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General Discussion: EigenTab key/scale/chord helper app available

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written by: mikemilton

John, the idea of stepping through is neat. That said, even without show me or stepping, EigenTab makes working out things much easier

written by: jsn

Sun, 3 Apr 2011 10:11:00 +0100 BST

When I first got my Pico I found it great for improvisation but extremely frustrating for playing pieces I had in books, in my head or on the backs of envelopes (literally) that were essentially chord sequences. This was mainly due to not being a trained musician and being able to look and say, "oh, that's clearly Eb dorian". So, as I am a programmer, I wrote myself an application to help me - which I am now sharing freely with the rest of you.

EigenTab takes a set of chords and tells you which key/scale to configure on your Eigenharp. It also shows you the key-shapes to play for those chords. It can be used online or can be save to use offline on the desktop or iPad/iPhone.

It has a few limitations currently:
- only does scales with up to 8-notes
- doesn't allow for custom key layouts
- only been applied to the Pico. If someone will give me a Tau and/or Alpha I will test those, too :-)

I am very interested in feedback and open to any suggestions on improvements/corrections.

Right now my to do list includes:
- scales with more than 8 notes
- custom scales (if one doesn't exist EigenTab tells you what to configure)
- hide editor controls so you can get 'pretty-printable' chord diagrams
- button to show all applicable chord diagrams for a key/scale
- ability to add 'lyric rows' so you can have words, too
- prioritization of key/scale by greatest range of notes



written by: barnone

Sun, 3 Apr 2011 23:11:26 +0100 BST

Well I for one tried it out and it's awesome.

Huge thanks for spending the time and sharing this.

The flexible scales are amazing for noodling, but I agree that getting bearings with other musicians and pieces of music can be challenging. This helps the training.

It's not so hard to extrapolate to the Alpha, but I can imagine something similar could be really useful eventually.


written by: jsn

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 07:20:16 +0100 BST

Thanks, Bar-none!

How could I make it better for Alpha/Tau owners?


written by: sfellner

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 09:42:42 +0100 BST

Thank you for your nice application and for sharing, John!
This is really great, tried it with the pico, and it is very helpful indeed. Before this, I cobbled chords mostly in chromatic scale. Your approach gives the built-in scales a new purpose for me as non-musician.
And the simple way to save a whole page is just genius.
Looking forward to see this extend to scales with 16 notes!
Stefan.


written by: mikemilton

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 11:59:36 +0100 BST

What a great idea and effective realization.

Cheers, m

Here is a bit of Alpha detail

The default Alpha keygroup uses similar blocks of 4 keys except they are 5 (or 4 / Tau?) courses wide instead of 2. The courses follow the scale pattern downward. So the 5th step in a scale pattern will be to the left and the next step will be below at all times.

Here is an Alpha C mapping.

Some time ago I played with the idea of chord diagrams which you can see here.

m


written by: jsn

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 12:18:03 +0100 BST

Thanks for the info, Mike.

So if I made it so you could see 2 rows for Pico, 4 for Tau and 5 for Alpha would that be helpful ? (i.e. 2x4, 4x4 and 5x4) With the option to see an extra block below (i.e. 2x8 for pico, 4x8 tau, 5x8 alpha)

thinking of adding 'gray' keys for alternate chord fingering


written by: mikemilton

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 13:27:24 +0100 BST

That would seem to be a reasonable extension.

Initially, I just wanted to visualize the layout. Then to make something like guitar diagrams. What I found, at least for myself, was that it was much easier to switch to chromatic and learn the song and I abandoned the work.

One thing that I observed from the exercise is that, depending on the preceding or following chord, it is sometimes easier to move across or down the keyboard... the whole exercise is (unsurprisingly) like working out guitar fingering.

Your effort is really interesting, particularly for anyone approaching the instrument fresh.

I wonder if it has the potential to spit out song-specific 'scales' that optimize (whatever that means) fingering. That might be particularly useful on the pico


written by: jsn

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 13:42:49 +0100 BST

As you have an Alpha, you have lots of keys so chromatic makes sense, then you get 'standard' chording. Us poor Pico guys need to squeeze as much as we can in :-)

I have found that this approach of key/scale gives me a much more flexibility and noodling space when improvising around a written song score. Many of the shapes (unsurprisingly) are the same so it's a music education in itself :-)

I am considering generating the 'scale' from the chords so you get the minimum number of keys - however, I'd've thought you'd miss some 'between' notes of interest. I'll try it as an experiment.

Currently, it recommends the 'simplest' scale in an arbitrary way. I will have a think about whether I can 'weight' the niceness of the chords by playability.


written by: mikemilton

Mon, 4 Apr 2011 14:20:28 +0100 BST

Chromatic certainly fits on the larger keyboards better, but scales are great for just noodling or improvising. If you are not playing the lead line you usually don't need the stray accidentals. A pico might be small, but that has advantages too.

I had thought at one point that it might make sense (for some specific applications) to make up 'scales' for a pico that simply map 4 chords to each 4 note segment. There are a whole lot of 4 chord songs, not to mention 3 or 2 chord songs where you could have side-by-side variations. In fact, if you stuck to triads, you could put any accidentals on the centre 4 keys.with the triads around them (or perhaps just reserve 2 keys for 'extra' notes.

The general question is how to optimally 'tile' the keygroup with appropriate notes considering the notes used, their sequence and the intent (backing, lead, both). Personally, I see the pico as an amazing, efficient, and elegant platform for this.


written by: jsn

Thu, 7 Apr 2011 21:22:05 +0100 BST

Just released v1.0.2 of EigenTab which has more scales and chords but also incorporates showing notes on keys - a good Idea from Stefan Fellner who not only suggested it but sent me some code!

eigentab.net


written by: barnone

Fri, 8 Apr 2011 16:07:20 +0100 BST

Very nice, I had to hit refresh in browser to get new version, looks like it cached old one.

Question, why the long list of scales like C minor, D minor, etc. Is that list cusomized to only those scales that can produce that chord? Just wondering if it is that smart.


written by: jsn

Fri, 8 Apr 2011 16:31:38 +0100 BST

Yes - found that bug on caching. Should be fine from now on.

And yes - it is that smart. As you add chords it only shows key/scale combos that can play all the chords.


written by: barnone

Fri, 8 Apr 2011 17:48:08 +0100 BST

That is very cool!!


written by: jsn

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 18:14:17 +0100 BST

Just released v1.0.3

Didn't realize EigenTab was going to be so popular and I'd get requests this quick!

Now:
- root note in a chord is highlighted red
- key/scale picker fits in a single screen (no scroll)


written by: mikemilton

Sat, 9 Apr 2011 13:31:55 +0100 BST

Early on there was a lot of dialog on the usefulness of even just visualizing keyboard layouts and this is much better.

So you stepped into a little puddle of pent-up demand - thanks.

I've found that, with other instruments you spend time learning that (fixed) instrument, but with the Eigenharp, you learn music!

hmmmm, think I'll tweet that

,


written by: barnone

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 18:11:40 +0100 BST

@jsn

btw, your link to "eigentab" above is broken.


written by: jsn

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 18:15:49 +0100 BST

Thanks! Fixed.

(imagine what my music sounds like when my typing is like that. urk)


written by: barnone

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 19:27:12 +0100 BST

Hey, playing the harp today and using eigentab. This is really sparking some more efficient exploration of different scales and modes.

So thanks again for this.


written by: jsn

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:38:15 +0100 BST

EigenTab v1.0.4 just released.

Now has 16 keys (full Pico), includes chromatic scale and alternate keys for chords.

I've sorted the internals so its now in a good state to do Tau/Alpha keygroups, which is next on my list. Then 'all chord diagrams' for a selected root/scale combo.


written by: sfellner

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 13:02:02 +0100 BST

Wow, this tool has now everything to fully explore Pico Layouts. I like the gray background for the second instance of a note. Thank you very much!

This would look also very well as a Tab in STAGE, to switch scale and tonic from there according to the key layout. Hey, I'm getting greedy again... EigenTab rocks!



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