What: AMP-up (?) - music learning app. A “piazza for music” where snippets of music can be posted and users can discuss, play, compare and ask about them. Social, collaborative, cloud-based, crowdsourced instrument learning app.

Before we begin:

• “Us winning this hackathon” is not:
• impossible
• easy
• a refrigirator
• Jackie Chan “Us winning this hackathon” is:
• what people who travel back in time would call “fact”
• an inevitability of fate
• entirely up to us and our attitude
• Jackie Chan

Things we will need:

• User accounts
  • support students and instructors
  • later, also support “artists” (?)
• Server that stores and manages:
  • discussion topics
  • sound files
  • images
  • user-data
  • additional information(?)
• User Interface/Experience (at the final form of the app)
  • smooth (demo-able) experience
  • tags and labels on questions (like piazza) for easy searching
  • differentiate student and instructor accounts
    • (do this by having two different layouts for the same activity? two activities for the same layout? completely separate?)
    • students can: submit audio to instructors, post questions, suggest answers, suggest their recorded “version” of an exercise, post images (sheet music snippets)
    • instructors can: submit a “verified solution” to a question, endorse a student solution, post answers, discuss student answers, post exercises (and assign them), post announcements, post images (sheet music snippets, maybe even their own hand-written/printed exercises)
  • Tie-in with the nonprofit
    • loading and uploading screens could have a blurb about AMP, while users wait for the app
      • quick links to open facebook page/website
      • maybe a donation button
    • add a “news” and “about” tabs to the app that talk about AMP
• Extra features and scenarios we would like to talk about as “directions the app can take after the hackathon” or mock-up for the demo
  • remote teaching with teachers from all over the world
    • teachers can even record and send snippets of music to the student comment on the student’s playing ability
  • can be a way to distribute a set of exercises to a class
  • can be made into a global “learning forum” where exercise-sets are provided and the community can assist new players
  • artists can “donate” exercises and their own recording (maybe allow them to include an audio description of the exercise or just let them post flavor-text) which could be sold for a small fee (really small, maybe $1 for a small set, $5 for something more substantial) and users could buy these and the money is donated to AMP
  • talk about how more advanced features of the device might be used with the app
    • NFC to quickly point another student (or an instructor) to a specific exercise or solution
    • tie in to android’s “share” service
    • better note detection feature to analyze playing ability
    • read notes off of images (like OCR)
    • add a tuner and a metronome
    • vidhur vidhur vidhur
• Technical features
  • server:
    • node restful API
    • mongo database
    • files are stored on the computer
    • server needs to accept POST with attached music/image files
    • “authenticate” users
    • deliver JSON information and files for specific “views”
      • all questions in a “classroom”
      • all comments/solutions to a question
      • etc.
  • client
    • android >=4.0.x
    • smooth UI and UX (see above)
    • store some data locally (don’t request all the questions every time you go to the main view, keep them in a local database and update db and view when you query for new questions)
    • Use camera and microphone; produce useable sound and image files; send them to server.
    • eat pineapples
    • jarvis should fill out the rest...
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Versions and Agile approach

• v0.0 - basic contact and views
  • log-in screen
  • loading screen
  • classroom lobby
  • contact simple server for log-in (plain-text authentication
  • receive array of (empty) questions from server, display an empty list as the lobby
  • contact db on server
• v0.1 - text based adventure
  • create a view for displaying individual questions and answers
    • separate student and instructor answer
  • client should store data from the server so it’s faster to load the lobby every time
  • questions should only have a text-field as their “question body”
  • answers can be displayed
  • separate student and instructor answers on the page
  • server sends “fake” questions and answers
• v0.2 - shouldn’t we also be able to post questions
  • client implements POST requests to create new questions
  • server supports POST requests to create new questions
    • no longer sends fake questions to the view
  • create a view for submitting questions (forms)
  • similar POST for submitting answers
• v0.3 - what about the music
  • client can attach images to questions
    • load from sdcard
    • take pictures
  • server can receive images for questions
    • store locally
    • db stores the string containing the path to the file
  • client can attach audio to answers
    • load from sdcard
    • record (don’t worry about setting up tempo/signature yet, but leave adequate room for it to be implemented later)
  • server stores and sends audio files
• v0.4 - collaborate/rate
  • instructors can endorse student answers
  • add comments to answers (use as follow-up discussion)
  • up-vote/down-vote questions
  • up-vote/down-vote student-answers
• v0.5 - ORGANIZE!
  • map all question based on #-tags found in the question body and answers
    • maybe we should be careful, since the octothorpe is often used for sharp-notes (e.g. C#, F#, etc.)
  • implement tag-search
    • screw full-text search.
  • filter the standard lobby view to only show posts for the relevant tag
  • server needs to support tags on questions

• =v0.6 - tba when we talk about it/get closer

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