frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

Open in hackernews

Show HN: Let’s Bend – Open-Source Harmonica Bending Trainer

https://letsbend.de
48•egdels•4h ago
Hi HN,

I built a simple harmonica practice app that shows real-time pitch and bending targets for each hole. It helps blues harp players visualize their technique and improve intonation.

No tracking, no ads, open source (MIT).

The app is available on F-Droid and GitHub. You can find more details here: https://letsbend.de

Feedback welcome!

Comments

SOLAR_FIELDS•2h ago
Bending takes a bit of practice but it’s not terribly hard. Here are some general tips for absolute beginners that are based simply on my anecdotal experience as an amateur player:

1. Don’t start with a wooden harp like marine band. The metal and plastic ones are typically a bit easier to bend.

2. One hole at a time. Ensure you can exclusively blow in a single hole to practice

3. Lower notes are generally easier to bend than higher notes

4. Make an O with your mouth and have the tongue float in the middle. Start by pulling, not pushing, in my experience bending on intake is slightly easier than bending on blowing out.

5. Tighten the lips and decrease the size of the O to increase pull force on the reed to create a bending effect, and also tighten the airflow chamber above your tongue by pulling your tongue back and up, then loosen it by moving your tongue forward and down

This tool looks great for helping improve once you’ve been able to perform the initial bend. Excited to try it out!

LorenDB•2h ago
> Don’t start with a wooden harp like marine band. The metal and plastic ones are typically a bit easier to bend.

OTOH I find the Marine Band Crossover (with a bamboo comb) to be probably the best bending harp out there due to it receiving detailed factory setup.

> Lower notes are generally easier to bend than higher notes

Additionally, you'll probably find a lower key harp to bend better, at least to a point. I feel like an A harp is the sweet spot for bending really well without being so low that it starts becoming difficult. G harps are good too, but require you to dig deeper to get a good bend.

LorenDB•2h ago
I love to see that you've added overbend targets! Overblowing is one of my more favorite things to do on the harmonica, but due to it being an advanced technique it's often overlooked.
collingreen•1h ago
I love seeing projects that shed a little vignette on a wide world I had no idea about! Thanks for posting!
philip-b•1h ago
When I was learning bending, I like the app "Bending Trainer" available for both Android and iOS, with a blue on black icon
jimmar•1h ago
I suppose your target audience knows what “bending” means, but I had to google it after visiting your site. Maybe a sentence or two on your site explaining what bending is, or a demonstration on your intro video, would be helpful.
abdullahkhalids•1h ago
This is great. Would have loved it when I used to have fun with the harmonica.

Here is a suggestion. Display a graph of played-frequency vs time. Then I can compare visually how my bending performance improves over time.

kpgraham•20m ago
Harp player here. When I first started playing, I had a Gindick's book, Country and Blues Harmonica For the Musically Hopeless. This was maybe 35 years ago. I would recommend that book and the tape (cd? mp3?) that comes with it, for beginners. You can't see the notes you are playing on a harmonica. You have to hear them. You start by playing clear single notes and then shaping the note by articulating eeeh-yah or something similar and the note magically bends. You have to hear the note so you can tell if the note bends. It is very organic, and I don't think an app will help much. It may confirm what is happening, but it is not going to help if you can't do it. Personally, I played along with Little Walter's greatest hits on my hour long morning commute, and eventually it was just natural to bend the notes at the right time. My advice is to look for Jason Ricci on YouTube. He has hundreds or thousands of videos on beginner to advanced subjects. He is a weird dude, but I've never known a better teacher.

Cooling Chips Still a Top Challenge

https://semiengineering.com/cooling-chips-still-a-top-challenge/
1•PaulHoule•50s ago•0 comments

Word Tour: One-Dimensional Word Embeddings via the Traveling Salesman Problem

https://data-processing.club/1dim/
1•martingalex2•55s ago•0 comments

Show HN: Dolph AI – A Focus App That Rewards You with AI Chat Time

https://www.trydolph.com/
1•kurrupttt•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Keep just your links and notes together

https://eyeball.wtf/
2•quinto_quarto•2m ago•1 comments

What Is This?

https://www.reddit.com/r/bangladesh/s/33D6pHmub9
1•ivape•4m ago•0 comments

Current Challenges in Publicly Available Chemistry GPTs

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jchemed.4c01552
1•patrakov•7m ago•0 comments

Windows Vista and 7 OOBE running on Windows 8 and above

https://winclassic.net/thread/3025/vista-oobe-running-on-windows
1•LorenDB•9m ago•0 comments

Why Android can't use CDC Ethernet (2023)

https://jordemort.dev/blog/why-android-cant-use-cdc-ethernet/
5•goodburb•9m ago•0 comments

Language Change Can Affect Personality

https://www.societalk.com/language-change-can-affect-personality/
1•Societalk•10m ago•0 comments

14 Rare Minerals Found Exclusively in One Square Mile on Earth

https://go2tutors.com/14-rare-minerals-found-exclusively-in-one-square-mile-on-earth/
2•austinallegro•10m ago•0 comments

Israel vows to prevent aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg and from reaching Gaza

https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-aid-flotilla-greta-thunberg-5899bcc088496dbcba4cb192c84ea367
3•donsupreme•11m ago•0 comments

We’re secretly winning the war on cancer

https://www.vox.com/health/415812/cancer-death-rates-myeloma-immunotherapy-smoking
2•lr0•13m ago•1 comments

Nanowar of Steel – HelloWorld.java

https://github.com/NanowarOfSteel/HelloWorld
1•fanf2•16m ago•0 comments

Omnimax [70mm IMAX Format]

https://computer.rip/2025-06-08-Omnimax.html
2•aberoham•17m ago•0 comments

Building for social good: Looking for a technical co-founder

1•thirstycr00w•18m ago•0 comments

U.S. military trims access to its critical sea ice measurements

https://www.science.org/content/article/u-s-military-trims-access-its-critical-sea-ice-measurements
1•lentoutcry•19m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Text receipts directly into Concur (for expense management)

https://textspense.com/signup-2
1•arjunarya•21m ago•1 comments

San Francisco wants to use AI to save itself from bureaucracy

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/05/san-francisco-ai-bureaucracy-00388853
1•rntn•22m ago•0 comments

Developer Relations: Trust Is Built in the Trenches, Not Through Marketing

https://www.tessakriesel.com/developer-relations-trust-is-built-in-the-trenches-not-through-marketing/
3•mooreds•22m ago•0 comments

Microsoft and Asus announce two Xbox Ally handhelds

https://www.theverge.com/news/682009/microsoft-asus-rog-xbox-ally-devices-new-windows-xbox-experience
1•layer8•24m ago•1 comments

Secure and seamless passkeys: A deployment checklist

https://web.dev/articles/passkey-checklist
1•mooreds•25m ago•0 comments

What Happens When People Don't Understand How AI Works

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2025/06/artificial-intelligence-illiteracy/683021/
5•rmason•33m ago•2 comments

The Wire That Transforms Much of Manhattan into One Big, Symbolic Home

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/eruv-manhattan-invisible-wire-jewish-symbolic-religious-home
1•rmason•36m ago•0 comments

AMD Unveils Ryzen AI Z2 Extreme with AI Processing NPU

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amd-unveils-ryzen-ai-z2-extreme-with-ai-processing-npu-expands-family-with-two-new-chips-for-handheld-gaming-consoles
2•layer8•39m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Is there an organization that grades the actual usability of OSS?

2•mathewpregasen•44m ago•0 comments

Pijul – Elpe. Yaks big. Razors bigger

https://pijul.org/posts/2025-06-08-elpe/
1•todsacerdoti•46m ago•0 comments

What is nihilism? Teen in shooting plot, car bomber subscribed to same ideology

https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/08/us/nihilism-black-pill-concepts-explained
2•andy99•48m ago•1 comments

Classifying Dithering Algorithms with ML

https://community.wolfram.com/groups/-/m/t/1383824
1•amai•48m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: What Happened to the Apple Vision Pro?

2•pera•53m ago•6 comments

Show HN: AI Roast your startup website

https://www.burnmywebsite.com
1•roozka10•54m ago•0 comments