Show HN: Guitoro, a virtual guitar you strum with your keyboard
guitoro.comGuitoro is a free browser guitar using recordings of real instruments. You can strum with your keyboard, mouse, or touchscreen, choose acoustic, classical, electric guitar or bass, and see chord fingering and each stroke. Song practice can be slowed to 20%, and there are free chord tools and tuners. No signup or download.
1 minute video demo: https://youtu.be/DtcluMLdSgs
I would love feedback on how the strumming feels and sounds.
Very well done. Looks and sounds great.
A couple of UX thoughts I had while using it:
1. Since the chords are all within a specific key, have you considered using the numbers 1 through 7 to play the respective chords? That way playing a 1-4-5 or a 2-5-1 would be very intuitive?
2. Have you considered using modifier keys (shift, ctrl, alt) to control whether a chord is strummed down versus up (e.g. pressing A would be down, but Shift+A would be up) or major/minor (A would be major, Alt+A would be minor)? I guess Ctrl could be a 7th chord modifier too.
Just some thoughts. Great tool!
That's one of the best guitar UIs I've seen on a computer.
Looking forward to your acquihire by Guitar Center! Makes me want to dust off my old acoustic after work and practice some more.
Sounds great! As a guitar player: I would expect the fretboard to be mirrored horizontally, so that the low strings are at the bottom, like it is the case in regular tablature. Messes with my brain that way :)
I had the same thought, you can switch to tab or audience view which is a bit more in that direction.
Holy smokes!!! It has just occurred to me that anyone who can type on a keyboard knows how to play an instrument. Your keyboard is the instrument.
With solo mode, I asked ChatGPT to translate the songs to keyboard notes, and I was just typing the notes as if I was doing a typing test, and I was playing songs. lol the easiest "sight-reading" I've ever done.
Is this the every persons instrument?
Here is Happy Birthday in solo mode:
E E T E I U E E T E P I E E B X I U T C C X I P I
Crazy unlock!
Musical typing is super fun and is built in to some free audio tools like garage band, but it’s kind of a thing where you’d have to already know about it in order to find it in the first place.
I love the idea of treating it like a typing test, maybe it is the new guitar hero.
Very cool, the "arp" function was a little buggy for me, it either wont let me activate it before strumming a chord, or it will lock itself to "on" until I refresh the page.
Hi op, great app. What's a rough time and $ estimate for the Claude cost of such a refined outcome, with all those vector assets, animations, options?
I just spent 30 minutes playing with this. It's incredible, well done to the author!
Nice job! The stock arp patterns are a nice touch. I’m surprised no one in here mentioned the original Smart Guitar instrument in GarageBand on the iPad [1]. It actually works in a very similar way, and feels very satisfying to use.
It basically gives you the chords for a given key signature aligned verticall, and then you can use your finger to pick or strum - it even lets you do string bends.
Question: OOC, where did you source the string sample recordings from?
Thanks! The sample sources listed on the credits page: https://guitoro.com/credits/
This is awesome. I have no music knowledge. and my dad recently learning flute and was asking me to build something like this for him to practice. You gave me an inspiration and I built this (me asking claude to build similar to yours). I think what I built is absolute garbage but its only decently good because of what you did. here it is. https://veeragoni.github.io/flutewizard/
I hope you take it positively and I am hoping community contributes to the flute sounds and make it better and right.
This looks great!
I noticed that the strumming seems a bit off on chord changes. A good default is to let strings that don't change on chord change to continue to ring through. Just think about the strings as actual strings and the kinds of things that happen to them when you play.
Also, different songs will have different techniques like bar chords that may have less brightness, palm muting etc.
I'm working on a physical guitar digital luthier kit right now as part of a project at Toronto Metropolitan University working with disabled musicians. Our aim is to release it so anyone can build one.
Here is our documentation of examining an existing assistive guitar built a few years ago in the UK. https://www.designingsoundfutures.org/kellycaster-mark-1/
Now we're taking lessons learned from that and working on robust versions for touring musicians, and variations to adapt to different assistive and artistic needs.
Great to see others doing nifty work with this guitar based music stuff.
Thanks, great input! Letting the shared strings ring through chord changes makes a lot of sense and I will look at it. Song techniques like palm muting are on the list too.
Your project sounds wonderful. Good luck with it, I'd love to see it when it's out.
I've been playing for years, and so happy to see an app so intuitive. The only thing is that I use several non standard tunings none of them are found in the drop down..... I was so looking to put my own custom tunings into this app, since its the best designed guitar app that I've seen in a while. I would love to use this over OOlimo (which allows your own tunings) I'll have to wait and see if this is actually a feature you would consider here. Thanks for sharing, it's great!
Thanks, that's really great to hear! Custom tunings are a good suggestion. Can you share here or by mail (contact@guitoro.com) which custom tunings do you use? That would help me understand what you'd need.
Thanks for all the amazing feedback, everyone. I really appreciate it, and I'm writing all your notes down.
It would really help if you mention whether you tested it on mobile or desktop.
The mobile version completely blew me away. I tried it on desktop first. Extraordinary job, really great work!
Mobile. I love it. I hope it lasts forever.
Very well done! When adding a chord on a key, I'm missing a small preview of the chords as they appear in the autocomplete list, or would be nice to be able to assemble a chord on a fretboard view. What made you start work on this app? And what is the logic behind how the chords are laid out on the keyboard?
Thanks! Both good ideas, noted.
I wanted to play some chords when Im away from my guitar and none of the browser online guitars I found were at the level I was looking for.
The keys follow the song's key: A row = the 5 main chords (I IV V vi ii), Q row = their sevenths Z row = color chords
This is fantastic, well done and thanks for sharing! Any chance of adding C Standard to the tuning list?
Why does it show a left-handed guitar on Player view, and a right-handed one on Audience view?
Hi Rygian, Good catch.
Player view does show a left handed guitar. Two reasons: 1. matches what a right handed player sees looking down at their own guitar: low E on top, neck on the left. 2. players without guitar, to lined up with the pc keyboard that is on the left.
True Audience view is like you watch right hand guitar player.
That's interesting because I think of Low E on the "top" as meaning close to me, which puts it on the bottom of the screen in this app. That matches what happens when I twist a real guitar face towards me when I've got one strapped. So I just switched it to Tab view and it all felt better.
" matches what a right handed player sees looking down at their own guitar: low E on top, neck on the left"
no, it's wrong
Yeah, and I would rather see the “normal” presentation of chords. At least provide a selector to be able to toggle the view.
Okay, it’s not just me. It was breaking my brain trying to understand the chords on the screen vs. when I play.
As someone learning guitar and looks at a lot of tutorials, 99% of the time it’s presented is the other way around, so the way it’s presented here is rather confusing to me.
Mee too :)
Same!
Yeah, Tab + Player is the right one.
Very nice. A selfish suggestion is to add ukulele.
The chord names not matching the keys on my keyboard are throwing me off a lot on this, but that's difficult to get anything other than major chords. Maybe it would be playable by using modifiers to shift to minor and 7th etc.
Another idea I had was being able to bend by holding two keys like monophonic synths.
In solo mode, there should be a horizontally flipped version, such that such that the 0 key plays open E on the 1st string, and the 9 plays F on the 1st string, etc. That would allow me to hold my wireless keyboard backwards, facing the screen, rely on the muscle memory of my hands.
There was something like this that came with an old Sound Blaster card back in the day that I spent quite a lot of time with. It had something like this, where you could pick individual strings with the number pad and change chords with the F buttons.
This is very nice. One suggestion based on a guitar related hobby webapp I built myself: fretboard renders in potrait probably makes for nicer ux.
My tool does not focus on strumming at all as this one does though.
Nice work. Am having fun with it.
Thank you! Yes, I tried that, but since the app focuses on strumming, I couldn't use all the space for a long fretboard. I'm still working on a better mobile UI.
This is very interesting however i don't know guitar. Can somebody give me a couple of tips on which keys to press so I could play well known song? For example Angie by the rolling stones?
Thanks. You can paste any chords (with the lyrics) from any website into "my songs" section and play it.
https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/the-rolling-stones/angi...
and switch to A minor
Had fun with this on my phone! Any chance of calculating velocity based on speed of pick movement? I'm sure some super basic ASDR and maybe a low-oass would get you to a very satisfying place
Looks great, but recordings are choppy for me, i dont know what is wrong. I am using Brave browser.
Thanks for the feedback! This might be a browserspecific bug. What device and os are you using?
Such an AMAZING idea - as a guitar player I wish I had thought of this. Kudos to the creator...Very well done :)
It's great! As far as I can tell, the toggle for Let ring is not working: when i disable it, notes still ring out after letting go of the key (in solo mode on electric guitar currently)
Thanks for reporting! I will look into it. Did it happen on all notes?
10/10 immediately played Hotel California chords. Felt very intuitive, sounded nice. Great fun!
Been working on something similar (a DAW, to learn more about music) - and just wanted to say that your guitar voice is quite good! Bravo
Tastefully done.
Before I knew it, ten minutes had gone! good job
Very nicely done, at first I thought it was gimmicky but it's actually playable
Next steps: add Guitar Hero controller or/and Rock Band interface support
Very good
This was a ton of fun! I tried it on an iPhone 13. Worked perfectly. I loved the UI/UX and also it was awesome to be able to select chords easily. Sounds fantastic. Feature suggestion: there's a part of it that on a physical guitar can be tapped with the palm (it's shown visually in the dark/red overlay; you may need to zoom out to see it), pressing there could produce a percussive thud.
This is incredibly satisfying. Nice work!
I love that this is a learning tool too.
Really really enjoyable, but how do I turn on drive for the electric guitar?
Thanks! click on the sound button on the right and pick one of the electric presets. For more control, open Amp & FX in the same panel and choose Overdrive, Distortion or Fuzz.
Don't know how I missed that, thank you! Even more fun now!
This looks very interesting, I may finally learn wonderwall.
Thanks you, Good luck with wonderwall!
This was much better than I expected. Nice job.
This is awesome!
This is absolutely amazing. Well done.
Sick, love it
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel:
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DDDDDDThis is super fun, thanks!
This is excellent. Thank you.
Enjoy (; and tell your friend
This is really good.
This is so cool.
This is great, great design, great functionality, TY!
That's awesome!
Thanks!
Nicely done!
Would be lovely to have a faq section about who you are and how you built it (how long did it take you, which tools did you use, how much back and forth did you need to do with the ai agent, what is your background in terms of programming, web, design and music, etc.)
Holy shit, this is incredible. As a guitar player this actually feels like playing a guitar. So cool.
Only suggestion I would have would be to make all 6 strings strummable independently in the chord instead of just the 4, so you can do finger picking on it.
Good idea. I've added it to the list of upcoming improvements. Thanks!
fantastic!
love it!
This is kinda cool, but it's nowhere near as fun as being able to play the real thing. Sounds better IRL.
It is nice that it shows the chords.
What an insightful contribution.
I said it's kinda cool. Like what more do you want? I could point out how useless it is in general, I can't say it would make a good learning tool, because it doesn't. But it is a novelty site that does make sound and show correct chord positions. Can you use it to compose something? Sure but the sound cutoff between chords and the need to pick a chord that strums down first before you can strum up means you'll always produce a sound you don't want and you can't even replicate picking.
It's not a tool, it's a toy man. Chill out.
I think you underestimate how creative people can be.
As a guitar substitute, sure, it's an approximation that can't possibly measure up. But as a modernized version of an autoharp, this could be a legit musical instrument.
The fact that it presents itself as a virtual guitar makes it accessible. You see it as a limitation. But limitations are actually great for creativity.
> I could
You did, not could. All those things that you said you could do? You literally did them.
You are failing to answer the question. What's your point? I pose a question, I present what can be said, which sure I did say it in that comment to point at the extremes, but the question remains unanswered. What do you want of me? and now we have what's your point?
My point is hiding behind passive language like that is cowardly. You actively chose to do literally all of those things. It's not that you "could" do them, you did do them. Own up to it.
Naw man, I'm taking this to my next gig!
You are right, but it is fun.
If you make this work in a gig (could imagine using it as a DJ), you should post it.
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