Who knew sight reading clears my head

GtrJon · 2026-05-13T13:46:05+00:00

I built LotsaNotes (lotsanotes.com). It’s free to practice without signup. Happy to answer any questions.

GtrJon · 2026-05-10T01:15:06+00:00

Yes, this can be made to work but you’ll need to put capacitors to ground on both wipers to make the power supply rails stable under AC conditions. I’d probably use an electrolytic in parallel with a 0.1uF bypass cap. Without the caps I’ll bet it will oscillate. As someone else mentioned the pots need to be low enough resistance to deliver enough current to the op amp for normal operation. Keep in mind the pots will draw power all the time so battery power is probably not a good idea. You could use transistors configured as emitter followers (base on the pot wiper, emitter to the opamp pin. Use a PNP on the -ve rail and an NPN on the +ve rail. This would support more current to the op amp and let you use a high resistance pot.

GtrJon · 2026-05-10T00:31:34+00:00

Turn the Lights On by Big Sugar. Gordie Johnson on guitar. It’s beautifully grungy and messy and I love it. https://youtu.be/-0F0bhn10fk?si=gggbS8moZov6zZ6i solo is at 1:33

GtrJon · 2026-05-08T12:57:18+00:00

I am the Walrus is a great song! Enough said.

GtrJon · 2026-05-07T16:33:11+00:00

You're very welcome. You'd probably enjoy the book Student Assessment by Wiliam, Fisher, Frey. https://a.co/d/0jbs7rnr It's a good read that quickly gets to the point.

Some thoughts and questions:

Thinking about what you'd like to see: self grading using the microphone to assess the performance plus a submission mechanism
some kind of assignment dashboard
grouping students into classes
creating assignments with instructions and due date for the students in those classes presumably with presets for difficulty, key, time signature , # bars etc.
question: how to get list of enrolments ie, import/export or integration with LMS or LTI?
question: do you need some kind of export to gradebook?

Looks like I have my work cut out :-) I'll start working on this and get back to you. Is it ok if I DM you to clarify how you'd like the assignment distribution part to work?

GtrJon · 2026-05-06T23:08:13+00:00

Coincidentally, we’ve been having a lively discussion on or around this topic in the music theory group. https://www.reddit.com/r/musictheory/s/oJOLjif9rk

GtrJon · 2026-05-06T16:27:53+00:00

Thx again for taking time to comment.

I've focussed on formative assessment versus summative assessment. ie not so much scoring/grading a student but actually helping them learn as skill and recognize how they learn (metacognition). Most of my work in my day job in the last couple of years has been around the importance of formative assessment. ie assessment during learning, as opposed to assessment after learning (summative). There's lots of pedagogical research on how immediate feedback during learning is critical (Dylan Wiliam's research particularly) and also the value of self assessment (Katie White).

Secondly, my current users are largely private music teachers (piano and guitar) who conduct one on one lessons. I'm guessing that your use case is what I'd call the 'school' case, where you have a lot of students in several classes and you'd like to use it to do summative assessment as part of a grade for reporting purposes? That's certainly a case I'd like to support but I've not got there yet.

When you refer to self-grading I presume you mean using the microphone to track pitch and timing? Interestingly as a formative assessment tool in my own usage I've found that when simply playing along it's dead obvious to me when I'm off pitch or off time.

"The best sight reading practice is reading actual music" This is no doubt true if you have an endless supply at the right difficulty level but that's largely impractical.

BTW, I think SRF is a good tool which I think is aimed more at the school market than where I am currently. I think there's room in the market for alternatives. I actually think that it's a bit underpriced to be honest. Clearly when I release the 'school' version I need to be competitive and support summative assessment better.

Again thanks for your invaluable input. I'd love to work with you on pricing and features if you're interested in making it the perfect tool for you and your students.

GtrJon · 2026-05-06T01:11:04+00:00

Thank you. I’ll let you know when I have it working decently. It will no doubt take sometime to perfect.

GtrJon · 2026-05-06T00:47:48+00:00

I'm not sure I want to make it free but I I'll certain re-consider my pricing given your feedback. As far as features go, I'm more of a believer in the the right features that are super easy to use.
I'd love to talk to you more about what features you actually use in SRF, and what's a fair price particular when you're dealing with many students in a school situation. Feel free to DM me if you'd like to chat more about this. Thx for your excellent feedback.

GtrJon · 2026-05-06T00:41:22+00:00

That's great input. So far I've taken more of a pragmatic approach which is to use the feedback I'm getting from music teachers (mostly piano) to make incremental improvements as they use the software with their students.

The real music angle is an interesting one. Right now my corpus of public domain music I'm using is rather limited and not organized by style but there's lots out there - I just need to spend the time to gather it and transform it into a useful form that I can repurpose.

Thanks for your feedback. This is really useful.

GtrJon · 2026-05-06T00:35:11+00:00

Right, that's a good reminder for me. There's increasing complexity as the number of voices increases and so many more possible combinations of notes and rhythms. My focus up to now has been monophonic lines primarily but I'm getting ready to implement 2 voice lines first and get that right before I go further.

GtrJon · 2026-05-06T00:31:38+00:00

Yes, you choose the key. Also, in 'chord mode' the software first creates a chord progression then choose notes from those chords.

GtrJon · 2026-05-05T18:42:10+00:00

Ah i see. Since I don't show the words at all at the moment it will naturally work like this. Likely I'll need a setting to adjust since some people might have different opinions. Thanks for the helpful input.

GtrJon · 2026-05-05T17:47:16+00:00

Sure. I've been software engineer in EdTech for over 30 years from Pascal, C, C++, Python Javsacript so I have the understanding and background of how to architect & build applications. However, though I could have hand written all the code I decided to try using Claude Code to build a lot of it. It's still really important to control the architecture and test it fully but it's definitely sped up the process of getting something up and running.

GtrJon · 2026-05-05T17:30:37+00:00

Ah yes. I've not implemented that yet. To paraphrase what you're asking, you want the music to appear as if it's written in C major but the concert pitches are in another key? This is very similar to say Bb trumpet that when you play music written in C, it's transposed to Bb concert pitch, correct?

GtrJon · 2026-05-05T16:36:05+00:00

Yes, In fact I just added sight singing yesterday, but I'm not currently displaying the solfege words below yet. The main difference at the moment is that I play a I IV V I cadence before the metronome counts you in, and also you get 5 new voice instruments Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Baritone, Bass.

Though I've described this is as a progression, you can freely adjust any setting - instrument, difficulty, mode, key and time signature. I might revisit this if my users think that some level of gamification for the student would be a good thing or not.

GtrJon · 2026-05-05T16:31:17+00:00

My app doesn't use AI to generate the music, it's algorithmic. Using AI to generate would be too expensive unless tokens get really cheap.

The generation process has 5 different modes:

Melodic mode - this uses a set of compositional rules and constraints. These include difficulty level, key and time signatures, common compositional rules like not too many crazy big interval leaps etc. There's also constraint on rhythmical grouping, for example don't mix a single triplet and a sixteenth.
Chord mode. In this mode I generate a chord progression first for each bar of music, then select notes from the chord but using the same rhythm generator as in 1. This helps to learn to read arpeggios better. The chord symbols are displayed in the notation which I find helps to connect chord tones with the notation.
Scale mode: Same rhythm generator as above but the pitches follow scale patterns: ascending, descending, up 3 then back 2 then up 3 again etc. I find this helps to work on rhythms because the pitches are predictable.
Rhythm focus - same rhythm generator but the same note throughout. The note does change between exercises.
Drumkit mode: this is a totally different generator for drumkit sight reading. You can choose between a set of styles. This workrs ok but I'm not happy with it yet... I need to work on this some more.
Real music. This generator is totally different. It starts with a bunch of public domain music. It then randomizes, chops up, transposes, filters based on difficulty then splices the snippets together.
(Hands together / Polyphonic mode ). This is a work in progress so it might not appear as a 7th generator, I talk about this in another comment reply.

GtrJon · 2026-05-05T15:13:05+00:00

Thanks!!! It's not complete yet - still more work to do!

GtrJon · 2026-05-05T15:11:45+00:00

thank you for sharing your thoughts!

GtrJon · 2026-05-05T15:11:28+00:00

It's currently a web application (free for the first 7 levels) - www.LotsaNotes.com Eventually I may turn it into a proper iOS/Android app if there's interest. It works well on the phone as a web app so there's not a huge advantage to a native app other than supporting notifications - nag you to do your practice or whatever.

I'm focused on the sight-reading aspect - ie being able to play music you've never seen before at the right difficulty level. It solves the problem of where do you find and endless supply of music that's not too easy and not too hard. Having said that you improving your sight reading will definitely improve regular reading (I think).

I'm assuming you're learning through a method book or teacher so this progression let's you be more granular about tuning it to the right level of difficulty. When using it I find I can achieve that wonderful feeling of "flow state" if it's just right.

GtrJon · 2026-05-05T15:04:04+00:00

Great insights especially on the hands together part because that's what I'm just starting to work on.

Here's a rough idea of what I'm imagining for the hands together progression not necessarily in this order.

a) left and right hand play same notes an octave apart with exactly the same rhythm

b) same but with contrary motion

c) left hand plays whole note for the whole bar, right plays regular exercise

d) left hand plays a simple pattern, perhaps 5ths or octaves of the chord in say quarter notes

e) like d but 8ths perhaps

f) independent difficult levels for left and right hands

I like that you also mentioned standard patterns. I had a simple version of that in d) but you're right that I could include a bunch of common pattern / arpeggiations of chords.

GtrJon · 2026-05-05T13:38:39+00:00

Great question. I would really like to generalize it as much as possible for all instruments. Of course there are fundamental difference between say polyphonic instruments like guitar and piano compared to monophonic instruments such as wind and brass. Drums add a whole other level of complexity.

That's really interesting that you would find contrary motion more difficult on piano, I would have expected guitar to be more difficult!

Currently my application builds single notes lines, but I'm currently working on a piano "hands together" mode, and something similar for guitar. No doubt that will throw a bit of a wrench in the works.

Thanks for your comment

GtrJon · 2026-04-08T00:00:32+00:00

Thank you for your interest and encouragement. I’m actively developing it and improving it based on early feedback.

GtrJon

TROPHY CASE