I swear I’m doing the exact same thing. 
I’m also an Operations / Deployments / Server Infrastructure / DevOps engineer, if you’d like some help pulling it off from that side of the puzzle.
Same here! I’m even delaying some composing because I’d like to wait until I have the new Hookpad to work while I get used to it.
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We’d appreciate some kind of response or feedback! Come on!
Hi all,
Sorry for the slow reply. Will post a video preview of HP2 this weekend
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Woah so much hype!!! \o/
Hookpad 2 preview. Will announce a beta testing date soon, targeting by the end of February.
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This looks FANTASTIC! I’m glad I’ve been supporting you guys for so long, and I hope to keep doing it for even longer. Thank you for the update! And please, count me in for the beta!
Edit: OH MY YOU INCLUDED THE MAGIC BASS FEATURE. AND IT HAS A INSTANT PREVIEW BUTTON
Holy christ that’s amazing.
Are we able to invert every chord yet?
Wanted to let you know we really appreciate all of your contributions to the community and the forum. In the past we’ve found ourselves drafting a response to a question only to find that you’ve already posted one.
We haven’t made a decision on inverting all chords, but yes presently you can now invert suspended chords:
The labelling of the figured bass here is technically wrong since the interval is now a 5th instead of a 6th, but in a suspended triad this interval doesn’t uniquely identify the inversion. I still think that if you do want a Isus4 in first inversion, you’re better off using its equivalent: IVsus2, since this probably better captures its function.
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A huge round of applause is in order: this looks terrific!
All of the additions have me extremely excited. Thank you for all of your hard work – I’m proud to be a supporter.
— Will the Hookpad2 beta be available to all current users of Hookpad+ upon release or just those who volunteer (in which case, I wholeheartedly volunteer 
) ?
Does this require any kind of conversion in saved tabs or do existing uses of the altered notes automatically gain those notes?
EDIT: Please bring back chords with both b9 and #9. Also I hope add6 and add9 can be used together for 6/9 chords (which were the main reason behind 3rd inversions of 7sus4 chords).
Nice work lads.
After watching the video have just 2 questions:
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Are there plans on integrating non standard time signatures? E.g => 7/4 … 10/4 time signatures?
Always have wanted to tab this out on your site, as it’s one of my favorite songs of all time, but I can’t (7/4):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PY1b8_iIPc -
How is performance against large scale (many lined) tabs? One thing I love doing is making a long tab to capture as much of the original source as possible, but when doing this with the old hookpad, performance would become an issue after about 4 full meters. Check this Ronald Jenkees tab I made for reference. It runs fine, until you actually go in and edit it, and then the UI becomes very slow. https://www.hooktheory.com/theorytab/view/ronald-jenkees/outer-space
Another question, that actually ties in with question 2 => What is your target platform? When you are testing your code, are you defaulting to Chrome, or Firefox (or any other in particular) ? This gives me a good idea, as a user, which platform you tested your new code on while developing so I know what you were targetting specifically.
Thanks for all the great work!
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This is actually highly important. Just because it’s now HTML5 doesn’t mean it’ll work perfectly across all devices and browsers. You’d need to test all the major browsers, and PC/Mac, mobile devices, tablets, and the like.
Hi @aylictal
Thanks for the comments.
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We do not have plans at this time of supporting arbitrary time signatures. I know this is a bummer, but it is a tradeoff we had to make to maintain support for many of our voicing algorithms. Hookpad 2 will support simple meters of 2, 3, 4, and 5 beats per measure, and compound meters of 6, 9, and 12 (2, 3, and 4) beats per measure. The FFVI OST is one of my favorites of all time, and I too am a fan of the esper theme in 7/8 (especially since in HP2 we can use min(maj7) quality for the first chord). This could still be analyzed by alternating fast 3 and 4, although I know this is not ideal.
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Performance for (very) long songs was one of our highest priorities for Hookpad 2. The original Hookpad was first designed for small sections, and as you note, did not scale well for longer ones. We addressed this by optimizing both our drawing and playback engines so that there should be no meaningful difference between a 4 line and a 100 line song. There are further optimizations to the drawing engine that we would like to explore, but will probably release the beta with the current one to get it into your hands sooner rather than later, and go from there.
Most of our development presently is being done in Chrome. Our newest MIDI I/O features require the Web MIDI API, which currently is only implemented in Chrome so far (https://caniuse.com/#feat=midi). However, we are committed to supporting all other features on all major browsers and platforms.
Although Hookpad will work on mobile, we are interested in building a separate mobile version of Hookpad with a more mobile-friendly UI.
@Mephistopheles, regarding the beta, we haven’t finalized how we will do this, but we’re certainly interested in all of your feedback here, so consider yourself invited!
Thanks again for all of your support!
Technically there shouldn’t be many tabs in the database that contain alterations, since this feature was never publicly released. Currently these alterations do not convert over, but we can think about implementing that.
We decided to include an (add6) option to have access to qualities like maj6 and min6 more naturally, which function more similar to triads built on the same bass rather than seventh chords in first inversion.
And yes, adding both 6 and 9 will be spelled as 6/9:
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Why not just disable voicings that aren’t supported in the current time signature?
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Then why was 5/4 added? Both 2+3 and 3+2 are valid additive meters, so there are two possibilities:
- You added one of them and not the other one. Hookpad 1 for example added 2+2+2 and not 3+3 (and I see no mentions of compound time in the preview either).
- You added both as separate harmony / bass track instruments. Then it should only require little effort to add 7/4 because either the
voicingaccompaniment algorithm is powerful enough or there was little algorithmic input to begin with.
The way it is presented right now makes it look more incomplete than it is, especially considering I can already use both 5/4 and 7/4 in externally loaded Theorytabs (2/4 too, but one of the dictation songs used that as well).
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In terms of irregular meters, 5/4 (and mainly 3+2) is much more common than 7/4, and has a larger footprint in popular music. That’s not to say that other meters aren’t important, but that’s just where we drew the line. 5/4 was added as 3+2 for now, but it is currently voiced as a standalone entity, rather than compounding 3 and 2.
As for actually programming in compounded voicing? Yes, in hindsight, that’s a pretty a smart and extendable solution. I know that seems obvious now but the truth is we just didn’t think of it. Moving forward this would be pretty straightforward to implement.
There’s still a lot of work to do with Hookpad, and just because we’re releasing this next version doesn’t mean that we’re finished. But at this time, we an believe that it’s more important to get it into your hands in its current state then to delay its release any further.
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totally agree with you Ryan, i couldn’t say it anyway better. thanks for sharing. i can see that you know these things really well and i was wondering if i may ask you questions? thanks!
Hi Ryan,
This new update looks amazing, happy to keep supporting you guys.
My burning question is, can the new Hookpad 2 import MIDI? Even just a melody import. I like writing melodies in my DAW using various plugins/samples for inspiration, but would love to be able to work with your chord features to pick the best chords.
I have to say though, I’m not super upset if you can’t because it looks like transcribing my melodies into HP will be 10x easier than before with the new editing features I just saw in the video.
Much thanks
J.
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