[floatrock]

It's very western-focused, especially when you describe the chromatic scale as "modern music".

I would also lose the "from first principles" by-line. The pentatonic scale description was neat in that you talked about how frequencies that sound good together have certain clean ratios, but when you jumped to chromatic scale, there was nothing about how that was derived other than "filling in the blanks." I love the site in general, but the "from first principles" by-line implies a few things that are kinda missing. It's more accurate to call it a visual introduction to western music theory.

A while back this article popped up on HN: https://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v2 That one dived more into the physics and math that derive different music systems. As I was reading it, I wanted some interactivity like this. So well done! There's a lot of detail in there that could give you ideas for additional visualizations. It was also criticized here on HN a bit for also failing short of it's "first principles" promise, so worth finding and reading that discussion too.

The other thought I have is make the notes keyboard-playable. A lot of the examples are around playing notes together, and shifting between them using a mouse is too slow.

Awesome site overall!

[coldtea]

>It's very western-focused, especially when you describe the chromatic scale as "modern music".

99% of the music people write and listen to in the west is western-focused, and not even that adventurous at that, so this is a little moot point.

[lebca]

Sure, but even in western music the chromatic scale is considered to have been exhausted in the 20th century. Modern music has moved on to use other notes and sounds and in many cases is not even pitch-centric.

[coldtea]

>Sure, but even in western music the chromatic scale is considered to have been exhausted in the 20th century.

Yeah, but by people like Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and the like, or the wilder jazz guys. Not exactly what most people enjoy with a cup of coffee.

>Modern music has moved on to use other notes and sounds and in many cases is not even pitch-centric.

I think that for e.g. electronic, dance, experimental music etc, the chromatic scale/classical harmony/etc. is still a good foundation -- the additional not pitch-centric focus is either in rhythm (which is orthogonal) or in sample/noise-based focus which usually just goes with "if it sounds good, it's ok" kind of approach.

So, not much micro-tonal or other approaches going on in practice.

[TylerE]

It's out there if you open your eyes a bit. There is a TON of microtonality in blues guitar playing - they just don't use the $10 academic words for it.

[coldtea]

Well, I'm from a country where lots of folk music is microtonal.

That said, I don't consider the blues guitar playing a major example of microtonic music, $10 words or not. There are some elements, but you can find much more impressive examples in African music for one (part of which could have been inspiration for early gospel/blues musicians).

[joeyespo]

Have any examples you could link to? I'm very curious to hear what that sounds like.

[TylerE]

Just listen to any blues...there are string bends all over the place, and many of them aren't traditional western 12-tet intervals.

[dharma1]

That's a bit like saying the alphabet has been exhausted, so we should come up with new letters.

There is a huge, potentially indefinite space of possibilities of combinations of melody, harmony, rhythm and timbre, even within the constraints of the chromatic scale

[floatrock]

It's less from a be-PC point of view and more from a "what (in some sense arbitrary) decisions led to the western system of rules, and what are alternative ways of making rules?"

You know, understand that this isn't the only way of doing it, and see how the physics could be applied in other ways (and have been). Appreciate the full breadth of complexity out there.

[cuchoi]

While the name that you propose might be technically correct I would recommend sticking to the "from first principles" kind of name. This introduction was created for beginners (like me), and the name was attractive and was what I expected. Maybe a footnote with this information could be useful.

[floatrock]

Here's the HN discussion on that one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12085844

[tiglionabbit]

Yeah, it would be nice if he mentioned the ratios the chromatic scale is based on, as well as the difference between Pythagorean tuning and equal temperament. Honestly, I thought even the pentatonic scale should have been explained.