Music Companion
A place to learn the local music of Boneiru — with a tuner for kuarta and ukulele, and chord detection from any audio source.
Music Companion was born on Dia di Rincon — but the story started about two weeks earlier. Here on the kunuku (the countryside plot) my cousin Robby and a filmmaker came by, looking for a location for a music video. They looked around, asked if they could film here, and I agreed.
That was the first time in my 33 years that I really got insight into the culture behind our local music. Those of us from Playa Grandi aren't really into Simadán, so it had never been in me — but I thought it was beautiful. They invited me to come along to Dia di Rincon, and there was a whole collection of instruments, including a kuarta that was completely out of tune. Online there was nothing to be found for tuning a kuarta — or a guitar, or anything in this context. So at that point I knew what I wanted to build.
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Tuner
The first thing I built was a tuner — for the kuarta AND for the ukulele (which I play myself). You pick the instrument, it listens in, and tells you whether your string needs to go up or down. Nothing technically special, but for the kuarta there just wasn't anything online.
A place for our local music
After that Dia di Rincon I noticed it's also just fun to play along — as if you're on a Simadán trailer. But I couldn't find which chords they use, or which rhythm you beat with your hand on the kuarta, or how you hold your wíri.
The idea behind Music Companion is to make a place for the cultural music of Boneiru, with instructions on how to play it yourself:
- the chords of a song
- the rhythm, and how you beat it
- which instruments are involved
- and maybe also how you can MAKE the instruments yourself — did you know that a wíri is just a tube with grooves cut into it that you scrape across?
Then you can practice at home, instead of every time looking for someone who knows it, asking "how does Simadán go again?", and forgetting after three days.
Chord analyzer
There's also a module that tries to detect chords from an audio source. You can paste a YouTube video, upload a sound file, or listen live through your microphone — and it shows which chords are being played.
It doesn't work perfectly yet. For local music I'd need reference recordings with the right chords labelled, to calibrate the system. I don't have those, and I can't find them anywhere. Who can help?
Does this interest you?
Voting is the main way to help me — it tells me where the interest is and where to put my time.