As someone who enjoys music, from punk to jazz, I wish I could identify a C from a G as easily as I can identify blue from green.
We’re taught to use our eyes to identify colors, why not teach children to use their ears to identify notes?
For example, you can go like: Wham! “Oh that’s a little too high” and adjust (relative pitch)
Rather then: Wham! “Hmmmmmmm, that’s an an E not an F” (perfect pitch)
Fun fact: Itzhak Perlman promotes relative pitch and knowing the distance between notes rather than perfect pitch.
It's all too easy for the top comment on a Show HN post to end up being a dismissal of the entire project - this is more the fault of upvoters than commenters, because the meaning gets subtly (or not so subtly) a lot more dismissive when it's stuck at the top of a thread. But we really want to avoid that on HN, especially when people are sharing their work.
If you want your kids to learn music, you should sing to them, dance with them, play music to them and just have instruments around at home they can play with. It same with language, reading, mathematics, anything really. So the imperative form in the title really irked me.
Saying that, I acknowledge this is Show HN and I am not speaking about the project per se (as in how it has been technically implemented), more about the general attitude the title and arguably the projects presents, where we think we can replace things we find challenging in life, arts or culture by shoving some code and a language model into it, but I too much answered as it were and argument someone making in more general post. I try to keep that in mind in the future.
In fact, I'd like to suggest that he's championing free range childhood by not making decisions for young people who might very realistically resent it as adults.
I know three people with perfect pitch. One of them thinks it's great (and is kind of annoying about it). The other two are constantly telling people that perfect pitch just means you're always exercising patience when your friends are singing, counting down the moments until they stop.
That sounds like a version of hell to me.
It just makes a significant difference when the context is a Show HN and the critical comment is at the top. If it is comment (say) #13 in a varied conversation, that comes across differently. This is more the fault of upvotes, as I mentioned, but it's hard to address those directly.
The way music schools teach this is relatively brutal and annoying, with a _lot_ of repetition and testing (eg "sing a major second above this note" and "identify the interval" questions), but I am not sure any other method works. At the same time, everyone going through an ear training curriculum does pick up decent relative pitch. This can take a year or two for college music majors, so it's not exactly a casual exercise. However, I assume the major barrier to entry is not musical aptitude but willingness to put up with bullshit, because it feels like bullshit when you are doing it.
I remember many years ago in my music lessons being shocked that some people can hear multiple notes played simultaneously. I've never found much material on learning this skill.
You can practice singing the intervals. What's a fifth sound like? You should be able to sing it. Or play it on your instrument and then sing it.
If you're willing to give the app a try, I bet it could actually be a pretty solid way to learn relative as well as absolute pitch. Just manually play "Red" before you start to anchor yourself. I've noticed some improvement in my relative pitch just by practicing it with my daughter. I'd be interested to know if anyone ends up using it explicitly for that purpose.