minimum size would be the new 7" nexus type formats.
But I am looking into how best to squeeze it onto iPhone size with good performance, even if it's just the Tuning Dojo.
Last Edited by on Sep 08, 2012 6:23 AM