Anglo Piano webapp

[Steve Schulteis]

7 hours ago, lachenal74693 said:

I may be OT here, but goodie! That means I can fix the off-by-one line number in my ABC error detection

program by simply adding 1 to the line number - even if I can't see why the error occurs in the first place...

 

I hate to admit it, but sometimes understanding a bug isn't worth the effort if you can fix it anyway. It's a balancing act against how likely you think it is for it to somehow bite you (and your users) in the future. But if your users expect you to keep adding features, it's helpful to be able to understand how the code works. 😉

[Roger Hare]

59 minutes ago, Steve Schulteis said:

I hate to admit it, but sometimes understanding a bug isn't worth the effort if you can fix it anyway. It's a balancing act against how likely you think it is for it to somehow bite you (and your users) in the future. But if your users expect you to keep adding features, it's helpful to be able to understand how the code works. 😉

Heh! I agree. I wasn't allowed to operate like that before I retired, but now, I have the choice - and am exercising that choice. The real b*s*a*d is that the code sits in two programs. In one program it gets the line number right, in t'other program, it's off by one. What fun...

 

I hope that Bb/F layout is OK...

[Luke Hillman]

@lachenal74693 thanks for the Bb/F chart! I've added it, and my inferred Jeffries 30b layout. I'll do the 38 and 40b versions later.

 

@DaveRo the easier way to clear the cache (for a single site) is just to hold shift and refresh the page, which at least works in Firefox and Chrome, and probably some others. On my phone, long-pressing the refresh button does it.

[Richard Mellish]

If it's any use, here's the chart for my Dipper 40 key Bflat/F baritone. Sorry for yet another orientation of push/pull.

 

It has one change from the standard Wheatstone 40 key layout. The top left push note on the right-hand end is a low G rather than an E which would be normal. I specified the G because I thought it would be convenient for playing in G minor, but in the end I never got far with that and now I have my Wakker G-minor/D-minor box. I've thought about getting that G changed but not done anything about it.

BflatF.pdf

[Luke Hillman]

58 minutes ago, Richard Mellish said:

If it's any use, here's the chart for my Dipper 40 key Bflat/F baritone [...]

BflatF.pdf 14.28 kB · 1 download

 

Brilliant, thanks so much, Richard! This will save me a considerable headache. I've been on Wakker's waitlist for a while now and would love to see some pictures of yours, if you have any handy

[Luke Hillman]

...Well, now I really am confused. I know that there are more layouts out there than just the Wheatstone and Jeffries ones, and all kinds of individual customizations besides, but trying to reconcile @Richard Mellish and @lachenal74693's charts is making me dizzy, especially considering the accidental rows compared to my transpositions of the "standard" C/G charts. Are Bb/F instruments rare enough that there is no standard?

 

Put another way, would it be incorrect to simply transpose the standard C/G charts to any other tuning?

Edited January 5, 2022 by Luke Hillman

[Roger Hare]

3 hours ago, Luke Hillman said:

...trying to reconcile @Richard Mellish and @lachenal74693's charts is making me dizzy...

It's making me a little dizzy too, but at the same time, I can see enough similarities that I wouldn't

be put off acquiring a 40-button. I'm going to stick my neck out and say I think the differences might

be due to: 1) differences one might get between different makers 30-button layouts, tempered with

individual preference; 2) a  different 'standard' layout for 40-button instruments?

 

Anyone who knows more about 40-button layouts than me (ie: everyone!) care to comment?

 

I tried the updated version in the club last night, and it's looking better and better! 'Twas a bit slow,

but that was due entirely to the lousy internet connection in the boozer. Please keep up the good work!

 

This prompts me to ask a possibly controversial general question. Background first:

 

Luke's web-based program has a distinct advantage over other web-based concertina-related programs

I've tried - it works, and it works well! I've had a bad experience with two other concertina-related

web-based programs I've tried - basically, they didn't work. One didn't do anything like everything which

was 'necessary'; the other got so many things wrong that the documentation was largely about how to fix

the errors in the output, after running the program. So I wrote my own stand-alone programs to do the job(s).

They run on my computer, and I don't need the internet (which is the way I like it, on the grounds of being

'independent').

 

So (at last!), my question is: What's the advantage of having programs running in inter-galactic space if you

can do the job without going off-planet? I think I know the answer, but I'd like to see what 'the body o' the kirk'

thinks...

 

Meantime, thanks Luke, you are doing a great job! Thinks: Somewhere I have an ex-Salvation Army 26-button

Ab/Eb. How're you fixed for adding another layout(*)...😎

______

(*) Just joking! For one thing, it ain't tuned to A=440Hz...

Edited January 5, 2022 by lachenal74693

[Richard Mellish]

6 hours ago, Luke Hillman said:

...Well, now I really am confused. I know that there are more layouts out there than just the Wheatstone and Jeffries ones, and all kinds of individual customizations besides, but trying to reconcile @Richard Mellish and @lachenal74693's charts is making me dizzy, especially considering the accidental rows compared to my transpositions of the "standard" C/G charts. Are Bb/F instruments rare enough that there is no standard?

 

Put another way, would it be incorrect to simply transpose the standard C/G charts to any other tuning?

In general, for a given pattern (such as Wheatstone 40-key), transposing everything should be correct. Besides my one-off change that I mentioned, and the additional buttons on my 40-key that are not on lachenal74693's chart, there are very few other differences: left-hand end, top row, 2nd button, pull; and left-hand end, bottom row, 1st button, both directions. That last strikes me as an oddity on lachenal74693's chart because the F on push and the C on pull are both available on the middle row, and my A and G correspond to the B and A in that position on a C/G.

[Richard Mellish]

17 hours ago, Luke Hillman said:

 

Brilliant, thanks so much, Richard! This will save me a considerable headache. I've been on Wakker's waitlist for a while now and would love to see some pictures of yours, if you have any handy

I don't have a picture of mine handy, but it's pretty much the same as the amboyna one at http://www.wakker-concertinas.com/A-6.htm

 

Edited January 5, 2022 by Richard Mellish
Corrected a typo.

[SIMON GABRIELOW]

Why not just sit there yourself physically and when someone goes online and presses keyboard note... You actually manually play it for them on your own concertina !!!!?

(Just a joke) but your idea sounds good!

😄

[Roger Hare]

3 hours ago, Richard Mellish said:

In general, for a given pattern (such as Wheatstone 40-key), transposing everything should be correct. Besides my one-off change that I mentioned, and the additional buttons on my 40-key that are not on lachenal74693's chart, there are very few other differences: left-hand end, top row, 2nd button, pull; and left-hand end, bottom row, 1st button, both directions. That last strikes me as an oddity on lachenal74693's chart because the F on push and the C on pull are both available on the middle row, and my A and G correspond to the B and A in that position on a C/G.

Yup! There seem to be relatively few differences between different forms of the 'standard' layouts. Once you

factor out the differences between 30- and 40- button instruments, the differences between my Bb/F and

your Bb/F are slight. Interesting that my instrument seems to be a bit of a 'sport' - I hadn't clocked that. I have

some provenance for the instrument, (it's a 'semi-miniature' ~110-120 years old), but I have nothing

which tells me why it's 'different'. These differences seem to be uncontroversial - if I remember correctly,

Mick Bramich's tutor books include a blank layout chart so that the eager student can fill in the layout for

their own particular instrument - useful, I think?

Edited January 5, 2022 by lachenal74693

[hjcjones]

This app looks really useful.

 

In my experience, once you get beyond the core 30 buttons then the idea of a 'standard' layout becomes increasingly remote. In my time I have owned a 40-button Lachenal, a 40-button Crabb, and a 38-button John Crabb G/D, and they all had differences.  Whenever I play someone else's instrument I usually soon find a button which isn't what I am expecting.  I recently had the opportunity to handle John Kirkpatrick's 40-button, made by Crabb only four years before mine, and most of the additional buttons on the right-hand side are different from mine (John's is close to, but not quite identical with, the Wheatstone layout in the app, so I guess mine must be the rogue).  The option to create one's own layout would therefore be helpful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ken_Coles]

3 hours ago, hjcjones said:

This app looks really useful.

 

In my experience, once you get beyond the core 30 buttons then the idea of a 'standard' layout becomes increasingly remote. In my time I have owned a 40-button Lachenal, a 40-button Crabb, and a 38-button John Crabb G/D, and they all had differences.  Whenever I play someone else's instrument I usually soon find a button which isn't what I am expecting.  I recently had the opportunity to handle John Kirkpatrick's 40-button, made by Crabb only four years before mine, and most of the additional buttons on the right-hand side are different from mine (John's is close to, but not quite identical with, the Wheatstone layout in the app, so I guess mine must be the rogue).  The option to create one's own layout would therefore be helpful.

 

 

20 years ago, when I was writing lots of articles for the old static pages on this site, I began collecting 40-button layouts to do a survey article. I found the same thing - they vary enough that trying to classify them even into groups was not very useful and I gave up. They are all in a file folder somewhere!

Ken

[Roger Hare]

12 hours ago, hjcjones said:

...I usually soon find a button which isn't what I am expecting...

Happens to me every time I pick up my 'regular' instrument. Must try harder...☹️

[Luke Hillman]

Okay! After spending a silly amount of time looking at all the Bb/F charts I could find, I finally came to the same conclusion as @hjcjones and @Ken_Coles; namely, once you move past 30-button and/or C/G layouts, there's basically no such thing as standard. Nevertheless, what I want to do is include the *theoretical* standard layouts and then allow folks to customize individual buttons that differ on their instruments. So, after some headaches with MuseScore, here's what I've come up with:

 

 

If anyone cares to give these a once-over to make sure I didn't do anything egregious, please do, and let me know if anything is off. Otherwise I'll add these to the tool later this week, and hopefully provide a method for further customization shortly afterward.

 

At this point I'm just being obsessive; no doubt people with 38- and 40-button systems are already quite literate and will have little need of this tool 🤣

[Luke Hillman]

On 1/4/2022 at 9:38 PM, lachenal74693 said:

I tried the updated version in the club last night, and it's looking better and better! 'Twas a bit slow,

but that was due entirely to the lousy internet connection in the boozer. Please keep up the good work!

 

Haha, thanks Roger! It tickles me to know that someone is playing with my little concertina app in a club somewhere in Manchester 😁

 

I, too, prefer my software to run on my computer whenever possible. I like not having to worry about crummy bandwidth, or the possibility that one day years from now some tool I rely on won't disappear from the internet without a trace. In this particular case, it was easier for me to make the thing in HTML, and if it's HTML, might as well put it up somewhere where people can get at it. And it's easier to just give people a link than to tell them to download and run something these days. I'd have to learn lots of new stuff to make a native app, but that could be fun...

[DaveRo]

On 1/5/2022 at 5:38 AM, lachenal74693 said:

So (at last!), my question is: What's the advantage of having programs running in inter-galactic space if you

can do the job without going off-planet? ...

As I suspect you know, the advantage is you can build it once and run it in any capable browser. And, sometimes, in an 'app' which looks like a native app but is actually a browser window. The disadvantage is usally performance and intefacing with other apps.

 

Web apps can be built to run offline once they have been downloaded and cached. I don't know if the Axure tool Luke is using can do that, but it does require extra programming work. Then you could avoid the long load time I see, even on wifi, and use it where there is no internet. As it is this app doesn't appear to access the internet once it's loaded.

 

Web apps, now called Progressive Web Apps, have been an undercurrent for years.  Device makers, particularly Apple, are dead against because they make their money from hosting apps. Developers periodically try them, or threaten to, to break that hold.

 

But performance, once loaded, is key. On this newish Android tablet (and even on my i7-extreme desktop) it's quite laggy, particularly before a note sounds. But I think that's caused mainly by Axure; I have a calculator web app developed 11 years ago that's as fast as the Android calculator app.

 

(I'm learning to play a Hayden, and last played piano 60 years ago, so my interest is purely technical.)

[Richard Mellish]

4 hours ago, Luke Hillman said:

Okay! After spending a silly amount of time looking at all the Bb/F charts I could find, I finally came to the same conclusion as @hjcjones and @Ken_Coles; namely, once you move past 30-button and/or C/G layouts, there's basically no such thing as standard. Nevertheless, what I want to do is include the *theoretical* standard layouts and then allow folks to customize individual buttons that differ on their instruments. So, after some headaches with MuseScore, here's what I've come up with:

 

 

If anyone cares to give these a once-over to make sure I didn't do anything egregious, please do, and let me know if anything is off. Otherwise I'll add these to the tool later this week, and hopefully provide a method for further customization shortly afterward.

 

At this point I'm just being obsessive; no doubt people with 38- and 40-button systems are already quite literate and will have little need of this tool 🤣

Taking the last point first; that's probably true, but this thread also serves as a useful survey of layouts, standard or non-standard.

 

I don't entirely agree that "once you move past 30-button and/or C/G layouts, there's basically no such thing as standard". Wheatstone and Jeffries are certainly pretty different. I can't confirm or correct your Jeffries chart, but I seem to remember from when I briefly picked up a 38-key Jeffries that it had less than 30 buttons in common with my (then one and only) Wheatstone.

 

However the Wheatstone-layout 40-key instruments are pretty consistent. I have three actual Wheatstones and two other makes, and I think all but my Bflat/F have exactly equivalent layouts, with everything transposed by corresponding amounts. (Though I can't check my D/A as it's currently away for an overhaul.)

 

My Bflat-F does have a few differences. Besides the one I that mentioned before, having a G on the right-hand end, top row, first button, push, there are two others. What would be the right-most button on the right-hand end, top row, is instead in the innermost row to make it easier to reach with my little finger That was at my request. But I've only just noticed, or been reminded of, one other difference. Left-hand end, top row, second button has a D on pull instead of the A-flat/G-sharp that would correspond to the B-flat on a C/G. I don't remember whether I requested that, but it was probably for the same reason as the G, for playing in G minor.

 

There was also one mistake in the chart that I attached. Right-hand end, top row, fourth button, pull, is an A-flat/G-sharp, as already shown on the stave and on your chart, not A natural.