alt.hn

12/26/2025 at 8:30:36 AM

Microtonal Spiral Piano

 https://shih1.github.io/spiral/

by phoenix_ashes

12/26/2025 at 8:30:36 AM

inspired from a few years of travel, i built something that aims to bridge the gap between modern western music with historical and global tunings.

the modern western mode of 12 Tones Equal Temperament (12-TET) is the default and likely the one you are most familiar with. once comfortable with the ui, i recommend exploring other N-TET versions to see what what harmonies your intuition guides you towards!

to better help you understand these N-TET modes, there is a 2D geometric visualizer that will computes the geometric shape of your chord and match it against common chord classes (major, minor, 7ths, 9ths, etc.)

the 2D version uses a realtime 2D convex hull algo.

there is also a 3D Tower version that hacks around the 3D convex hull algo (looks accurate but not accurate)

there is also some basic synth sound design implemented as well.

please enjoy!

~yoshih

by phoenix_ashes

12/31/2025 at 6:21:42 PM

If anyone is unclear on how to switch to microtonal mode (okay, if you're pendantic, "xenharmonic" would be the right term), use the gear at the top-right and change the Tuning system from 12-TET to something else.

by throwawayk7h

12/31/2025 at 11:08:13 PM

Thanks, having a way to link directly to a certain configuration would be interesting.

by kibwen

12/31/2025 at 11:58:46 PM

This guy (Gavin) built a physical version of the same music visualisation spiral. Fixed at 12 notes per octave and no ability to act as input. He feeds it with MIDI from a standard keyboard.

https://tinkerings.org/2021/11/20/spiral-music-visualization...

by femto

1/1/2026 at 10:57:16 AM

That whole blog is amazing. It ends in 2023?

by jacquesm

1/2/2026 at 5:22:43 AM

Gavin Smith is a pretty interesting guy. I've talked to him and gone to a presentation by him (we both live in Sydney), but I wouldn't say I know him. He's still active. Perhaps he's too busy making stuff to write about it?

by femto

12/31/2025 at 9:35:58 PM

This reminds me of a neat piece of computer keyboard -> audio software I found on what had to be an "old internet" site 15-20 years ago. For lack of a better phrase, it was relative tone keyboard. I've looked but have not been able to find the software, not remembering any hint of the name, but it was fun to play with.

It worked one of two ways, I'm not positive which.

--------

You stared with musical note C. One note could be played at a time. G would go down a half note, H up a half note. F down a whole note, J up a whole note. Repeatedly pressing G would go down the chromatic scale. Playing a Diatonic scale up would be a combination of pressing H and J.

--------

Pretend the keyboard letter G is the base note, mapped to C in music. F would give a half note lower, H a half note higher, and so on across the home row of the keyboard. Then you could adjust the base note (perhaps T to go down a half note, Y to go up a half note).

In essence, you could transpose a song from the key of C to D by doing a modifier, and your fingers could complete the exact same sequence. In a jazz application, something on Spiral Synth like "FSA, GDS, HFD, K" might have been

by DavidPeiffer

1/1/2026 at 9:48:46 AM

Jeskola Relativion does exactly what you describe. Relatively obscure because it's exclusively a Buzz plugin and it's not documented anywhere. I believe it comes with Buzz, it's mentioned in the changelog here: https://jeskola.net/buzz/beta/files/changelog.txt

That said, it's a fairly simple thing to develop, and I wouldn't be surprised if there are a bunch of other implementations.

by pierrec

12/31/2025 at 6:26:34 PM

It's unusable on mobile browsers - centers the page, can't scroll left or right.

On desktop it's awesome. Very cool!

by observationist

1/1/2026 at 10:29:22 AM

In my desktop Firefox it does not fit horizontally, and it is not scrollable: I had to maximize the window in order to uncover the keyboard completely.

by defanor

12/31/2025 at 8:44:04 PM

Almost fits in horizontal layout, but not quite.

by xnx

1/1/2026 at 10:39:12 AM

Nice one, to me it sounds a lot like a xylophone though. But the spiral positioning is very interesting, it shows the relationship between the higher order much better than a normal keyboard.

by jacquesm

12/31/2025 at 11:05:05 PM

That's so cool!

Also, I really liked your audio performance monitor to debug the audio engine. I've done a lot of work with Web Audio and it's so annoying to "visualize" or "track" what's happening.

I've been searching for a decent "F12" / "Developer Tools" for it.

by hmokiguess

12/31/2025 at 7:31:57 PM

Very delightful even just to run a finger back and forth across a row on the keyboard.

Why doesn't clicking on the key spiral trigger the same visualization in the right panel that using the keyboard does?

I wonder if "shift" would be a good modifier to some of the key behavior (reverb?)

by xnx

12/31/2025 at 7:14:45 PM

Very cool. May i suggest making the keys pizza-slice-shaped so they are slightly easier to press?

by gatkinso

1/1/2026 at 12:22:53 AM

Very cool! The settings for the actual tuning system (the point of this webapp) were a bit hard to find though.

by markzh123

1/1/2026 at 2:01:44 PM

Sounds nice for sure.

And no-one remembered Loom..

by mos87

12/31/2025 at 6:26:23 PM

I played this piano and it reminded me of Twilight Zone (1959).

by 29athrowaway

12/31/2025 at 6:15:51 PM

This should be in Show HN.

by zahlman