Location: Ohio, US (70 mi SW of Pittsburgh)

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: Open to discussion

Technologies: React, Typescript / Javascript, Web Components, CSS, UI Design, Golang, C++, MySQL, Postgres, Docker, Linux

Résumé/CV: https://sectionfourteen.com

Email: anthony[at]sectionfourteen[dot]com

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Former graphic designer turned software developer with 10+ years of professional experience. I've built highly dynamic frontends with React. I've developed full stack applications with various tools, including: React, Vue, Vanilla Js + server templating, and Go. Also, I've built a number of CLI tools in Go.

Currently working on a VST plugin in C++, and I have explored a number of other areas over the years. Such as: mobile, games, graphics programming, and embedded systems.

While most of my work has been web focused, I'm open to working in other areas. Check out my website, sectionfourteen.com, for more detailed info.

Recognizing melodies by ear is a hugely useful skill, but I can't help but think it's going to be nearly impossible to do without a sound foundation in music theory.

Tabs are, in large part, paint-by-number. Lots of guitarists out there are only interested in learning a song. Regardless of key, mode, or what the notes actually are. And, tabs satisfy that group by saying: "Play this fret on this string".

To write tabs, you'll need to be able to make an educated guess at what's being played. ex. "Is that a minor pentatonic scale? Or are they arpeggiating a minor 7th chord?". If terms like that aren't in your musical vocabulary, and you haven't played enough to recognize the difference, I don't see how a guitarist would even begin writing their own tabs. Maybe the author is assuming this skill set.

Having learned guitar in a way that's somewhat similar to what's outlined in this article, I will say that someone doing this transcription-based method will likely naturally consolidate their "making tabs" into "making chords" pretty quickly, because the patterns occur often enough. I'd also say that producing your own tabs is very far away from a being a mere tab-consumer, it's just a natural introductory medium because tabs are very easily digestible to a beginner and, as you say, satisfy the craving.

I think that starting off with easy songs, and with enough brute force as you scale up, you can become organically familiar with these concepts to make the educated guesses you're talking about.

Many renowned musicians were able to effectively create music utilising these concepts despite never formally learning music theory, and by just learning by ear.

> To write tabs, you'll need to be able to make an educated guess at what's being played.

Knowing the theory certainly makes the process faster because you'll recognize patterns, but you can definitely work through most songs without knowing anything about music theory. Just pick up your guitar, slow the track down and try to reproduce the tones.

Back when I first started playing guitar, my teacher had me transcribe the melody to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (from memory). I didn't even know the major scale at that point, but by trial and error I improved my intuition for translating melodies in my head to the fretboard, which is remarkably useful as a guitarist, not only for improvisation, but for composition as well.

That's not to say that knowing music theory isn't helpful in transcribing and in general, but I wouldn't say it's a prerequisite. A lot of my foundation in music theory came from transcribing first and putting things together afterwards.

> I didn't even know the major scale at that point, but by trial and error

That is not productive. Sure, you can do that once or twice. But it gets painful quickly.

> but I wouldn't say it's a prerequisite.

I firmly believe it is a prerequisite. Just by knowing what an interval is and playing that repeatedly, trains your brain to recognize it. Specifically 1-3-5 interval range.

This is also one of those things that varies with the individual. When I was a kid taking cello lessons, I learned to play by ear. For classical students, theory doesn't really start until college.

I know very little theory, but I've been playing jazz for almost 50 years, and I know hundreds of melodies along with enough of their harmonies to improvise and accompany other players. Many people pick up tunes from the radio or hymns at church, even if they don't play an instrument.

I think a helpful tip for ear training is that you can do it without an instrument, just by hearing stuff (tunes, rhythms, accompanying parts) and trying to sing along. For beginners, this avoids the awkwardness of the instrument and its technique getting in the way.

If you develop your ear and learn your way around your instrument, then you can learn to play along by ear and then just write down what you're doing.

>For classical students, theory doesn't really start until college.

Well, unless, you are studying here in Hungary, for example, where it starts pretty much right away... (though it is a separate class).

Maybe this is the reason behind the old saying: "All of the good composers were either deaf or Hungarian."

> you haven't played enough to recognize the difference

I think the key bit here is that this is aimed at someone who is proficient, but not "good" ie can play tab, but not much else.

I think its perfectly possible to transcribe if you don't "know" musical theory, but for guitar, you should need to know chord shapes.

The key or mode is probably not actually that important, because you are transcribing rather then improvising. Obviously it will reduce the search space considerably if you do know what key/mode its in.

But you'd be surprised at how much musical theory is innate, or at lease learnt through listening.

I may be wrong but I don't think there is a theory of melody in as there is go harmony or counterpoint. A good melody can't be constructed from rules. That's what makes them magical.

As I write this, I think when a melody sounds good it's likely related to the implied harmony in the notes being used, and obviously the expectations the listener gets and how they're handled. But I don't think there is a system of constructing good melodies in Western classical music theory.

I'd say that once you understand practical harmony, counterpoint, diminutions, common schemata, some basic elements of form, you've pretty much understood what classical music theory has to say about melody too. There's definitely an element of playing with expectations in a fully "creative" and rule-free way, but knowing the theory underneath is how you understand what the expectations are.

You can figure it out by ear with music theory. You use different terms but who cares. Theory is useful of course but not required.

Something I never see answered in articles like this: What are all these corporations going to do when the AI companies who are handling all their operations raise rates by 10x, 20x, 100x? Outside of "pay up", of course.

Also, shouldn't they be worried about AI providers launching competitors? If these predictions come true, and AI handles most of a company's workload, wouldn't the company itself be something that could be automated away by AI?

Vendor management is a risk that every business deals with to some capacity. What keeps Microsoft from charging more for Windows licenses? Linux, MacOS, even Chromebooks. A business who puts all their eggs in one vendor's basket without any exit strategy will either have to pay up, sell, or fold, but that kind of behavior from a vendor will have their other customers looking for a door.

Launching competitors? Maybe so, but this too has existing analogs pre-AI[1]. The fact that many start-ups today are created with the explicit goal of being acquired rather than growing organically or existing in perpetuity tells me that the only thing that may change is the cost of Sherlocking a startup will come down below the cost to acquire. But if the cost of creating a start-up and using a lawyer-bot to protect its intellectual property also come down, then the math isn't settled.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)#Sherlocked...

Isn't that exactly what this is? Except they're targeting a single app.

A million percent! I was so bad at Math in school. Which I primarily blame on the arbitrary way in which we were taught it. It wasn't until I was able to apply it to solving actual problems that it clicked.

Wow, this is really innovative. It really takes "physical modeling" synths to another, more literal level. Would love to have been a fly on the wall when the idea was proposed.

This + an Ekdahl Moisturizer would be an interesting pairing.

Exactly. The 60 and 70 year olds I spend time with, women especially (not a dig, but an observation), are just as addicted to facebook as the Instagram / TikTok crowd are to those platforms.

> at which point you've reinvented either a static site generator ...

It doesn't have to be Astro though. You can build something super simple that just includes the header, footer, and nav. Leaving most of the site as plain HTML.

Yes; that's Eleventy. Or Hugo. Or Jekyll. They are extremely simple, without the bells and whistles of Astro.

Seems like a pretty solid deal, if you need everything. I don't know who that person is though. The intersection between Final Cut Pro and Logic users is pretty small, I'd imagine.

TBF, you can say the same thing for adobe creative cloud - the intersection between After Effects and Indesign users is also effectively nil!

But having one simple opex line item for "software I buy for the creative types" is appealing for a lot of orgs.

But the CC subscriptions offers a lot more.

Photohsop, Illustrator and After Effects are pretty much industry standards.

Apple really should’ve grabbed Affinity before canva. Would’ve rounded out this suite much better.

Yeah. The Affinity team with Apple's resources could have made an amazing Adobe CC alternative for Mac users.

Yes, re: opex. The product is “renewals,” not software really.

I'm that kind of user but I would rather not use Logic, Final Cut, or PixelMator unless Apple really improves those. On top of that there's also the platform lock-in concern.

There’s quite a few creative hobbyists and freelancers.

In a past life, I’d have fallen quite squarely in the latter and I still fall in the former.

Given this also extends to my family, it feels like a no-brainer replacement for creative cloud.

Subs like this are great for people who can’t afford the full versions yet

I wonder if used vinyl purchases would skew this number more towards "owns a turntable".