[pganssle]

So I built the original web app for this (it's not stolen, it's open source and I told OP they could fork it). I've been glad to see it getting more attention over the years.

One note of caution here is that with my older son we did this for a few years and it hasn't really worked as expected. He can identify all the chords perfectly every time, but when we started testing single notes, he was worse than chance at it. In fact, when I activated the secret Easter egg "red only" mode, he was worse than me at choosing between C E and G (though with practice he can now do it perfectly).

I'm working on a version where you can identify single notes instead of just chords.

Also, I gave a talk about this a few years ago and the talk is on YT if anyone is interested: https://youtu.be/l2Z6uEsx9lE

A decent chunk of my PyCon 2025 talk is also about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNbq-o5HODY

[a_c]

Did it help your son to study music?

[pganssle]

I'm not sure I understand the question, but I can answer both interpretations:

1. Did it (the chord trainer app) help my son when he was studying music? Not as far as I can tell. He has also been taking piano lessons and sometimes it helps a little with music theory to tie it back to the chords, but I don't think there's much transfer learning going on. He seems to have a good ear, but my other son is not picking up chords nearly as quickly, and I know a bunch of other kids have bounced off this app, so my older son may just already naturally have a good ear.

2. Did it (studying music) help my son (with identifying chords)? I don't think so. He made pretty steady progress in the chords before he started piano, and after he started piano it didn't get any easier. He also mentions things like, "The chords sound different on the piano", which makes me think I need to have more varied samples (even though the book says that consistency is key and you should practice on the same piano holding the chords for the same duration every time).

[a_c]

Hey thanks for taking the time to respond, appreciate it! I left the comment in a whim. I meant to ask 1. Do your son find it easier to identify chord because of the app? Do they, when hearing a passage of music, or a chord, say something like "oh this is a minor chord"? I know this is hard to isolate as there are so many confounding factors.

I'm asking because my sons started picking up piano lessons. I think the way their piano is taught relies to much on their eye. They are looking at music much more than listening to it. So am curious if there are ways to trigger their interest in hearing.

Again thanks for your reply!

[paytonjjones]

Thanks for commenting and for doing all the hard work here! (For reference, the story here is that I was using pganssle's web app as a PWA, but encountered some snags on mobile that led me to make a PR, which eventually turned into a fork / TypeScript rewrite at pganssle's suggestion)

I was surprised when I learned about the Eguchi method recommending chords, as I assumed training single notes would be easier. A single note mode sounds like a great idea, I'll put it on the list to add to Bsharp as well. I was also thinking of adding Guitar sounds if I can find or create some good samples.

Maybe also an "identify the root of the chord" mode could be helpful to bridge from the chord sounds to single notes?

[pganssle]

I can't believe I didn't put this in the original repo, but this is where I got the piano samples from: https://theremin.music.uiowa.edu/mis.html

They have guitar samples as well, but it was a bit more complicated because with a piano you have one key per note, there's exactly one way to play C4♯ or whatever, but with a guitar the notes are overlapping, so C4♯ might be played on the B string or up on the G string, and I didn't really know how to choose samples for interpolation.

> Maybe also an "identify the root of the chord" mode could be helpful to bridge from the chord sounds to single notes?

There is already a mode (it might turn on automatically for "white" chords after you reach black chords, I forget) that follows on to identifying one of the three notes, chosen at random, from the chord you just heard. That is what I'm doing with my son now and it seems to be bridging the gap, but I think a direct "which note is this" thing might work better for him.

That said, we're pretty far afield of the original Eguchi method at this point. According to the book, kids are supposed to just naturally understand the nature of notes as you improve. The book also mentions that the advanced students are doing stuff like listening to arbitrary combinations of up to 6 notes (not chords, just random combinations), but they don't really explain how that works. There's a decent amount more to do, but given that I'm not 100% convinced that it even works, I'm not sure how much it's worth it to do it.