The notefinder is an app, like everything else. On perceiving pure tones it will isolate and name each one that it can find. The notefinder app will then give said grouping of notes a name, if possible: for example G7, or C/B, or E6dim. Maybe something will be sus. Some things may have 2 or more names, each valid.

Then when you are fooling around and find a mix of notes that sounds good, you can learn a name for it, thus easing subsequent systematic discovery of other incarnations of that group of notes.
-- bungston, Jan 10 2017

How will it distinguish between harmonically related notes and the different overtones that are present in the sound of real instruments?

I can see how this might work with sine waves, but the tone of a real instrument looks like a chord in the frequency domain even when only a single note is being played.
-- Wrongfellow, Jan 10 2017


And yet a good musician can identify the notes in a complex chord, so the information must be in there.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 10 2017


I had this idea that a given note would look the same to a frequency analyzer regardless of context. But maybe this is not true - maybe harmonics vary according to context (like what other strings are doing).

If a note is similar regardless of context one there would be a learning set to teach the app what each note sounds like: main note and harmonic hangers-on.
-- bungston, Jan 10 2017


I voted for it because I have no musical talent, and a computer program that finds the sounds I unintentionally make that are pleasing might permit me to compose.
-- beanangel, Jan 10 2017


So, this works in stereo then, [Ian]?
-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jan 10 2017


In the most difficult case --- where there are two notes, one octave apart, and in perfect phase alignment --- the app could detect all the frequencies present (by Fourier transform of course), and in this case would find an unnaturally strong 2nd harmonic of the lowest frequency. The fact that it was unnaturally strong would be reason to assume it is a second note being played. This is especially so if it can test the assumption by confirming that two notes with similar harmonic levels can reproduce the original chord (the match is sure to only be approximate due to natural variations between intruments played at different pitches).
-- Alvin, Jan 11 2017


Woo! Alvin is helping!
-- bungston, Jan 11 2017


" She talks in stereo, she sounds so good to me, she talks in stereo ... "
-- normzone, Jan 11 2017



random, halfbakery