I was really excited to see this, but is HN being astroturfed?

The bottom of chords.fm says "Copyright CBMS Networks, Inc."

Which points to this website: http://cbmsnetworks.com/

Is this really a startup? Is this really YOUR startup? Or a project at a larger company that specializes in technology like this?

Looking at the "about" section it's hard to say. http://cbmsnetworks.com/index-1.html#

Sorry if I'm totally off-base. I just know too many people who see HN as nothing more than a distribution channel and are willing to take advantage of the general good will people have here.

CBMS networks is a startup company that develops chords detection technology and Chords! is one of the product that is based on this technology. I am co-owner of CBMS networks and fully developed Chords! as a separate product.

Now the question is could you call Chords! a startup? From mine perspective yes - since it is brand new product. If this is not according to HN definitions, than I am sorry for posting it here.

Plus the poster's account is like 8 hours old.

Call me paranoid, but I've come to believe in the last two months HN has started to be gamed

I was reading HN for more than 3 years now, without posting, so no need to register.

The site has only been open to the public for around 2 years.

Before I was reading PG ...

Regardless of the source, the damned thing actually works very well.

I'm quite impressed.

This would be a real money spinner, if it could be made to work. The problem, assuming you are using an analysis algorithm to attempt to extract the harmonic information, is that you are attempting to solve the problem of polyphonic transcription, which is one of the holy grails of computer music research - and is definitely an unsolved problem, especially when the analysed song is complex or unpredictable (jazz chords, hendrix tunings etc.), or when there is a lot of noise, as is the case with almost all popular music.

It is quite straight-forward to use a Fourier transform to discover the energy contained at certain audio frequencies, but extracting musical structure from this data is terribly difficult, partly because of the perceptual ambiguities in the human hearing system, and partly because it is basically impossible to confidently separate the identity of the constituent instruments within the audio spectrum. What instrument emitted this or that harmonic at 1800hz? The answer is crucial to identifying the chords, and nobody really knows how to reliably and programatically determine that, on an arbitrary recording, just yet...

You are right that this task is not solved yet. You may read about our technology at http://www.music-ir.org/mirex/2008/abs/cbms_cover_song_id.pd...

Our tests showed that 92% of the time we show correct chords, which is obviously not a 100%.

If you will have a time, give it a try, it works really well.

Make it an iTunes plugin and you'll have a business.

I know from experience that Winamp plugins are hard to make money from. I also know a guy who put out a CD burning plugin. To distill his email:

X 30,000 downloads and 10 copies sold

X The French don't pay for software

X On average, more Americans pay registration fees than other people (eg, French)

X Have a time-limit (which you have) so people have to pay

X (my own experience) Cracking groups rarely pirate Winamp plugins

[additional]X There is a store for Winamp plugins (and has been for years). If you list there, you get a spotlight for a week or two, and you have to make the most of that - it usually gets a few 1000 downloads and then trails off.

Only winamp supports DSP API, so you could mix chords to actual song. Rest players are less open, but more popular. We are thinking to support other media players without mix functionality

I really like the idea, but don't use Winamp. Most of the things along this line that I've tried are pretty bad, so I'm not sure I'm willing to download two pieces of software to see if this one is different. What about an online service where I can upload the song in FLAC or mp3 and get the tab back?

Could you send me any mp3 to kos@cbmsnetworks.com and I will send you chords back.

We plan to add online service.

Your target market is musicians. As said above, the iTunes model will work - indeed, so might an iPhone app.

But also, consider making it a VST plugin (VST = virtual studio technology, free SDK from Steinberg) It's the industry standard for non-pro users and works with all music recording/editing platforms on both Mac and PC. These kinds of users have no problem downloading & installing, and are more likely to pay - your pricing is quite reasonable, and moving what you do to VST shouldn't involve much overhead, the DSP will be the same. Make an option to output the chords to MIDI, which should be trivially easy. Better yet, make lite and pro versions - lite version maybe only does major chords or doesn't output MIDI.

3 websites (kvr, sonicstate and createdigitalaudio) will reach 90% of the plugin community. I'm at work so I can't test it out (and gave up using WinAmp long ago anyway) but I wonder how it copes with techno or orchestral music? I like making electronic stuff, but I just don't have a very good ear for chords and would love to have this as an analysis tool. Feel free to email.

I'm a freelance music producer on the side, and I've worked on tons of top albums as well as with random indie people who think they can make it big. Here's a general overview of plugin formats:

RTAS - this is the Microsoft of the industry. Pro Tools is big, ugly, painful, and frustrating, but everybody uses it. Every song ever made gets run through a Pro Tools rig somewhere down the line. The interface and features have basically been frozen for ten years (I believe v8 changed some colors, which apparently enough of a deal to be a marketing selling point), because everyone's learned to use it. Like older MS products, the good people avoid using it when they can (only real innovative feature is Beat Detective), although it's extremely stable. Runs on all platforms; requires custom hardware.

VST - This is fairly well-supported on Windows stacks (Sonar, Audition, Steinberg, FL Studio). Nobody seriously uses Windows for real-time audio (not a fanboy comment; actual market conditions), but kids in their garage and/or that rundown "studio" downtown, or some part-time DJ playing clubs in Chicago make it work. VST is painful to use on OS X and of my two dedicated mac recording rigs none of the software I run actually supports it. Steinberg's DAWs are cross-platform, and I am told people actually use them, but I have the vague perception that it's used more with TV (network jingles and applying post-production to commercials, etc). I do largely recorded music production and occasional movie scoring work, and I've never used a Steinberg DAW. I have used Audition and Sonar on a few projects from indie clients.

AU - This is the new kid on the block. A mac-only standard, powers GarageBand, Logic, and DP. Your younger, hipper bands have all switched to Logic for day-to-day use, which kicks ProTools' sorry behind, although it's less stable. Most of the "cool" big-name bands that I work with (i.e. write their own material, actually play things live, actually competent musicians, etc.) run Logic themselves on some mac portable that they take to band practice (no external hardware). They take it to me for primary mixing (still Logic) and then pawn it off to some sound engineer for final mastering (Pro Tools). All the kids use GarageBand. I've seen DP used both in live settings and in recording studios although it's kinda fringe. AU is a joy to code if you know C quite well.

What you say is all true, but only for stuff that comes from big-name bands or artists with the potential to be one. I do think there is quite a large community of bedroom producers/artists out there that will never get near a record deal or anything more substantial than tiny sales on iTunes or views on YouTube - less good musos who can't easily make out the chords (like myself) and those in the less profitable musical genres (electronic/dance and metal) where there are many, many more amateurs or hopefuls than successful acts. Anyway, I think there's a definite market for this plugin among the bedroom set. AU users (who I forgot abuot because I'm not a mac owner...oops) are more likely to pay money than VSTers, but a friendly Lite version will definitely drive sales of an affordable Pro version.

The Pro Tools folk will have little to no use for this plugin - let's face it, if you're paying for PT, you probably don't need the computer to help you with working out the chords. I think you're being a little unfair to Windows audio though. I used to produce on a full-size Pro Tools HD rig, but at home I've always been a Win/PC guy and don't find it limiting. I think the lean to Mac is just because they were the leader in that space for such a long time.

I was really surprised you didn't mention Ableton Live in your otherwise excellent roundup, though of course that's much more for dance than other DAWs.

Forgot about Live. Supports VST and AU (mac version only).

At any rate, my argument was (although I didn't explicitly lay it out) that he should cover AU for the garageband kids (bulk of the users) and the actual musicians that use Logic at band practice (sizable minority), and maybe catch VSTs on the way out for the Windows folks if it's not too hard (I'm not a VST developer; I can't say). AU is where it's all going though--you've got a generation of people growing up with garageband for recording, producing, even taking piano lessons. I would imagine that would be prime market for a chord detection app. In addition, the GB/Logic family file format is based around chord notation (and is pretty easy to reverse engineer), so you could actually export the chord structure back into the arrangement if you were clever. This has all sorts of interesting implications for chord-aware events like Apple Loops-- mixing would be drag and drop even for the people who don't know one chord from another.

Agree that Pro Tools isn't much use for this sort of thing. I do know a couple of kids who've picked up Pro Tools LE because they think it's what the cool kids use, but it's not worth the effort to capture.

Another obvious direction for this would be an iPhone app that displays the chord it currently hears (and does so accurately). Not sure how good the algorithm is from a bad source, but that would be worth $50 to me.

Thank you for information. We hadn't considered this path.

I'm excited about this and want it to work. I recently paid an online sheet music service for one piece of sheet music and was miffed to discover that I could only print out the piece once. I could choose which key I wanted it in, then the file would no longer be accessible in my account. If my printer jammed, it would be my tough luck - I would need to pay again.

I had imagined it would be stored there forever - that's what I paid the 3.95 for I thought, but sadly no - the publishers will not allow it. People complain about digital music but the world of sheet music is even more bizarro. Hopefully apps like this might shake up the business.

Having played with it for a minute, it looks decent and something I think I will be shelling out the 19.95 for. I thought that piano/guitar mode would be tabs/notation but it is to choose which instrument accompanies the song. Still, I'm impressed. I hope it evolves.

Thank you. I am glad you liked it.

Great idea, but I agree with the rest, you should focus on iTunes or have a web service do it.

For better or worse, I blogged about Chords! http://slapstart.com/2009/06/chordsfm/

Now I'm wondering if this isn't a start-up at all, as per the CBMS Networks comment. I was wondering about that too.

Thanks Steve for blog post. I answered about CBMS above.

I just asked a friend to review it for you:

http://chords.fm/Chords!/forum/topic/53/future-direction-of-...

Thanks. He wrote very useful comment.

Don't know him personally, but based on what he wrote sentence "found it do an 'interesting' job determining the chords of the song" sounds like we are doing pretty good in chords extraction, right? :)

I would have bought this right now if it existed for mac/iTunes. I'm a music student when I'm not an entrepreneur. Sounds like a good idea just poor market selection.

This is in our plans to have Mac support.

At work so I can't actually demo. However, the video looked nice. One thing I noticed is that the tabs correctly displayed minor chords while the text simply said B or F# (implying major). Additionally, how good is it at picking up alternate tunings (i.e. down a half step a la hendrix) or obscure jazz chords? I suppose I can just wait until I get home to try it out, so maybe I'll report back then...

From what I can see, major chords are displayed in uppercase, minor chords in lowercase. e.g., E for E major; e for E minor.

Correct

Does it really infer them using DSP from the mp3 - or does it look them up? If the former - that's very cool, though I wonder about the accuracy. It would be good to have way to try it out online.

Making it a webapp would make it much easier to trial, it wouldn't be narrowed to one app (winamp) - and piracy goes away. On the downside, you'd doing all that DSP on the server instead of spread over the clients.

We actually analyze the mp3, no need for Winamp DSP at this stage. WE need DSP to mix chords to song, so you hear exact place.

we are working on some web based application, down side is that you have to be connected.

Cool. I was thinking you sell both a webapp (free trial + normal price) and download (super-premium price!).

Uh... why don't you make your own webapp player? For the download version, you could setup a server on the user's computer, thus reusing the same server and client code (but the user doesn't have to be connected).

Good start on a great idea. You could add a signup for email updates option on your homepage to keep those of us who would definitely buy a more developed version (ie more exotic chord recognition) &/or different format informed about new releases - I'd signup to that. I actually browsed the apple app store in vain for something like this yesterday.

Neat! I agree with others you should make an iTunes plugin, or perhaps even a standalone app with more features to help learn songs, like http://supermegaultragroovy.com/products/Capo/

just chords or notes? just chords seems pointless in my opinion. plus anyone who really plays the guitar will use something like guitar pro and just download free tablature - which is probably the best solution out there.

This is not solution to pro, rather to beginners. It might take a while (forever?) to find chords for not so popular song.

Chords will help you figure out the notes if you know your arpeggios and scales.

Guitar Pro tabs are user generated and vary in quality. And good luck if you want to find an obscure song.