Ashish's Blog

Friday, January 24, 2014

Looking for Chords of a Song? Meet Chordify

"Talking about covers, whether visually or sonically, if a particular combination of notes struck a chord in your heart in a way that you want to be a part of it by covering that song, then there is nothing wrong with it." - Ville Valo

A couple of days ago, while surfing the net, I found out an interesting site chordify.net which I thought is worth sharing with the people who are interested in music. So what is Chordify all about?

What is Chordify?

Chordify is a web application that transforms the music from Youtube, SoundCloud or any uploaded music file into chords. Sounds interesting!!. The first thing that might pop into your head is "Any Song", and the answer is "yes" any song that you upload, chordify will display the chords for that song. The online music service automatically recognizes chords from the audio signal, and aligns them to the music in simple and intuitive player.

Chordify Origin and Popularity

The website is an outcome of a PHD research by Haas, W.B. de. After his PhD research on music information retrieval, Bas did not want his work to get lost in a dusty closet with other PhD theses. He decided his chord recognition algorithm was almost good enough for public use, so he brought together a group of other music enthusiasts to create Chordify. Chordify is the handiwork of 5 guys from Netherlands and UK. They started work on this on October 2012. The website seems to be rapidly gaining popularity. In less than 2 years of its operation, it has already reached among the top 35000 websites in the world.

Sleek Interface

The user interface for the website looks very simple and easy to use, however the website uses state of the art web development techniques made for and by music enthusiasts. When I tried a song the chords were pretty accurate. The relevant chord is highlighted on the screen and moves inline as the song progresses. If you want to learn only some specific parts, you can click any part and it takes you automatically to that part of the song be it chorus or bridge. All thanks to the modern technology that now one can learn the chords for the song that we like in one click.

Things to improve

As the output is solely based on the automatic recognition of the audio signal, how accurate is the output generated from Chordify. The website is in its initial phase and it doesn't display any chord variants other than Major and Minor. The time signature shows 4/4 and for the songs with different time signatures, it doesn't really work out as the song is still divided in fours while showing irregular beats. In terms of accuracy, this app is better suited to simple songs rather than riff laden and solo centric songs. The website is improving the chord recognition quality, however automatic chord transcription is a hard problem in general, and the developers are working to improve it. Hope we will get to see a advanced form of chordify sooner than later.

For all the people who are interested in getting the chords for the songs they like, this is a site that can be really helpful. If you find the website helpful for you, please comment below.

4 Pianists to Listen To

Piano is one great instrument that provides melody of life. “Pianos, unlike people, sing when you give them your every growl. They know how to dive into the pit of your stomach and harmonize with your roars when you’ve split yourself open. And when they see you, guts shining, brain pulsing, heart right there exposed in a rhythm that beats need need, need need, need need, pianos do not run. And so she plays.”

A single listing of pianists in all genres would be impractical, given the multitude of musicians noted for their performances on the instrument. But If you are wondering which pianist should you listen to, here are some of the pianist who are master in what they do.

Vangelis ( 29 March, 1943)

Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, popularly known as Vangelis is a Greek composer cum pianist, who began composing at the age of 4. Although a composer, I would consider him as a Pianist as I love to see him playing piano. He was a person who refused to take a traditional piano lesson, and through out his career did not have a good grasp on reading and writing notations. But we can see how his music has inspired other to take piano playing seriously.

Whenever, we talk about Vangelis, the song that is anonymous to his name is score for the movie Chariots of Fire based on 1924 Summer Olympics. The music choice which was supposedly unorthodox as most of the movie of that period had orchestral scores, whereas his music was heavy and modern.

The other song that is one of the favorite in my playlist for Vangelis, is score from 1492: Conquest of Paradise, which was based on Christopher Columbus' voyage to the New World. The song itself gives you the feeling of achievement. His music is gorgeous and unique.

Richard Clayderman (28 Dec, 1953)

More than 1300 recorded melodies in his name, Richard Clayderman is a French Pianist who has given a new meaning to the word "Romance" in piano playing is certainly one pianist to listen to. He is noted by the Guinness Book of World Records as being "the most successful pianist in the world". He is notably popular for instrumental renditions of popular music, movie soundtrack and easy listening arrangements of popular classical music.

Although there are many popular songs for him, some of the songs that is a must in my playlist are:

Yiruma (15 Feb, 1978)

A South Korean pianist whose playing style is popular among the new generation listeners, started playing piano from the age of 5. His style of playing is normally categorized into "New Age Classical" or "Contemporary Classical" as his music is even popular among the listeners who are not that familiar with the classical music. Yiruma's music is considered as soothing and peaceful, as it takes you to a different world of imagination. I am sure that you will also feel the same once you hear him.

Some of the songs that is a must listen in my playlist for Yiruma are:

Maksim Mrvica (3 May, 1975)

Maksim Mrvica, a Croatian born pianist started playing from the age of 9. Maksim Mrvica knew he wanted to play the piano when he was just eight. He caught a glimpse of the instrument at his best friend Alexander’s house. That was in 1984 and although 22 years later he is one of the most famous contemporary pianists in the world. His playing is categorized as a new age classical form of music, which is a very popular.

Some of the songs which is a must listen in my playlist of Maksim Mrvica are:

To the amazement of some, the list doesn't include some great legends like Beethoven, Mozart & Liszt. They are some of the legends who can never be included in the list. They are the gods of music.