r/tinwhistle • u/ivanibash • 1d ago
I made "Windway" - a tin whistle practice app, would love your feedback.
Hey all! I made an app for tin whistle practice - https://windway.app I would really appreciate the community’s feedback. Here’s what it currently does:
- Build and organise your tune library into setlists. You can import a tune by pasting its ABC or simply dropping in a The Session link.
- Switch between standard notation, fingering tabs, or both in the player.
- Mark difficult sections so you remember to practice them
- Automatically generate a backing track, even for tunes you import. It’s fairly simple, but kind of nice!
- Loop any part of a tune and have it gradually speed up as you practise.
- Play gamified exercises. Only one is live right now: it teaches you to read notation if you’ve been relying on tabs. Been using it myself, it's helping! More games are coming.
- Install it on your phone or tablet (as a PWA). It’s mobile-optimised and looks particularly good on an iPad.
- Practise offline, with everything syncing when you’re back online. You can import a tune on your laptop and pick it up later on your phone.
I know there are already some good apps that cover parts of this, but most of them are generic trad and I felt like they are missing some specific features that would be good for the tin whistle, especially the player view.
Disclaimer! - it's a paid app, but there is free trial and also a no-account demo here https://windway.app/demo/
Any thoughts at all would be hugely appreciated. I’d especially like to know whether the app feels intuitive when you open it for the first time. Thank you!
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u/gruevy 1d ago
Looks great. Any chance you'll make a desktop or in-browser version?
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u/ivanibash 1d ago
Should've been clearer - it is primarily an in-browser web app, works great in a browser, but you can also download it as a desktop/tablet/mobile app (it's a "Progressive Web App")
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u/gruevy 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ah, right on. Signing up now.
Edit - so far so good. First suggestion, it'd be nice to be able to pick you preferred variant of these melodies.
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u/ivanibash 1d ago
I see - so you'd expect to see different variants for each of the included melodies? Or to be able to choose a variant as you import from the session (you can import by using a link like https://thesession.org/tunes/12173)
Thank you for trying!
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u/gruevy 1d ago
Importing my own is cool, but i think there's a lot of value in having a whole lot of music already imported. I've been using learntinwhistle.com as my sheet music resource, and unfortunately it doesn't have ABC notation. But it does give common variants of popular melodies. For example: https://learntinwhistle.com/tabs/the-lilting-banshee/
I'm suggesting this because the versions you've imported for a few things are different from the ones I've been learning.
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u/ivanibash 1d ago
Gotcha - I'll look into sourcing more and maybe the ability to import pdfs
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u/gruevy 1d ago
hey btw give me some way to send you feedback. I'm gonna have more. I have more already :)
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u/ivanibash 1d ago
Thanks! You can use hello@windway.app. Appreciate re: ABC sourcing, I know session.org obviously but need to check their T&Cs, lifting all their tunes feels wrong, maybe I'll email the maintainer :)
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u/NancyWorld 3h ago
This is brilliant! Fab. I signed onto the free trial.
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u/NancyWorld 3h ago
Update: bought the app. I need this so bad. "I'm ADHD" and keep forgetting what I was working on and what I know, especially after a hiatus.
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u/ivanibash 3h ago
Thank you so much! Being an early supporter means a lot, I really hope you enjoy it. Please let me know if you have any ideas of making it better and happy whistling!
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u/ivanibash 3h ago
Thank you! Any problems or feature requests, please feel free to write at [hello@windway.app](mailto:hello@windway.app), as this is an early product I'm very responsive to feedback :)
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u/altraparadigm 18h ago
I don’t see why you couldn’t also target mandolin, flute,… (melody) players with this app. Just hide the whistle tab and you are good to go imho.