Free mobile app to show tones and chords from live music in real-time

[bzamecnik]

Hi friends!

Please meet HarmonEye for Android.

I'm happy to announce the release of this unique mobile app that is able to listen to live music via microphone, analyze it in real-time and show you the tones and chords being played in a visual way. And it's free.

Maybe you have the same problem as me. Imagine an amateur musician who loves music, but neither has perfect pitch, nor has spent years in the music school mastering the technique and the theory.

When I'm learning a new song at home, jamming with friends or with a backing track or just listening to a great soundtrack, I'd like to know several things. The chords, so that I can join with guitar. The melody, so that I can sing or play a solo. And the key, so that I can improvize. Or I'm just curious why the song sounds so strange or beautiful.

Best musicians can pick it by ear and play instantly with the band. Skilled musicians sit down for a while and transcibe it or find a sheet music and pick it from the paper. The rest of us maybe download some lyrics with chords and a tab and try to pick the melody and rhythm from the recording. But not all music is available already in notation. And even then decrypting the lots of note/chord symbols might be time-consuming for the untrained.

So I decided to make an app to help with this and put all my passion and technical expertise into it. I believe in the power of visualization. Most people use their sight all day and have it far more trained than hearing. So I decided to make it visual. It is called HarmonEye, since you can see and understand the harmony in music using your eyes.



HarmonEye is like a tuner on steroids - you can see even multiple tones at once in case a chord is played. There's no staff with symbols just 12 tones in a circle - it's like a piano keyboard rolled into a single octave.

Since it works in real-time you don't have to open a file and wait. You just see what you hear, right now. You can see how tones move in melody or which tones stay and which move in a chord progression. Also you don't need music education to see what's going. Anyone can use it, no matter if you play piano, guitar, saxophone, sing or just listen. With this "perfect pitch" in pocket you can go and explore the world of sound around.

This app is there for you. Free of charge. You can download it for Android and Mac OS X now, other platforms are planned. If you like it tell your friends. Or let me know - you might just say thanks or tell me what's your pain and can be improved. At present, it is already very interesting thing but there is a long way to make it perfect. This is just a beginning. I have a whole bunch of ideas how to make it even better. But I need you. Every single word matters. Thank you.

Enjoy!

Created with love and passion by Bohumir Zamecnik in Czech Republic

[Tahitijack]

ok....i'll be the first to say it...

Your very first post on this forum is about your product?

[bluzuner]

My "every single word" is this.....

Advertisements belong in the marketplace, not here.

[mc1]

given that it's a freebie, what's the problem? it looks like something that has been asked for many, many times.

[SongwriterFan]

Very nice . . though where's the CHORD part?

That looks like a C chord with an extraneous B? But the B's actually stronger than the G?

I guess it's a Cmaj7 without a lot of the 5th?

It'd be even cooler if it could make an attempt at the chord (in context).

[mc1]

Originally Posted by SongwriterFan

Very nice . . though where's the CHORD part?

That looks like a C chord with an extraneous B? But the B's actually stronger than the G?

I guess it's a Cmaj7 without a lot of the 5th?

It'd be even cooler if it could make an attempt at the chord (in context).

i'd guess it is showing the relative loudness of each tone. i don't mind not seeing the chord but i'd like to know what octave each of the notes is in.

[robj144]

Originally Posted by SongwriterFan

Very nice . . though where's the CHORD part?

That looks like a C chord with an extraneous B? But the B's actually stronger than the G?

I guess it's a Cmaj7 without a lot of the 5th?

It'd be even cooler if it could make an attempt at the chord (in context).

Pitch Lab has a mode where it attempts to determine the chord and another mode where it determines the notes like this app does.

[TheGuitarKraut]

Tried this app a few minutes ago, always showed me 4 different chords when playing a "G"


…ahh sorry, read it was supposed to indicate the single notes you play, when you play a chord.

[bzamecnik]

Thank you for your replies. They're helpful. The important thing is that the visual graph shows the intensity of each tone (with a sub-tone precision eg. for vibrato) no matter what the octave is. Recognizing the octave is in many cases possible but for this graph is not important since the octave information is discarded.

I'd like the app also to show in future the timeline where the octave information might be useful. Also it seems that a demonstation video would be really helpful (screen capturing works for me only on desktop, not yet on Android...).

For now HarmonEye does not attempt to detect tones and chords automatically. It just givens the listeners good visual cue to do this jobs if they wish. The current priority is to filter the signal so that the tones are clearly perceptible visually even if the tones have rich harmonics or there is percussion. Then with good input data the recognition algorithms can be implemented and they might be much simpler than for raw sound data.

I know this is not the only app to work with audio. There's plenty of them, each suitable for some purpose, some condition and with some price tag. For me the important thing was processing live sound in real-time on a mobile device, doing the analysis robustly and showing the results visually. Unfortunately there was no single app meeting those requirements. So I simple started to play with it on my own.

HarmonEye is a free app and I have no money from it. If you really like it and wish to accelerate its development you might support it. I'd be very grateful. It is by no means final and still it is a result of many months of development, typically during night. To be honest the first idea is several years old.

By no means I'd like to spam you or be rude. I'd just like to share a nice tool for musicians. You have nothing to lose. You are the people that have the power to say what you like the app to be in future . Isn't it cool. That's about it.

Thanks and keep in touch

Bohumir

[ljguitar]

hi folks...

I like the idea, and I'll let you guys be the BETA testers. Let us know when it gets close to 'landing'.

[BEADGCF]

Originally Posted by bzamecnik

Thank you for your replies. They're helpful. The important thing is that the visual graph shows the intensity of each tone (with a sub-tone precision eg. for vibrato) no matter what the octave is. Recognizing the octave is in many cases possible but for this graph is not important since the octave information is discarded.

I'd like the app also to show in future the timeline where the octave information might be useful. Also it seems that a demonstation video would be really helpful (screen capturing works for me only on desktop, not yet on Android...).

For now HarmonEye does not attempt to detect tones and chords automatically. It just givens the listeners good visual cue to do this jobs if they wish. The current priority is to filter the signal so that the tones are clearly perceptible visually even if the tones have rich harmonics or there is percussion. Then with good input data the recognition algorithms can be implemented and they might be much simpler than for raw sound data.

I know this is not the only app to work with audio. There's plenty of them, each suitable for some purpose, some condition and with some price tag. For me the important thing was processing live sound in real-time on a mobile device, doing the analysis robustly and showing the results visually. Unfortunately there was no single app meeting those requirements. So I simple started to play with it on my own.

HarmonEye is a free app and I have no money from it. If you really like it and wish to accelerate its development you might support it. I'd be very grateful. It is by no means final and still it is a result of many months of development, typically during night. To be honest the first idea is several years old.

By no means I'd like to spam you or be rude. I'd just like to share a nice tool for musicians. You have nothing to lose. You are the people that have the power to say what you like the app to be in future . Isn't it cool. That's about it.

Thanks and keep in touch

Bohumir

Good job, Bohumir. Interesting and creative.

Don't mind the skepicism as it is sometime warranted.

I will be interested to see other comments.

Good luck.

DK

[ecguitar44]

Originally Posted by SongwriterFan

Very nice . . though where's the CHORD part?

That looks like a C chord with an extraneous B? But the B's actually stronger than the G?

I guess it's a Cmaj7 without a lot of the 5th?

It'd be even cooler if it could make an attempt at the chord (in context).

Actually, those notes could be a lot of different chords...depending on how "out there" you want to go with it.

It would be almost impossible to create an app that could adequately NAME the chord being played. Identifying the notes is a pretty good start though!

Cool idea!

[gfa]

Looks like a cool idea, thank you. I look forward to trying it out.

[fishstick_kitty]

Awesome idea...and a nice way to visualize the information!! That must've been some cool programming to do .

[devellis]

I think it's useful. I think of it s a learning tool. With a rudiment of theory, you can visualize the components of various chords and figure out what the chord likely is. It's not a magical tell-me-how-to-play-it app but I still think it has useful applications. And it's free, for goodness sake.