Rapidly developing skill in sight-reading in guitar and bass

[luster]

I am looking for a piece of open source, Linux, music-related software that:

takes song note data such as from MIDI files;
displays the notes one-at-a-time sequentially on the grand staff;
waits for input of the correct note (or name only, C, D, E, F, G, A, or B) from an attached analog guitar or bass;
then displays the next note.

I feel that such a piece of software would be a useful tool for rapidly developing skill in playing and reading music on these instruments.

I looked for a while via the search engines, but couldn't seem to figure out the right keyword searches to get past the robot sales bots that feed back the search terms but contain nothing at the links of any relevance to my search.

Is anybody aware of any software that does this?

Thanks.

[Vixus]

Don't think this exists.

The hard part in something like this is clean conversion of frequency to pitch which isn't always so easy.

[Pablo]

You might like Nootka
http://nootka.sourceforge.net/

[luster]

Don't think this exists.

The hard part in something like this is clean conversion of frequency to pitch which isn't always so easy.

It wouldn't have to have a super-fast response detecting the notes; I imagine this program being of value mainly in learning the note positions on the instruments as they appear in standard notation. At least that's how I envision using it.

I haven't officially programmed a complete discreet application in many years, but I don't see that it would be extremely difficult to do. The determination of the note (it's frequency) could be sloppy and slow. Notes with a lot of harmonics and overtones might be difficult to parse, but I've seen some pretty impressive MIDI parsing in Rakarrack and Guitarix, for instance. In most of these MIDI parsing stuffs such as Rakarrack and Guitarix, the focus is on being workable in real time playing; in this software I am imagining, the note (frequency) parsing wouldn't have to be extremely fast.

I'm pretty sure I could do it in Puredata, so if I have to write the application myself, that's how I plan to do it.

If I can find a readymade, I would be very happy.

[luster]

You might like Nootka
http://nootka.sourceforge.net/

Wow, Pablo. That Nootka looks like it might be perfect!

Thanks

*checking it out further now...

[hebjuzeb]

Nootka looks interesting but by this time I thought we'd have something really superior. It's just a note-checker with no provision for learning rhythms and provides no help for the most important element of sight-reading, which is learning to read ahead of what you're playing. My favorite analogy is Tetris; you can get to a certain point and no farther 'till you expand your awareness and peripheral vision to take into account the area where the next piece is coming from.

Maybe you've heard this joke:
Q: How do you get a guitar player to shut up?
A: Put some sheet music in front of him.

Orchestral musicians learn by playing lots and lots of relatively simple parts in time with other musicians, so they develop fluency. Guitarists (in classical schools anyway, jazz is a different matter) are notoriously bad readers because they lack this experience.

What I'd like to see is a program that will accept MIDI files with multiple voices, let you play along in "Music minus one" mode, and grade you afterward; with modern pitch-detection/correction technology it should be very possible to devise something like this, or am I being too optimistic?

[Garmonbozia]

I'm not sure what your goals are in learning to read, but I can give you a bit of advice in learning to read based on my own personal struggles with sight reading.

I honestly don't think software is really what you need. In my experience, the only way to become fluent in reading music, is to actively do it all the time. Being a self taught musician, I struggled for years reading music.

Here's some tips that I think will help with reading:

1. Make reading a part of your daily practice. Sit down with a piece of music that you've never seen before every day and try to read it. Real books are an excellent source for this. There's literally hundreds of melodies to choose from. Many of them are very simple.

2. Join an ensemble that emphasizes reading, be it either a big band or an orchestra. This will for you to follow a long. It's hard at first but after awhile you'll start to get the hang of it.

3. Get a sight singing book. I recommend "Music for Sight Singing," by Ottmann. Sight singing will really help bring a lot of this all together. It also has a lot rhythm exercises which are crucial to being able to sight read.

4. Study theory.

Maybe you're already doing all of this or have already and I'm really just preaching to the choir. However, while I think the software might be helpful, it's going to be actively doing it that gets you there.

[StudioDave]

... while I think the software might be helpful, it's going to be actively doing it that gets you there.

Very good post, and quite to the point. I'm fluent in reading standard music notation for the classical guitar, a rather rare thing. Of course classical guitarists can read but few are very good sight-readers. My first instructor, Jerry Willard, was an excellent sight-reader who advised me to do exactly as you've advised, including beaucoup ear-training, theory, and reading in ensemble. I tell my students that the time spent was one of the best investments I ever made.

Software can help, surely, especially with ear-training, but nothing beats practicing with better readers.

Best,

dp

[luster]

I'm not sure what your goals are in learning to read, but I can give you a bit of advice in learning to read based on my own personal struggles with sight reading....

And:

... while I think the software might be helpful, it's going to be actively doing it that gets you there.

Very good post, and quite to the point. I'm fluent in reading standard music notation for the classical guitar, a rather rare thing....

...Software can help, surely, especially with ear-training, but nothing beats practicing with better readers.

Best,

dp

Thank you all for the excellent advice, especially Garmonbozia and StudioDave. I understand that "there is no royal road" to skills such as sightreading. I'm already doing as many of the things suggested above as possible.

I wanted to use such a piece of software for creating a series of what I felt would be innovative training exercises designed to make more fluid the selection of position on the bass guitar for a given series or grouping of near-random notes; I wanted to be able to limit the range of the excercise's notes to a variable number of half-steps. The idea was to create a fairly large number of short exercises with the notes for the excercises created by machine, then rapidly determine how and where to play them most effectively. The software would show the notes on the staff, show the notes played on the instrument, and also be able to play the excercise itself. I wasn't expecting the rhythmic aspect to be usefully functional, and I would have been happy with just the the notes working.

LOL I get strange ideas. I guess I'll have to make it in PureData when I get some time.

Nootka works as advertised, and with voice, but I did not extensively test voice. It works well with guitar and with the upper register of the bass, but with the notation appearing only in the G clef. I was interested in the grand staff, but mainly in the F clef notation. Sometimes Nootka appears to lag at note detection on the bass, so it's not, in my opinion, perfect for the rythym aspect of sightreading on the bass, but then it was written for guitar, so asking it to do bass is unfair. I didn't extensively test this on guitar, but I think it might be very much better with that instrument.

I understand that the developer of Nootka is planning a new version that also works for bass in its full register and also uses notation in the F clef or maybe the grand staff as well. I plan to message the developer after I have some helpful details clearly written out. IMHO, it's worth a look. It might also be a worthwhile project to include in KXStudio. One thing I did notice is that it sometimes fails to see the USB card on the input side and so becomes effectively mute until a fortutious re-boot.

For my purposes, Nootka wasn't exactly what I was looking for.