tvl-depot/website/sandbox/chord-drill-sergeant
William Carroll 277ad983d4 Nixify build for Chord Drill Sergeant
Thankfully @tazjin builds Gemma (an Elm project) with Nix, so I could reference
Gemma's default.nix to help me with mine. Elm problematically attempts to
HTTP-fetch a list of packages to verify my project's dependencies. Because Nix
builds derivations in a sandbox without network access, I need to use some
escape hatches (i.e. NIX_REDIRECTS, LD_PRELOAD,
SYSTEM_CERTIFICATE_PATH). Welp... it's packaged now...

I'm also pointing learnpianochords.app to this project's index.html. It will be
live soon! :)

TODO(wpcarro): Rename "Chord Drill Sergeant" -> "Learn Piano Chords" (KISS)
2020-04-17 15:08:38 +01:00
..
src Nixify build for Chord Drill Sergeant 2020-04-17 15:08:38 +01:00
.gitignore Begin styling efforts 2020-04-13 22:43:04 +01:00
default.nix Nixify build for Chord Drill Sergeant 2020-04-17 15:08:38 +01:00
dir-locals.nix Properly support chord inversions 2020-04-12 16:43:34 +01:00
elm.json Render a mobile-friendly piano 2020-04-17 13:35:29 +01:00
ideas.org Track app ideas 2020-04-11 17:44:20 +01:00
index.css Begin styling efforts 2020-04-13 22:43:04 +01:00
index.html Begin styling efforts 2020-04-13 22:43:04 +01:00
README.md Begin styling efforts 2020-04-13 22:43:04 +01:00
shell.nix Begin styling efforts 2020-04-13 22:43:04 +01:00

Chord Drill Sergeant (CDS)

Are you a musician looking for a more effective way to improve your craft? Maybe you're a music teacher looking to create useful exercises to give your students.

Studying music theory can be a fruitful undertaking, but it can often overwhelm or bore students. I think that if practicing is enjoyable, students will practice more. Practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect. Chord Drill Sergeant is a web app that lowers the barrier to practicing and internalizing music theory.

How does it work?

  1. Grab a cell phone or a laptop and your instrument.
  2. Open a web browser and visit the Chord Drill Sergeant app (URL and app forthcoming).
  3. Set the tempo at which you would like to practice.
  4. Set the target duration of your session.
  5. Select the key(s) and chord(s) you would like to practice.
  6. Set the tempo (i.e. pace) at which you would like to practice.
  7. CDS will display chords at various rhythmic intervals during your practice session. It is your job to play these chords in time before the next chord appears.

Highlights

Here are some useful features of CDS:

  • Tempo: Set the rate at which CDS displays chords.
  • Predefined practice sessions: CDS offers users a few practice sessions to get users started. The goal, however, is to teach users to create their own bespoke practice sessions. CDS aims to foster a community of practitioners who curate and share their practice sessions.
  • Whitelist / blacklist: Construct the set of chords you would like to practice. Let's say you only want to practice triads in the keys of F, C, and G. Would you also like to avoid diminished chords? Or maybe you only want to practice major-7th chords for all keys. CDS supports all of these scenarios and many others. You can save these chord configurations to reuse them at any time. You can also share chord configurations with other CDS users if you find the practice useful.
  • Inversions: Every chord has inversions. For instance, every triad (i.e. chord composed of three notes) has three inversions: root, second, and third positions. CDS acknowledges all of the positions in which chords may appear and helps you study all, some, or none of these inversions.
  • Harmony: CDS understands basic harmony and can sort the chords you would like to train in various harmonious permutations.
  • Chaos-mode: Feeling confident? Throw the classical notions of harmony to the wayside and use CDS in "chaos-mode" where CDS samples randomly from the Circle of Fifths.

Developing

If you're interested in contributing, the following will create an environment in which you can develop:

$ nix-shell
$ elm-live -- src/Main.elm --output=elm.js