Music For Beer

One of the reasons I post regularly on this blog is avoidance of beer-oriented debt. That’s because I’m part of Iron Blogger, an effort to encourage people to blog at least once a week. Nelson Elhage organizes Iron Blogger, and the concept is simple: post a once a week or put $5 in the beer pool.

When I’m not being a computer nerd I’m often studying music (I’ve even created website which helps me study), and in an effort to keep me and my friends making music I’ve started Iron Musician, where my friends and I must create at least a minute of music once week or owe $5 to the beer pool.

Take a listen to some of the entries and feel to free to provide some constructive criticism.

Ear Training

When I’m not playing with computers I spend a lot of time trying to play guitar, and one aspect of my musical education I have struggled with is training my ear. My guitar teacher suggested practicing with Ear Trainer, a free site that is very complete but has a terrible user interface.

In what was a very productive session of procrastinating on doing my guitar homework I ended up making my own ear training site. So, if you’re in need of some ear training, please take a look at Minor Seventh.

I built the site on SoundManager 2 (which regrettably requires Adobe Flash, because JavaScript has no native way to play sound), jQuery and jQuery UI. I’ll work on an HTML 5 version once someone sends me a free iPad.

I’d love some feedback on the site if you end up using it. Upcoming features include:

  • Listening mode, where pressing the interval buttons plays the interval
  • Chord sound training
  • The option to change the root note to a random note
  • The option to play only the arpeggio, not the chord
  • New samples
  • Progression training (identify a set of chords by location in the key)

Big thanks to Jessica McKellar, Mike Fisher, Greg Price, Todd MacGarvey, Giles Hall, and the others who helped work out all the bugs. Would you like a new feature or a change? Post a comment here or send some feedback from the ‘Submit Feedback’ link on Minor Seventh!