Online shamisen tuner

I’m placing this under Shamisen of Japan Errata, since I’ve been thinking about how to easily explain the shamisen fingering positions shown on page 112 of edition 2.

The “Learning Center > Tuning your Shamisen” page (http://bachido.com/learn/pages/tuning) only shows the open strings. What if the pictures could be extended to show the full fingerboard, with position markers on the side? Then, let the user listen to the tone for each position on each string, rather like a shamisen tuner. To reduce clutter, use only a single picture, with “radio buttons” to select one of the three tunings.

There’s a good piano-keyboard example, at this site: http://www.seventhstring.com/tuningfork/tuningfork.html

More techie discussion (for Kyle’s brother):

The current tuning web page plays mp3 files for each tone. For twenty positions, three strings, and the two variant tunings, I estimate that 67 mp3 files would be needed. And that’s just for a standard tuning based on the key of C. It might be useful to generate a tone for each tuning/position/string/ “on the fly.”

The piano example uses a Java applet, which requires the user to install the Java Runtime Environment (they probably already have). I assume this applet uses the Java Sound API.

The W3C consortium has developed a javascript web audio API which can be used to generate tones, but currently it only runs on Firefox 4+ and Chrome browsers, not Internet Explorer.
Info: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Creating_a_Web_based_tone_generator
Example: http://jsfiddle.net/c59yu/

That’s a good idea. It would make more sense and save a page to combine it with the tuning. And for all the strings as well! I had first thought to just record the positions on the san no ito (or ichi no ito) so they could match the sound and stick the markers on. However, if it’s for the ni no ito as well, it could help with learning a piece, as they can also tap out all the notes and hear how it sounds.

What timing. I was just about to go downstairs and record the positions/tones on the shamisen! :-S