OnKey - Singing trainer for Mac that shows where you're off-key
Show HN: OnKey – I'm a bad singer, so I built an app to show where I'm off-key
OnKey is a free, open-source singing trainer for Mac that helps you learn to sing the songs you love. Play a song in Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube, and sing along. The first time, you get lyrics, and OnKey learns the singer's melody when the song ends. After that, notes scroll towards you, your pitch is drawn over them, and you get a score with a report on every line. It uses AI to separate vocals, track pitch, and turn melodies into note bars. Your recordings and learned songs stay on your Mac, with no account or analytics. Perfect for shower singers wanting to improve.
Learn to sing the songs you love. Saving shower singers from themselves since 2026.
- drltaidev
I like the idea, I definitely think there is potential in apps helping with teaching music, of course this isn't anything new, but the direct feedback possibilities have improved a lot with recent ML / AI advancements. As others said, singing is so much more than just hitting the right notes of course, so understanding the scope of the tool is important. But still, it's a neat idea. It's awesome that AI coding tools have made it so much easier to work out these ideas... but also tricky because everyone seems to make their own now, and it's not even per se the best ones that survive.
I've thought about these kinds of apps a lot recently, and am also working on some (not for singing though), I have a programming background (and a PhD in Machine Learning) but still I am impressed by what Claude Code can do so I'm hardly writing a single line of code myself any more. Asking for the right things is still important of course.
- enzoaguado
Singing is about so much more than just hitting the right notes. Breath management is one of the most important skills you can develop to improve your singing. Proper vocal technique helps you avoid injuring your voice when tackling difficult songs. Learning to recognize and use techniques like belting, twang, head voice, chest voice, vocal fry, etc., can really bring your singing to life. Prosody and rhythm training help you develop good timing (one of the most important aspects of music), and there's so much more to it.
This kind of app is great for getting started and getting a taste of what singing involves, but it would be awesome to cover these other aspects as well, or at least mention their existence for aspiring singers.
- abktya
I am sure this app will be very useful for my wife and daughter, who spent the whole day singing at the top of their lungs. It will also be a benefit for me, as I’ll get to hear more accurate notes.
- manlymuppet
The main demo video uses the Red Hot Chilli Peppers as an example. A singing app, for learning to sing, and Anthony Kiedis used as the model.
Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Anthony Kiedis.
It's like if you had let Shaquille O'Neal teach you how to shoot threes.
- wnissen
What a fun idea! I love that the song doesn't have to be programmed in by the developer. Will give it a try.
Have you played the Rock Band and similar "rhythm games" that were all the rage in the Wii era? I don't know that it helped my singing per se but gave some incentive to practice.
In case anyone is interested, you can test your relative pitch perception (as opposed to producing the pitch) in this excellent Yale site: https://www.themusiclab.org/quizzes/td I got 15th [sic] percentile!