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.
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.
Same here! It took me a while to realize that as a beginner. At first I was thinking that it was left handed or something.
100%. The player view is weird. I'd expect the player of the guitar to look down from above on the instrument and that's not the case here.
Aaah, "tab" view is the view that is one I'd expect.
Defaulting what is called "player view" on this page is a very odd choice. All learning material is displayed with the low string at the bottom (or "tab view" on the page). All guitar emulators I have ever used have that view as default.
This is also how it looks when you hold a guitar, so I have no idea where this "player view" comes from. If I take my guitar and lay it on the table in front of me, the low strings are closest to me not farthest.
Thanks for the feedback. I chose the default orientation to make a downward mouse movement produce a downstroke. In tab view that relationship is reversed. But I understand your point that tab view is more familiar to guitar players and matches learning materials. I will reconsider the default and how the view options are presented
This would make sense if you're going with keywords, like "downward". But this logic only holds in language. If you compare it with human experience, then it no longer holds.
For example, did you notice that if you look at your own body, your legs are pointing "up"?
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!
This is great. It also shows how complex it is to play a guitar. I think it would take me ages of practice to play even a simple song.
Maybe add an option that shows the finger positioning (with adjustable transparency so you can also see the touch points on the strings).
I like it because it shows how easy it is to compose a song though (if, of course, you first learn to finger a few chords—and everyone knows you only need to learn three chords).
Canonically, a hit is more likely if you use four chords:
https://youtu.be/5pidokakU4I?is=gPjE8VERGB3IJJEU
But which three or four chords are best to learn?
C, G, Am and F for some definition of best.
Is there a logic behind this? Can you play any song with just those chords?
Well, without going into music theory (which, ha ha, I am ignorant of), these chords "go together"—they're in the same "key" [1].
(And there are perhaps hundreds of songs that use the same chords [2].)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%9...
[2] https://youtu.be/dFpryVMgni0
It makes me wonder how long it will take robots to approach the dexterity of even a six year old child, some of whom can play guitar pretty well. And guitar is commonly thought to be an "easier" instrument. Something like an erhu only has two strings and is fiendishly difficult to master.
I’ve sadly stopped being curious about that since I realised that we’re already cyborgs, only the other way around from what popular sci-fi predicted: the internet does the thinking and the meatbags move their fingers. It started with GPS, came for software engineering and won’t stop any time soon. Actuators won’t be critical if humans are ever more fungible.
Maybe guitar is easy if you only strum cowboy chords.
I used to play the piano and am learning electric guitar, and guitar feels way harder because there are 1000 ways to pick a note (articulation wise), bending, legato, plus the complexity of the fretboard vs linear piano layout.
Classical piano was hard mainly because there are sooo many notes to read all the time for all the different voices.
Piano is much harder. The fretboard is how I think about music generally, it is much easier to re-call intervals vs piano, I don't think either layout is particularly difficult to memorize though. There are a lot of ways to pick a note but you'll find 99.99% of them are wrong. That's one plus on piano, the most experienced and least experienced person can make the same sound relatively easily on it. I think the main thing is on piano you're often doing 3 things at once. On guitar you're doing "2" things. Arguably, the right (or left) hand isn't doing much at all so you don't really have to think about or practice it the same way one does on piano.
I agree there are a lot more little techniques on guitar that don't exist on piano but a lot of them are very easy to master in a short amount of time.
I think getting really good at either is a lot of work, but I can teach someone to play a recognizable song on guitar in a very short amount time, a few hours or less depending on the person, to play even "beginner" songs on piano can be weeks of practice for a newcomer.
This is quite old but worth a mention. :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RBSkq-_St8
Great project overall, I like it a lot. Please fix it on Firefox. Tested with Firefox for Linux and layout was broken compared to Chromium based browsers. Additionaly, I also noticed in the mobile version on Android (Chrome) when switching to another app and back it breaks the guitar sound simulation and it gets completely distorted.
Thanks alot for feedback. I tested it with FireFox on windows but not yet on Linux. Can you please describe whats broken or even better share a screenshot?
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.
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.
A small toy xylophone with each note painted a different colour works by the same principle of abstracting melody into a simple system whose mechanics are already mastered. That kind of device has given children a way to learn Happy Birthday (by simply going Red Red Blue Red Yellow Green.....) for many generations now.
The full challenge however is that "knowing how to play an instrument" in the musical context is a deeeeep, deep well, and that any musician is only as informed as their experience. Hitting-notes-in-order means you've just walked into the atrium of a potentially lifelong learning experience, no matter what the instrument.
It looks more like 'Old Macdonald had a farm'
You should try strudel.cc
There's plenty virtual instrument that use keyboard as input, you can even modified as simple or complex. I don't remember the name but there's desktop Piano app and browser based virtual Drum.
Welcome to QWERTY-MIDI, around since the advent of DAWs basically.
https://beijaflor.io/qwertymidi/
Am I going crazy? How is this the first time people have encountered a musical keyboard?
I liked it very much. I remember once I tried to hold a guitar fret and found it very difficult. I never played a chord properly on guitar.
But this is nice, simple and fun.
You don't need to fret to play a chord properly on guitar just play the 3 highest strings together and that's an E minor chord. Just lightly hold the bottom highest string and the top two strings (to mute them) and you can play a G major. Or play them all open at once and you have a Em11
congrats, now the only songs you can play have G, Em, and Em11.
Did you use a mirror? Or is this for left handed guitars? It's because a guitar never looks like that, not a regular right-handed guitar. When you play a guitar, you see the side of the neck, so you need to lean out a bit to see it. Or rotate the guitar so that you can see the fretboard. In this position the headstok is pointing to the left and the thickest strings are on the bottom, closer to you. For the thickest string to be on the top, you'd have to flip the guitar over like a left-handed person would do. But then the headstock would point to the right, and you're in the left-handed position with a right-handed guitar.
I just pushed an update fixing this issue. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks
Yes! The Tab view reads intuitively now.
The previous view would still be valid view for left handed guitars. The 10% or so of left handed population would appreciate it, just don’t make it the default and clearly label as a left handed, or a mirror reflection. And the “player view” for left handed should have the headstock pointing to the right.
Really cool app, sounds good, especially when playing back the demo songs.
I am also building a music game/app for learning piano basics:
https://ultimidi.com
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.
Wow, amazing work! And so complete in a way, you open each section and just gets blown away, like the songs with all those album covers and all. Love that there's stuff like Satie in there too, sounds superb with the band playing along...
Will def use this in my job as a high school music teacher.
If I could wish for one thing it would be to have just a little more authentic guitar sound. Works as it is, but can't help but hearing "MIDI".
Great work!
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.
" 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.
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.
Thanks for adding Tab view. Much more intuitive.
I just spent 30 minutes playing with this. It's incredible, well done to the author!
Listening to it auto-play "Ode to Joy" with a full band was more amusing than I thought. Lol!
I would love to have this as an electron package/standalone if/when the website ever goes away. It's great work
I've been playing guitar for 20 years and this is incredible. Impressed by the feat of getting all this in browser, and the quality as a learning tool.
My dad had a stroke years ago and hasn't been able to hold a guitar, but I showed him this tonight and he thought it was awesome. Excited to see what he does with it.
Looking forward to your acquihire by Guitar Center! Makes me want to dust off my old acoustic after work and practice some more.
If you want to see the difference between vibe coding and masterful AI-assisted coding, this is it.
This isn't about coding. I've been yapping about architecture and design for a decade and I'm seeing LLMs produce significantly cleaner architecture than most developers I've worked with.
This, I think, is great product design. More than babysitting the code, it's about hammering the experience until it's as useful, ergonomic and delightful as possible for the user.
Very neat!
Does anyone else remember Frets On Fire? That could be a fun mode to try to adapt.
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
That's one of the best guitar UIs I've seen on a computer.
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?
[1] - https://imgur.com/a/6jQiUJp
Thanks! The sample sources listed on the credits page: https://guitoro.com/credits/
Impressive, I test on old iPhone, it's works seamlessly!
Like other already mentioned, the orientation is bit odd, like you play with guitar facing you.
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'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.
Wow, I liked it a lot. It's really smooth and the sound is perfect!
I like the strumming part, could you add an option to not auto strum a chord when I do a chord change?
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.
Super cool. This is more towards one who knows to play but any plans to introduce tutoring sessions for beginners?
Thanks! Yes, I plan to add beginners lessons and more songs.
Very much looking forward to it, the app is awesome!
instantly reminded me of the "c64 bass guitar": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kDhpFaf4EY
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.
Amazing work! One of those things I wish I’d thought of.
I’d love support for multi touch on tablet. Currently zooms out but I expected it to pick multiple strings.
Thanks for the feedback! Yes, I see your point. Did multitouch work for you on the fretboard?
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.
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.
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?
https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/the-rolling-stones/angi...
and switch to A minor
Thanks. You can paste any chords (with the lyrics) from any website into "my songs" section and play it.
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
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?
Very nice. A selfish suggestion is to add ukulele.
+1 for uke! This would be a great teaching aid.
It’s incredible. I tried it on PC and got hooked for half an hour.
Amazing.
This is fantastic, well done and thanks for sharing! Any chance of adding C Standard to the tuning list?
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
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 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.
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.
(-:
Before I knew it, ten minutes had gone! good job
Such an AMAZING idea - as a guitar player I wish I had thought of this. Kudos to the creator...Very well done :)
I would pay for this in a VST form
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?
10/10 immediately played Hotel California chords. Felt very intuitive, sounded nice. Great fun!
Will you add lefi hadn mode later?
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
Tapping in a tempo could be useful.
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 is great, great design, great functionality, TY!
This was much better than I expected. Nice job.
This is incredibly satisfying. Nice work!
I love that this is a learning tool too.
Why is the guitar backwards?
Feels really good!
No MIDI?
This is absolutely amazing. Well done.
this is awesome
Sick, love it
thanks, claude
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel:
This is excellent. Thank you.
Enjoy (; and tell your friend
This is super fun, thanks!
Tastefully done.
This is really good.
This is awesome!
That's awesome!
Thanks!
This is so cool.
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!
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.
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.)
fantastic!
love it!