[yoodit]

Hello,

I've been hard at work on a project that I would like to share with you. It's called YouTab and its what I believe is a great way to sync lyrics and chords with music. The smart guys I work with use a nifty algorithm to "listen" to the music and in a lot of cases it does a really good job in getting the chords. But since technology has its limits there's an editor application that lets you fix what is wrong.

I am hoping that this will develop into a useful resource for musicians and music lovers and I'd love to hear what you think about it and get ideas as to what you might like to see next.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

[jameshush]

You should send an email to the guys at http://chordify.net/ . One of the people involved in that project has a PHD in computer science with focus on analysing music with code. They'd be great people to team up with for you.

[elwell]

Chordify works pretty well. One criticism: it doesn't handle meter or speed modulations mid-song very well.

[euphoria]

The algorithm for generating chords does seem to work very well for simple songs, and at least makes a good stab at more complicated songs, for the guitar-driven songs I tried.

In terms of presentation and editing, I believe the guys at http://www.soundslice.com/ have a solution that is much better. I would love to see a synthesis of these two technologies, with YouTab producing a first draft of a sheet for SoundSlice based on any video.

[pimlottc]

Very cool! You've already captured a few hours of my life.

A bit of feed back on the editor -

First, in general, it's a little... mysterious? It's not immediately clear exactly what clicking in difference places will do, and it's easy to click the wrong the and have the song jump around or a element shift or something, so it ends up feeling a bit twitchy. One thing that might help is better mouse cursors, like the i-bar for moving the current play position line, or the hand for grabbing-and-repositioning.

I get what's going on with the timeline being split in three horizontal rows, but I still find it kind of confusing, especially when working near the edges.

Also, scrolling the timeline backwards is awkward when the music is playing, as it brings the play line closer to the end of visible timeline which causes the whole thing to jump forward, negating your progress. I think a zoomed-out preview box would be helpful with highlights marking what's currently visible (like graphics editors often have). I did see you can move around in the song in the player controls but it doesn't show the blocks.

Keyboard shortcuts would be very helpful, particular for fine-tuning block positioning. Perhaps even you could have a key to mark positions during playback for later use in aligning blocks? In fact, in general it would be helpful if you could align blocks to one another, or to the beat.

As a non-musician, I would find it useful if you could "play back" the chord track, for comparison with the song.

[don_draper]

Very nice. You know one feature I would love to see are strumming patterns. It's nice to see the chords but it's tough for an amateur to identify the strumming patterns.

[yoodit]

I have been thinking a lot on how to implement this feature. Showing it easy enough, but creating strumming patterns is a bit of a challenge...

This is my favorite feature though.

[jordanwallwork]

Don't implement strumming patterns! I've watched my wife trying to learn guitar pursing her lips saying up-down-up-up-down to herself and it just sounds robotic. Once you can play the chords smoothly enough strumming just happens. Even better, everyone seems to strum their own way (i cant sing so i strum a lot to compensate, whereas i have a friend with a beautiful voice who barely touches the strings)

[philbarr]

That up-down-up-up-down whilst keeping the hand moving sets up different rythms and is an important skill. Especially if you're trying to learn a particular song - which will sound totally different if you get that wrong. Of course, you can get away without learning it like a lot of stuff on the guitar but you just won't be as good.

[somehnusername]

IMHO, strumming patterns are something that you (as a beginner) need to experiment with to see what sounds just right. Eventually you end up not thinking about it anymore.

[dfmi]

Maybe an algorithm that could identify for ex first played note - meaning bass or first string and continue the same with other chords. After that you know where to start. Also there are only few strumming patterns and if you know the measure it should be easier. Just an idea.

[sinwave]

Would it be useful to see this on a grid? I find it's much more intuitive to coordinate strumming with my sense of hearing.

[mdturnerphys]

Very cool—thanks for sharing!

One feature that might be nice would be to allow for transposing or denoting that a capo should be used.

[skeletonjelly]

Yep absolutely this!

Example:

https://www.youtab.me/music/_vAC1WCDa4n/band-of-horses/no-on...

[raverbashing]

Great, it's a nice project

However, it seems to have "gone crazy" with this song (which is hard) https://www.youtab.me/music/gkE29Y2PPdd/one-without/withered...

But this one it got very well (it's easy) https://www.youtab.me/music/zGvQx6E4KO4/ruth-laredo/mozart-r... I don't remember all the details but it is pretty close to the original

[glynjackson]

Wow, this is an amazing piece of work.

I tried a few songs. It was not clear you could make the screen larger but once I did I just loved the way it counts the beats.

The second song I tried did not work. It stated the song could not be analysed because it was not public, although it was in the search results.

The last song: https://www.youtab.me/search/arctic-monkeys-mar it did not do so well on, but I guess this is where the community comes in.

[elsigh]

Certainly love the concept! And the UI flow and automatic lyrics-to-chords feature appears to have worked on my song just great.

But... it doesn't seem to play, which is kind of a bummer.. Maybe the server is being swamped?

https://www.youtab.me/music/XnWT_wslaBc/lindsey-simon/its-a-...

[pbhjpbhj]

Plays fine for me but the start of the verses are completely out of synch lyrics->music. By the end of the verse it's fall in to synch however, then in the next verse it falls out' again - appears to have problems handling the long gaps with no lyrics.

[yoodit]

Hey there, the links works for me. Loaded very quickly, the server is doing fine. Could be a glitch, try again please?

[hammock]

Worked great on the first song I tried. Thereafter it crashed my browser several times (FF 31). Would be awesome if you could mix in/out with the actual song a MIDI track of the chords themselves, just to verify that they are correct.

[darren884]

This is a great web app! I have been searching for something like this for when looking for chords! Really great job!

[golergka]

It would be really nice to be able to download the chords in midi.

[adamnemecek]

Is this a proprietary algorithm?

[fredsanford]

1) Allow me to open links in a new tab. Without this, I'll never use your site.

2) The back button is there for a reason and I like to use it. Again, without this, I'll never use your site.

3) Search for '"billy preston" circles' (without the single quotes). From the results, choose "D&F - Will It Go Round In Circles, Billy Preston - [Dave and..." -- Nothing happens on the resulting page other than chords are generated. The chords are close to right (IIRC) but, you cannot listen to the song to transcribe the lyrics. Zoom in and out works.