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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Use of harpninja app
Use of harpninja app
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SuperBee
3273 posts
Jan 23, 2016
12:35 PM
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Hi. I've had the harpninja programme for some time but I've never used it. I've had a couple of sorties with it but they just amounted to looking at it, trying to work out what it's supposed to do, wondering how it might be used, wondering if it would be effective to use it, failing to be convinced and shutting it down feeling uninspired.
But...I'm continuing to see it recommended so I suspect I've missed something. Do you/have you used it? What do you do with it? Why is it better than say just checking your pitch against a tuner?
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slaphappy
160 posts
Jan 23, 2016
1:12 PM
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I've just been using a keyboard..
I find some unbent pitches need to be bent down a bit to match the keyboard. Can't tell if my harps are a bit sharp or my embouchure is or a bit of both? Haven't figured it all out quite yet but matching my pitch to the keyboard has sweetened up my 2-draw and 4-draw tone a bit so that's a plus!
I think Komuso wrote Harp Ninja so maybe he will chime in.
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4' 4+ 3' 2~~~
-Mike Ziemba
Harmonica is Life!
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nacoran
8897 posts
Jan 23, 2016
3:45 PM
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I think it's more visual than just checking your pitch against a tuner. It combines checking your pitch against an image of the harp, which useful for learning the layout of your harp too, and a little more visually engaging too.
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Nate
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Harp Study
173 posts
Jan 23, 2016
6:53 PM
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Great question SuperBee. I've had it for awhile and think it neat, but I know I'm not getting the most out of it. I'd love to know what others are doing and find useful with the app.
As a side note: one thing I would like to see added to the app (but imagine that it is more difficult then it is worth) is an option to show the half valve bends like the show overbends option. Not a big deal, but thought I would mention it incase Komuso reads this.
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Komuso
660 posts
Jan 24, 2016
12:43 AM
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Hi SuperBee/HarpStudy,
Sorry to hear it hasn't hit the spot for you.
HarpNinja is intended to be a swiss army knife that you can use to suit your learning and level, rather than an instructional program per se.
The website blurb:
"HarpNinja is an innovative harmonica software application that supports your harmonica learning independent of whatever method you are using. It is targeted at beginner/intermediate level harmonica players, but advanced players should also find it useful to sharpen their skills."
More specifically:
"How to Use HarpNinja
There are lots of books, audio, video, and website resources from many superb harmonica player/educators that are available for learning harmonica. HarpNinja is not designed to replace this excellent body of harmonica knowledge, but is meant to be used a tool to speed your learning in addition to whatever program or teacher you choose to use. It does this by providing real time feedback on the accuracy of your playing, helping you to visualize the note layouts of different keys, tunings, scales and chords – this being one of the biggest challenges for harmonica players that other instrument learners don’t have. Additional HarpNinja modes help you practice and learn Songs, Scales, and Riffs faster, as well as provide a quick and easy music theory calculator via the interactive Circle of Fifth’s. Here is a selection of some of the best free and paid subscriber harmonica learning resources"
HarpNinja - FAQ
It really depends on you how you want to use it.
I personally use it for figuring out what tuning/position/scale is best for some new tune I might be working on, as well as pitch bend checking. (I still can't get those 10 hole bends nailed, especially that gnarly 1/2 step -but that's probably because I insist on using OOTB harps)
My own personal view is HarpNinja’s biggest benefit is to help you build a mental model of the harmonica faster (as nacoran alludes to).
Harmonica is the only instrument you have no visual reference to so having a tight feedback loop of real time pitch recognition linked to visual layouts of tuning/keys/scales/chords acts as a learning scaffold to support you while building your mental model.
This is key to being able to develop fluid improvisational skills later, especially if you're regularly playing in different positions and tunings.
I split the harp by octaves and work on each octave separately, then work on transitions, then two together fluidly etc. It helps me anyway, especially playing in a rack while playing guitar.
Other benefits are also valuable:
· Bending accuracy training. Check bend accuracy both visually and aurally (pressing the note buttons plays the tone so you can hear the tuning beats)
· Circle of fifths for easy basic music theory learning
· More advanced players can use it as a songwriting or song analysis tool to help find the best tuning/key/position for a song’s melody
· Testing your ear and technique by using song mode to play the same *simple* songs in different tunings, keys, and positions.
· + others
Teachers can use it to emphasize aspects that they think are more important. David Barrett, for example, uses it for bending accuracy training with his students. It was also his suggestion to add the piano keyboard mode, which is useful to explain chord and scale theory.
My first suggestion would be to get the free practice tips newsletter if you have not already:
SIGN UP FOR FREE PRACTICE TIPS!
These tips can help structure your practice sessions more effectively (especially if you're learning ad hoc via whatever resources you find and are also time poor), and you can use HarpNinja as a tool for some practice sessions. eg: Checking your bend accuracy on specific holes for 5 mins and then running through a tune that uses that bend a lot, or working on your mental model building for a particular scale (in a specific tuning) for one weeks goal.
Some help and tutorials on the features are here:
HarpNinja Help
HarpNinja Tutorials
@HarpStudy
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll add it to the *long* list.
Can't promise anything, as features are really prioritized based on impact for bulk of users at the moment. Maybe I should add a "Suggest and Vote" poll for new features to the website.
I've been slowly building up the mailing list, but it takes time as the only way to capture real users emails is via website signups as Apple/Google give you ZERO information on who actually buys your app. Unless the user contacts me directly with a feature suggestion or bug report ( as happened last week from a first time harp player on iPad Pro in Germany) I get no customer feedback.
Hope that helps.
Always interested in feedback and hearing how people use it (or don't!) plus bug reports etc
If you've also got suggestions for using it better I'm all ears too, especially about how I could better communicate using HarpNinja if you are a self learner.
Cheers,
Komuso
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Paul Cohen aka Komuso Tokugawa
HarpNinja - Learn Harmonica Faster
Bringing the Boogie to the Bitstream
Last Edited by Komuso on Jan 24, 2016 7:03 PM
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mlefree
528 posts
Jan 24, 2016
11:32 AM
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I like Harp Ninja and have found several uses for it, for both diatonic and chromatic harmonicas. It's not perfect but it is a very valuable tool to achieve and maintain my harmonica skills. It even helps to maintain my ~interest~ in maintaining them.
As I've mentioned before Dave Barrett showed it to me at the SPAH in Denver last August. I'd spent lots of time in front of my Seiko tuner but it had been a while. Still I was confident in my bending accuracy.
I tried HN with my carry A SP20. Two things became immediately apparent. My bends needed help and HN seemed like a useful and intriguing tool to do it. On first blush it had what looked looked like many useful features but most importantly it provided great, dynamic visual feedback as I played. Information about the layout of the notes available and a little digital tuner that pops over the note you are playing and displays how accurate you are at hitting it. I purchased HN as soon as I got home from the meeting.
Here are a few things I have learned about using HN.
- It's fun. That's real important to me. I've been playing a decade and a half and I've been around the horn a few times in terms of learning resources from ancient times to the present. I've seen so many book/CD combos or Youtube follow along videos that my eyes quickly glaze over any more. But HN gives me immediate ~personal~ feedback rather than reading about, listening to or watching someone else do it cannot. That element of engagement elevates my laptop to almost a personal harmonica fitness trainer.
- It's clunky and inconvenient to use and has very little in the way of written documentation and that is embedded deeply in the app so you can't read it and use HN simultaneously. There are, as Komuso says, a number of explanatory Youtube videos but they are jumbled in terms of what version they target. It gets confusing when the video talks about a feature your version doesn't have or is different. As a long-time end-user software developer I'm admittedly picky about these things. Half my life was spent doing technical writing producing user manuals for the software my engineers developed. I suggest Komuso do that for HN. As the developer it's likely that he knows the software so intimately that he can't see how clumsy it is to use. Writing a user's manual would immediately correct that and guide him in writing better user apps. HN is also not a good software "citizen," at least for a Windows environment. It works only in full screen mode and cannot be minimized. You have to manually return to the toolbar to select another program and HN stays put in the background. I imagine that's a limitation of the way it's ported to different environments but I've never seen a HN smart phone app.
- HN has a number of functions (Dojos) but only one is useful for any but a beginning player. The "Songs" Dojo might be useful for a beginner but I find it just "cutesy." The "Circle of Fifths" Dojo would be a good teaching tool for someone who doesn't have it memorized. The "Keyboard" Dojo is the second most useful. Like Komosu says it can also be used to test intonation but...
- The HN super star is the "Harmonica" Dojo. It too is clumsy to set up as you have to exit the Dojo to change harmonica key, position, scale or chord. It would be so much more convenient to be able to change those parameters right in the Dojo. I like to try the same exercise on different harps and it's the long way around the horn to get there. That's the bad news. The good news is that once those parameters are set, the Harmonica Dojo is that personal trainer I spoke of. I won't go into details of how to use it but highlight the features I find useful.
- Of course the main thrust is the roving tuner. It's not a tuner you'd tune your harmonicas with. It's a floating tuner that you use in live time to refine the intonation of your bends. You ask, "why not just use a guitar tuner?" To me there are several reasons. I got, in some respects, off on the wrong foot because found it so much more easy to learn and play by ear that I got lazy and skipped past a lot of "theory." Also, I am very much visually oriented. A life-long amateur photographer and an expert in medical imaging technology, that's how I operate in the world. So having that graphic of the harmonica and the names of the available notes is something that I need to tattoo on my brain. HN helps me do that.
And that's before I play a note. That's when the fun and excitement begins. Weall know that it's challenging to hit those bent notes spot-on. Practicing with a regular tuner its all too easy to for me to dink around until I hit the target note and call it good. HN lets you know with changing colors when you get close and gives you a satisfyingly blank display when you are on target. It's kind of like gambling. It begs you to keep going if you aren't "winning" and it gets intoxicating when you do. Either way it spurs you on to trying again or switching notes.
Then there are the ancillary tools in the Harmonica Dojo. These have much more appeal to me at my level of experience than the Songs Dojo, for example. Depending on the parameters you've applied in the Settings screen, you can highlight the notes of a number of different scales (and hence positions) and they're right in the Dojo so you don't have to leave to change them. This is a great way to explore different scales and modes. The target notes are highlighted and the usual mini tuner pops up over them as you negotiate the scale.
This saves a lot of work for me looking up and displaying or printing out this information. All that is quite disruptive to my practice session. Once you learn your way around HN the pain of dealing with its clumsiness as as a software app fades and you're able to concentrate on the real matter at hand.
You can easily record and replay a practice run with the built-in audio recorder. Listening to yourself is an essential part of learning to play and it's easy in HN. Once again because it's integrated into the Dojo, there's no fiddling with an external recorder or app. (But I'll admit, once I get a head of steam in a session it's easy to forget to do it.)
Harp Ninja is deeper and wider than you think on cursory examination. Sure, my HN wish-list is long but that wouldn't be the case were it not to have such current appeal and future potential. I've stated a few gripes but to me HN is a diamond in the rough and well worth my $30 investment.
Nice work, Komuso, and keep going!
Michelle
PS: As a newb chromatic player, I find the Chromatic section of HN similarly useful in learning scales, spotting enharmonics, etc.
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Last Edited by mlefree on Jan 24, 2016 8:27 PM
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SuperBee
3286 posts
Jan 24, 2016
12:36 PM
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That is good. Thank you Michelle. I believe I can relate to the experience you have outlined but have had somewhat less determination.
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Komuso
661 posts
Jan 24, 2016
4:05 PM
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@Michelle
Many thanks for the awesome detailed feedback and UX analysis
re: UX
I'd be the first to admit it's not in the "Don't make me think" zone (yet!). Clunky is as good a word as any, and there is a short learning curve to get to grips with HarpNinja before it "clicks".
Partly this was driven by technical limitations of the development platform (https://unity3d.com/) UI tools at the time, but with recent releases this has gotten a lot better opening up more UX/UI options for me.
UX design is top of my list (and it's a looooooooong list) for V3. I did some changes with HarpNinja Diatonic, but it's only part way there too.
I've been upskilling a lot on UX design the last couple of years and realize how important it is. It's also probably the hardest part of design, so all this feedback is extremely helpful - because that's where UX design starts.
I know what you mean about the settings. In an earlier version they were on the main screen but I changed them to a separate screen as a trade off for multi-platform use. It still niggles me a little too, as the flow is better on the one screen. The trade-off was in practice terms you generally tend to stick to one scale/key (for example) for at least a period of time. The chord buttons are an effort to make this easier to use for that aspect, but they also need more options for easily switching to different chord types.
re: Docs/Videos
Noted.
re: HarpNinja Smartphone app
As mentioned above, that would be this HarpNinja Diatonic
Please note the differences in features. Smaller screen means some of the features were just not a good UX at that screen size, like the song mode, so they were dropped.
re: Windows
You can switch between full screen and windowed mode, with different resolutions, on the initial startup dialog.
@Superbee
Can you explain what it is you need help with?
Music theory? Scales knowledge? Chord theory? or ?
You're obviously a more experienced player, which is a secondary but important use case for HarpNinja.
I'm interested in understanding why/how HarpNinja is currently not helping you achieve that. It may not have those features at all, or it may but they are not articulated well enough early on to allow you to jump the learning curve.
I suspect this is the case, but what would YOU like to see to fix this?
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Paul Cohen aka Komuso Tokugawa
HarpNinja - Learn Harmonica Faster
Komuso's Music Website
Last Edited by Komuso on Jan 24, 2016 5:11 PM
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Harp Study
174 posts
Jan 24, 2016
6:01 PM
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Komuso and Michelle-
Thanks for the great responses. I know that the app/software has some great benefits that I'm currently not using. I think I just need to work it into my practice routine and give it some time. I'll take some of the tips mentioned here and put in some time during practice.
Thanks again.
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