u/Aggravating-Seat-926

I can usually find my way around simple music by ear, but with more complex tracks I often get lost. Sometimes I can guess the scale, sometimes I miss, and sometimes I just fall back to pentatonic and hope for the best.

So I tried making a different kind of tuner. Instead of showing one note at a time, it listens for a while and tries to figure out what notes seem to fit the music that is playing. Then it shows that scale or mode on keys, guitar, and bass, so you can quickly see where it is probably safe to play.

It’s not trying to generate tabs or transcribe the melody. More like a compass. It points you in a useful direction, and you still have to play and listen.

It is very much a weekend prototype. It sometimes gets the tonic wrong, and it can be confused by voice or messy audio, but with YouTube tracks it often gives me something useful after 5–10 seconds.

No release yet, just a video for now. I’m curious if this kind of thing would actually be useful to anyone else, especially beginners or people who jam by ear.

UPD: TestFlight beta is now available: https://testflight.apple.com/join/1Xy3dEev

Last weekend I made a free experimental app called Hoverophone.

The idea was to turn an old iPad mini into something like a theremin. Well, not exactly a theremin. I have never played a real one and have only seen them on YouTube, so I am not trying to pretend this is the same instrument.

It uses the camera to track your hand: hand position controls pitch, and volume is controlled by the distance between thumb and index finger. Pinch together means silence, open the fingers and it gets louder. I wanted to keep one hand free while still keeping the “playing in the air” feeling.

It also has optional note/octave grids, stereo panning from left-right movement, and a two-hand mode for playing two notes at once.

I am mostly looking for feedback from people who use iOS music apps: does this feel like a usable little performance instrument, or just a weird toy?

iPhone/iPad only for now. Free, no subscription.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6781463406

I have wanted to try a theremin for years, but I have never played a real one. I have only seen them in videos, so I am curious how wrong or usable this feels to people who actually know the instrument.

Last weekend I made a free experimental iPhone/iPad app called Hoverophone. It tracks your hand with the camera: hand position controls pitch, and volume is controlled by the distance between thumb and index finger. Pinch together means silence, open the fingers and it gets louder. The idea was to keep one hand free, while still keeping the “playing in the air” feeling.

I am not claiming it is a real theremin. I am more interested in whether this feels like a useful theremin-inspired instrument, or whether it misses something essential.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6781463406