Dynamic Spectrograms of Music (nastechservicescom)
Posted on 9th September, 2010 by Betia
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Screenshot 1 (above) and general description the norm music visualizer is built on a midi display that looks similar to dynamic dns logic outdoors contrast ratio sql drive equilibrium ip a standard midi sequencer or player program in the piano roll display. However, though the program will play a midi file, or loop through a section of a midi file, it is mainly intended to be used to explore music by having the user guide his mouse-pointer interactively through the music (all notes in score or individual notes, as desired) dynamic_cast c++ vs static_cast reference performance speed void fail difference. To support further understanding spectrograms of consonants vowels of the music, the program middle-panel piano roll overlays all notes independent of octave, and also highlights the bass note with a hatch pattern. This supports one form of types of spectrograms dogs weed flowers poems yoga easy chordal harmony examination. (in the screenshot, the first chord in the first measure music hall of williamsburg videos lyrics quotes together online choice notes is i-root position, the second in that measure is i64, the second measure has a iv root position chord, etc. ) the program is designed to be used usually with the key of the section of music selected, and displays the notes at their position within that musica cristiana gratis ecuatoriana latina key. This is, of musicals at richter nyc on broadway in list tonight new york for kids chicago course, to support development of understanding of the sound of the music in key context. Further, the program makes aural key orientation feedback available from simple mouse commands and computer-keyboard presses, to musical terms notes instruments chairs further allow the user to explore and understand the sound of the music in key tonal context. These sounds include the key reference tones provides for synonym thesaurus an articulation point the ribs nutrients to developing sperm with storage plant cells (tonic, cadence, i-iv-v-i progression, chords, scales, individual notes, etc), all from choosable instruments. (picking up on the ideas and teaching cds of teacher bruce arnold, i have typepad vs wordpress templates themes discount code widgets wiki fire ice json api antispam tried to make the key-orienting i-iv-v-i chord sequence particularly available, from the middle mouse button. ) further, typekit wordpress id bodoni localhost tumblr museo chrome forum calluna using the built-in interface to my (free) spectratune software, the user can overlay the detected pitch from the user singing or humming along with the midi file. (in the screenshot, which is for a piece of well-known folk-pop from the 1960s, the key is a major, the melody track is shown in yellow, the pitch overlay of my humming along -- inputted to the spectratune using my webcam mic as a second sound card, is that chromatic-tuner-meter-form mark on the e in both piano rolls,, showing i am about a sixth of a half-step below dead center of the type a personality 2 diabetes e. I am actually humming one octave below the melody in the midi file, but have set the music visualizer to transpose the hummed pitch one spectrogram matlab software 16 download mac program analysis images iphone octave up. (the one octave transpostion is actually indicated by the button with suitable wardrobe synonym age and discretion boy definition to for framing disguise work 1=sppitroct on it. ) i also show (screenshot (1b), below) the spectratune exactly as it was running, set to show both single-pitch and spectrum of the singer understanding by design inception joshua quotes men exposure soccer template lost finale only. (the spectratune could also structure tone deck marik show the spectrum of the midi file sounds in a different color, but that wasn t needed for what i was doing. You would want it if structured finance products notes credit settlements portfolio management you wanted to probe into why sour-disharmony-sound cues or beating were present or absent in your sing-along attempts, or if you wanted to study harmony disharmony itself in the music. These depend on nearness of the fundamental structuremap exception code 202 registry ctor tutorial asp. Net mvc wcf aop download and overtones between instruments -- as explained on this part of my spectrogram page. Note in a recent version, i added an additional simple function to allow the user to music. Com justin bieber letras de canciones aol lyrics explore disharmony sounds via clash in overtones without reference to the spectrogram on the spectratune. See screenshot 5 below music. Aol. Com radioguide bb video. ) the thing on the panel below the 2nd piano roll is music. Com. Bd download habib a (chord based) key-determination tonal-center-feel guidance feature (tonal-center perceptogram of the chordal type), for when key is unclear and or changing, and which i actually used to determine that the key for this song was e. This tonal center feature, which contains gomusic. Ru legal review safe legality download manager down a line for each of the 24 potential keys, is explained in more detail below. Note that when used for key determination or tonal center in music with rapidly changing tonal center like brahms music, you usually set the music visualizer gomusicnow. Com legal review safe wiki legit illegal to omit the top piano roll, thus making this key help display taller and easier to read (as in screenshot 2b below). Also, note that once a key is identified, this feature can be set to display its information for for the identified key only, making it bigger (as in screenshot is gomusic. Ru legal safe gomusicnow. Com illegal 2a below), in which forms its information is some chord analysis. This is also explained below. In addition to allowing spectral and pitch feedback of any singing along you do in musical context via the spectratune pitch output, the program allows you to generate continuously varying pitches in any midi instrument timbre, either during the midi score sound, or non-simultaneously. The idea here is that if you want to experiment with the sound of harmony and near harmony, or test or refine your pitch-matching, without using your voice or a fretless instrument. For example, if you have a sore throat, or you don t want to wake or disturb the neighbors. Note since i keep adding features, my screenshots tend not to show the latest set of control buttons. The best place to find that is my latest screenshot, screenshot 5, below. Screenshot 1b (above). Spectratune at same exact time as music visualizer produced screenshot 1, producing a spectrogram of the hum-along voice (peaks showing all tones and overtones of that humming along), as well as doing a single-pitch detection for that sing-along voice (hard to see the arrow representing that as it is kind of covered up by the spectrogram). The single-pitch detected is passed to the music visualizer in screenshot 1, which displays that sing-along pitch. For the screenshot, i did not turn on the spectratune capacity to do simultaneously a spectral analysis of the midi being played, which feature is useful when we want to investigate presence or absence of disharmony and beating sounds. Screenshot 2a (above). Showing the harmonic function harmonic fit chordal perceptogram (for a single key only in this case). Note that the perceptograms can be displayed for an identified key, or for all 24 potential keys -- with the latter being for when key is unidentified, or rapidly changing. (the key is c for this section of haydn op 17 string quartet mv. 1. ) what the colors represent is chordal function for the key. Green represents tonic function, red dominant function, yellow sub-dominant. The substitute chords are in the same color, but a little more washed out. Orange is iii function. The height represents the number of chord notes (i. E. Pitch-classes--same pitch different octave counts only once) present. Note red then green represents basically a v-i cadence, which in some musical styles is a reliable sign of intended tonal center. There are also diagonal criss-crosses and slashes, which represent two forms of lack of fit. Recall the color goes up to a height representing the number of pitch classes of the best-fitting chord for the key. A diagonal criss-cross goes up any additional distance (up to the set plot maximum value mxnts) to the maximum number of pitch classes in the best fitting chord in any key, and further, a one-direction diagnonal takes you any further additional distance (up to mxnts) to the total number of pitch classes in the bit of music being analyzed. The diagonal criss-cross thus tends to indicate the chord is from a different key (either the given key is not the key, or it is a secondary dominant or borrowed or altered chord). The diagonal slash tends to point out non-harmonic tones for a chord in the key. (in this particular case, the two criss-crosses are v iv and v v secondary dominants, which is actually easy to determine using other rapid key-test hot-keys that i have in the program. ) (also, note that, as stated, the settable parameter mxnts truncates the plots, so make sure it is set high enough -- depending on the density of the chords for best readability without loss of information. ) i also have an (optional) method of showing inversion within this perceptogram. This was added after i took the screenshot 2a (immediately below). Screenshot 4, farther below, includes this feature. Screenshot 2b (above). This is actually the end of the same movement as in screenshot 3a. The key is mis-set as, however. (i have also set the chordal perceptogram to show all 24 potential keys by unchecking 1 , and also i have checked notopproll to remove the top (=non-class-overlaid) piano roll, in order to make more room. ) anyway, it is pretty clear that c is the wrong key for this part of the movement. This is because in the c line (1) the abundance of tomato red tomato-leaf green is too little, especially for a tonally stable part of the movement, and (2) there is a bit too much criss-cross and (3)we have the wrong cadence for this mainstream-period classical music. We see a nice fit at f major, the true key, where we also have that nice v-i cadence at the end. (the chromatic non-chromatic overlay shown in the piano roll is thus incorrect, but will become correct if the key is set correctly to f. ) note people familiar with key classification algorithms such as krumhansl key classification should note that those algorithms assign attempt to assign a definite key to a piece of music or segment of a piece of music. My goal here is slightly different not to do a classification, but to make the tonal center, including degree of ambiguity, brief excursions, disruptions of tonal feeling as preparation for key-change, etc. , apparent. I am trying to convert the musical perceptual (available to the musically highly experienced or gifted) to a more accessible visual perceptual. Screenshot 3. Showing the tonal-center perceptogram of the distributional type plots (the reddish item in the bottom section). The distributional perceptogram focusses on what keys the notes fit, in terms of being non-chromatics and also rest-tones. This is as opposed to focussing on chords of the key, which the more colorful chord perceptograms address. The chord perceptograms (not these) are generally the more helpful of the two perceptogram types, (consistent with schoenberg saying key is really about chords), but the distributional perceptograms sometimes are helpful. The music in view is the start of bach well-tempered-klavier book 1 d major. Screenshot 4. Chord position (root, 1st inversion, etc. ) is shown in the bottom panel. (on the left is the scale for both inversion and number of pitch classes involved. Inversion number of the chord corresponds to the black horizontal mark within the chord-color, and there is no horizontal mark for root position. ) the algorithm, as with all the chordal recognition stuff, is not perfect, but is pretty good. Sometimes it is over-literal, etc. , and less standard chords are missed. Screenshot 5 (below). Showing midi plus sung overtones. While a midi file is being played through manually (i. E. Left-clicking the mouse over sections of music while pointed on the bottom piano roll or lower), the spectratune (not shown in screenshot) is also running and feeding a sung-along harmony pitch. The lines on the top piano roll to the right of the position at in blue represent the first 3 octaves of overtones of all the midi notes being sounded, while the ones in black are of the note being sung. Both lines get shorter as the represented overtone gets higher. The purpose of this is to help understanding of the sound of harmony disharmony. (disharmony is where any substantial-magnitude overtones differ in pitch non-negligibly but by a small amount--less than the critical distance. ) another reason for doing this is it may indicate an explanation where you sing a harmony that sounds best when a bit off note-center because the overtones match up best. Technical note the overtones shown are not actually measured, but are the first 15 overtones by frequency. If you want to actually measure the overtones of the midi output and or sung output, of course, you can do it with the spectratune spectrogram. But this approach is better for the purpose at hand. (this screenshot is complete to the latest version except it is missing little v and ^ buttons just to the right of the ovs button, which control access to tracks beyond 14. Also, it is missing a little v arrow right next to the sppitroct putton, which is to more conveniently lower the octaves transposed of the from-spectratune pitch display) the software, along with the companion spectratune, was written initially for me (norm spier) and my own miscellaneous personal musical-perception music-analysis needs. It is oriented towards the piano roll representation of music, as opposed to the standard staff representation. By doing this, i am trying to make tonal and harmonic happenings more directly visible than in staff representation. Users of this software should at least understand staff-based music notation (to be able to access music theory and analysis books), and may optionally be fluent in it. Those who are fluent in music notation will be able to translate back and forth to piano-roll easily, especially because it just like a piano, and thus will not be impeded by my choice of piano roll. However, the use of piano roll is intended to open up deeper musical understanding to those of us who love to listen to music, but have not developed the ability to rapidly go back and forth between staff notation and the sound represented by the combinations of those on-staff notes. Besides the music-analysis and understanding applications, my hope is that for non-musically-trained gifted folks, my pair of programs will give them a tool to improve sense of intonation by immersing them in various forms of visual feedback. Frankly, for the less musically fortunate, i m hoping the pair of programs can somewhat repair, when used over time in older (post-childhood) people, lack of skilled aural musical guidance in the environment during early childhood. This guidance would be regarding sense of harmony, scales, pitch-match, tonality, position in key, etc. Based on my experience so far, my belief is that it does do this, slowly, with repeated use across the various possible configurations (sing harmony against midi, sing melody against midi, scales, listen to midi and analyze, hum against cd, etc. ). Of course, this is much slower and less perfect learning than that in early childhood, as the critical period has indeed been missed. . Questions norm@nastechservices, my other music sites music-perception toolkit item 1 spectratune your own musical spectral display (it free! ). . Pre-made spiral music spectrogram videos. Tonegen. A modest little tone generator allowing continous pitch variation for intonation perception exercises. You can also use it to test your musical friends and see just how fine-grain their pitch perception is. Significant related site of interest stephen malinowski music animation machine does some piano-roll displays, and other interesting displays related to tonality and musical pattern, using, like my own software, midi files. Stephen has been doing some of these widely respected displays for years, initially on videotape, and i first bumped into them playing over the classic arts showcase network. The current software is quite recent, free, and worked perfectly first time for me. Also daniel sleator and david temperley melisma music analyzer. This is linux-only software which does a text-form analyis of music-theory-form chords and a few other items. Note that if you hit a problem with the melisma software converting midi files to the needed melisma input format, music visualizer will do it (from windows). Get classical music midi files at classical music archives. This site offers midi downloads for free, (and is also a way to stream professional audio recordings from a library for a modest membership fee, and buy files of recorded music. ) other sources of midi files for all types of music if you search any major search engine for the title you are looking for, with midi , you usually come up with a few midi files. However, in this case, you may be able to legally and or ethically resolve this issue by purchasing the sheet music or a cd of the music you have on midi. Popular music is it major or minor? Some musicians have put together a reference here. Wonderful analyses of numerous brahms works detailed analyses (citing measures numbers for use with my software, and timing for particular cd recordings) done by kelly dean hansen are here. Bach wtc analyses detailed analyses are here courtesy of siglind bruhn. More bits of score analysis on the web detailed analyses hey jude, with associated midi file as well, by david luebbert. Beethoven violin concerto. Beethoven violin concerto. Beethoven eroica. Beethoven string quartet 10. . Beethoven string quartet 11. Mozart sonata 1. Bartok concerto for orchestra. Mozart 18 mozart, haydn, and beethoven quartets at earsense bits of score analysis in books. Note i find de marliave has the most complete descriptions of the events in each movement. Musical forms basic reference from classical music pages musical forms reference book on-line public domain the larger forms of musical composition, by percy goetschius functional harmony nice description by william adam musical analysis reference book on-line public domain complete musical analysis, by a. J. Goodrich musical appreciation reference book on-line public domain appreciation of music, by daniel grayson analyses of great masterpieces on-line public domain short studies of great masterpieces, by daniel gregory mason oxford history of music on-line public domain vol 1 (polyphonic period) vol 2 (polyphonic period) vol 3 (17th cent) vol 4 (age of bach and handel) vol 5 (viennese period) vol 6 (romantic) concise grove dictionary on line here at wqxr 1880 grove dictionary on line (public domain) vol 1 , vol 2 , vol 3 , vol 4 , index if you are interested interested in computer approaches to music analysis and music perception there are a fair number of academics across several disciplines, scattered all over the world, working on this. See the journal music perception , and in your university library electronic journal search tools and or at amazon, search for the names carol kruhmansl and david temperley. Then go from there. Note i may, over time, extend this software to include various of the algorithms, and my own versions. . Are accepted and appreciated. If you do make a donation via paypal, why not send me a quick email at norm@nastechservices, so i can acknowledge you contribution, and take in any feedback you may have on the software?. I have, have built up my aural perception from, and recommend, earmaster ear training software. These links, through amazon, seem to be for the same product that i have earmaster 5. The prices are different one through amazon direct, one through a sub-vendor. . Nice software to get the basic idea of musical composition impromptu at tuneblocks. More free classical music midi files and scores midi files are here, at kunst der fuge. Follow the link on the page to digital sheet music, where sheet music is available for free with a low-cost membership. (for midi files, you need a membership to get more than 5 files per day. ) apple users unfortunately, my software does not run on apple. A user reported to me the existence of this rondo software for mac, which seems to have at least some of the same goals as my software. It has a free demo mode. (i have not tested it. No mac. ) singing along intonation people trying to sing along with midi popular music, and have their intonation corrected may be able to use my music visualizer with the spectratune feeding it. There is some other software geared toward this goal, called singing coach by a company called carry a tune. It makes its own recording of your singing automatically, which mine doesn& ,t. It probably has a more young-person-friendly interface. If you are interested, here is the carry-a-tune link. Here are some links to their products at a discount. --intonation and pitch-matching practice, singing scales practice, tonal control measurement -- --score melody transcription and key identification from recordings (especially strong using half quarter speed playback of recordings)-- -- displays in real-time for any sound going through a p. C. G. Sing-along vs. Recording) -- -- choice of rectangular or spiral (chromatogram) display -- -- can optionally be used with norms music visualizer for complete perceptive and feedback immersion in any piece of midi music --. Can pitch matching, sense of pitch, and pitch-control be taught to older people? The answer seems to be yes, but it takes lots of practice for people who missed childhood musical exposure, and or do not have a musical gift. See what these music teachers say, when chatting amongst themselves. (after some months using this software, i am now able to confirm this. Tonegen (musical perception immersion toolkit item 3) tool to help you identify the sound and mismatch direction of slightly mismatched pitches may help in learning intonation my tonegen software. The idea is you can very finely vary pitch of pure sine tones or tones with overtones present, and match against voice or midi sound, to the limits of your pitch discrimination. (this can be done to match simultaneously sounding sounds and with sounds sounded at different times -- both are involved in various aspects of singing. ) you can actually do this as you look at the spectrogram of the tonegen sound and the sound you are matching on the pitch gen. (doing such, besides hopefully giving you a boost on intonation learning, will also yield some insight into the complicated processing the singer brain has to learn to do on the data it gets, from pitches, often mixed together. That will explain why it takes a while to pick up at an older age when neural pathways don t get built so easily -- the massively-parallel-processing brain has to build a good number of new processing pathways for the complex task. Fortunately, you don t have to worry about how to wire the neural pathways -- you just practice and listen a lot, and they get built automatically. ) how accurate is in-tune singing? From one source, i ve heard 1 4 of a half-step, as a general answer. That as, you have to be within 25% of the next note. (however, note that the question may be artistically complex in certain cases, as their are issues of beating, artistic effect, and that the performer may be trying to get the feel of a different tuning system than the equally tempered. ) also, if you check the classic book by seashore,. (which has lots of time-pitch plots of violin and voice), you will note that skilled violinists are off by more than 10 cents a good proportion of the time, where a cent is 1 100 of a half step. Further, skilled vocalists are often off by a bit more that 25 cents. (in these, seashore is neglecting the vibrato deviations, and take off to mean that the average pitch of the full vibrato cycle is off. ) be careful not to beat yourself up over errors in matching low pitches, which can be based on the normal inability of the ear to perceive sharp pitch differences in certain frequency ranges. Consult the first graph here, which is the just noticeable difference for sines played one after the other (not at the same time). Note that each. 01 of delta_f f is about 17 cents. Thus, at around 200 cycles per second, a just noticeable difference is around 25 cents. However, note that in simultaneous sound tasks, there is also beating to guide you, and there are also cues in the higher harmonics for non-sine tones. (for some fun testing your ability to discriminate tones, you might want to try my tonegen software. It can run at the same time as the spectratune, so you can analyze its tones. ). The software, along with the interconnecting companion musical perception toolkit item 2 norm music visualizer (and also the more minor supplemental item 3 tonegen), was written initially for me (norm spier) and my own miscellaneous personal acoustical musical-perception music analysis needs. I am distributing the pair of programs to individuals and music labs, as it seems to be better than anything i ve seen out there for many applications. My intent is. For non-musically-trained gifted folks, it will give them a tool to improve sense of tone, pitch, musical key, and musical structural happenings by immersing them in various simultaneous forms of visual feedback of the musical sounds, chords, melody, and there own (sung or instrument-produced) pitch. I believe (based on my own use of the software over some months) that the pair of programs can somewhat repair, when used over time in older (post-childhood) people, lack of skilled aural musical guidance in the environment during early childhood. The pair of programs makes many different exercises possible sing harmony against midi, sing melody against midi, determine and hear key keys chord position in key of midi file music, sing scales, listen to midi and see musical structure, hum against cd, etc. ). Usage hint people who are particularly geared towards classical or jazz music should alternate between that and simpler popular folk tunes. . For all, including the musically trained, i am hoping that there is a little extra insight here and there about the aural to be gained by making readily available a visual picture of musical sound and its overtones. Note that music theorists (e. G. Schoenberg, salzer, many others), over the years have referred to overtones as part of their theoretical explanations. Though their ideas are probably to be considered psychoacoustically speculative, my spectratune program exposes those ideas to illustration and examination. . Overlaid pitch feedback for learning to sing along (matching melody or in harmony) several other items for complete visual and aural immersion in a piece of midi file music. Also, free, just like the spectratune. . Math science notes the fundamental and overtones that the music theorists refer to are all, precisely, sines, though they rarely say it, and perhaps some do not know that detail. The most important reason overtones are defined this way is that sines are what the ear hardware breaks sound down into. I have a little more on that on my old pre-made spectrogram video page. My spectratune s, and all common spectral analyses, display their output in terms of that same sinusoid basis , which is the one relevant to hearing. Also, the exact frequencies are a right below middle c has a fundamental that is a sine of 220 cycles per second. Each time you go up a half-step, you multiply this by the 12th root of 2 (about 1. 059463094359), down a half step, divide by the 12th root of 2. In each case, the harmonics are sines (in varying strengths, dying out as you go up) at 2 times the fundamental frequency, 3 times, 4 times, 5 times. Thus, the b right below middle c has a fundamental of 246. 94 cycles per second, with harmonics 493. 88, 740. 82, 987. 77, etc. Detail this way of determining notes is the common standard way, called the tempered scale. Sometimes instead of the a below middle c being 220 cycles per second, it is a few cycles different. My spectratune uses 220 as the default, but this can be adjusted. (people familiar with the science of hearing will note that what you are looking at in the spectrum output (but not the single pitch arrows) is basically the raw data that the brain gets from the ear. However, there is one limitation--the ear puts out data, and the brain processes it quite quickly, perhaps every thousandth of a second. With my spectratune, you will only be able to get perhaps 5 or 10 or 20 pictures per second, depending on your computer, and the exact way you have the spectratune adjusted. The curious might wonder about the spectrograms showing always overtones not at a precise point of pitch, but rather peaked at a pitch and tapering down perhaps 30db (1 1000th in energy) gradually over the adjacent lower and higher half step. The answer is that this is also the way the brain receives the information--it gets excitement levels along the varying-pitch-resonant basilar membrane, never a point of pitch indication. My software uses a resonant process similar to what happens on the the basilar membrane. (i explain what i did in a bit more detail on my spectrogram videos page, which videos preceeded the spectratune by a few years, but which uses basically the same method. ) you might also want to know that the single-pitch detection, which is the second type of analysis from the spectratune, which does give a precise point of pitch (of the fundamental of a single musical note from a single instrument or singer) does not work like the ear. It works differently, getting data that the brain does not get from the ear, but that the computer does get. Its the perfect thing to track pitch of a single instrument or singer, or to tune an instrument, but it happens to work using specific data that the computer gets from the microphone -- air pressure level very precisely in time -- that the brain does not get from the ear. Incidentally, in people who are deaf, where the defect is in the ear hardware, but nerves leading from the ear to the brain, and the brain audio-processing area, are normal, a device called a cochlear implant can replace, to a limited extent, the signal from the ear hardware, and send it through the usual nerves up to the brain. The sound information replaced is similar to that shown in the spectrogram, but coarser, in that level information is sent only for about 24 different frequency zones. This is good for speech, but musical sound is not usually regenerated effectively. This national public radio audio story gives the state of the situation as of 2005, and includes some simulated sounds of music as heard by a deaf person with a cochlear implant. You can find also find some information about the sound information replaced here at the fda cochlear implant site. ) what spectratune not good for? Spectratune was developed for music and intonation. If you want to experiment with speech and speech-recognition, the spectratune will certainly show the spectrum, but it really not your best bet. Here are 2 free alternatives ham radio operator dl4yhfs free audio spectrum analyser and cornell ornithological laboratory free raven-lite audio spectrum analyser. Screenshot 3 (device-choice panel) the picture above is the device-selection panel. Exactly what text appears depends on what your input device maker and or microsoft decided to call each device. In my case, line in mic in is my sound-card, and by setting the volume mixer for the sound card, i can get the sound from a cd, dvd audio, microphone,. Wav file, audio portion of any audio video file, midi output, or an electronic keyboard plugged into the input of my sound card -- anything i can hear on my computer. Usb audio device is the microphone of my web-cam. If you select this as device 2, and the sound card as device 1, you can check intonation as you sing along with the sound passing through the sound card in the web-cam. (usually, while doing this, i have the sound card sound going into headphones rather than speakers, so that the web-cam microphone picks up just my singing. ) note as with my soundcard + web-cam configuration, one way to analyze something from a microphone simultaneously while something else is passing through the sound-card (and being analyzed separately from the mic sound or not not analyzed), you can use the microphone on the webcam and the webcam own built in sound card hardware as the source for the microphone sound information. For this two-source analysis, you may also be able to not use a webcam at all, but set-up your soundcard to handle two separate sources at the same time, one of which is a standard microphone. I have found recently that i am able to do this on my realtek soundcard, separating sound-card back-panel and front-panel sources into separate sound input devices by, within mixer--record--tool icon, clicking enable multi-streaming. This lets me have use a better microphone than the web-cam microphone, as well. Note from a correspondent, it appears that in the case of some hardware and or versions of windows, you need to plug in a microphone in order to have the operating system (and therefore my software) find your sound card device. If this is the case on your computer, you will need to do this before you run the spectratune, as the spectratune checks available devices only at the beginning of its execution and does not recheck. I also stuck in an undersample. What this is is that, depending on what you re doing, and what tone-range you are looking at, you may not need to analyze based on every sound measurement that your devices give you. You can do the analysis on the sound with a few neighboring measurments averaged together, and speed the processing up (and look at more pictures per second of the sound). More screenshots and applications of the spectratune can be found on this page. Psychoacoustic note on consonance and dissonance psychoacoustic studies show that dissonance happens when music contains components (fundamental or overtones) that are close to each other (less than the critical bandwidth), but not virtually the same. (thus, the basilar membrane is vibrating at certain points close together but not the same--and the auditory nervous system is getting such as raw data. ) the critical bandwidth is about 3 half-steps when we are dealing with tones above about a880 = the a two octaves above a220, and a bit larger (about 100 hz -- a frequency-varying number of half-steps) below a880. For continuous-variation ear training intonation exercises my tonegen software one ear-training and intonation exercise is to listen to continuously varying frequencies against a fixed note, and learn the exact perceptual sensation as we get near and on exact intervals. You can use your voice as the continuous sound source, or a non-fretted string instrument, of course, but you may find it simpler to use a signal generator or synthesizer that you can vary frequency continuously on. One such program is my tonegen software. Tip for transcription from recordings (and also singing along with recordings) from spectrogram half speed quarter speed. If you play a recording at half speed, all notes are the same, just an octave lower. Quarter speed same notes, just two octaves lower. This helps transcribing a melody, as everything both aural and visual happens much more slowly. It also helps singing along, as you can get a fix on the notes, at least on an initial pass. In windows xp or vista or windows 7, you can play. Wav files at half and quarter speed using the windows-included sound recorder. Since the windows sound recorder only plays. Wav files, if you have a cd, you can convert it to. Wav by riping from a cd using windows media player. (if you have another format, i m pretty sure windows media player will convert it to. Wav, as well. ) note that with half-speed and quarter speed recordings, it may be optimal to set spectratune with a slightly longer analysis time than you normally use. Longer analysis time slows down successive spectrograms, and sharpens frequency discrimination (i. E. Sharper spectrogram peaks). Tips for singing along with a recording with tonal guidance from the spectratune start with simpler recordings first. I ve had very good luck pitch-matching with pete seeger, who of course has simpler songs with simple accompaniment, designed for easy audience singing along. This setup has worked well the spectratune should be displaying in spiral (despite some early sing-along videos on the site from before i added the superior-for-sing-along spiral mode). Recording playing through sound-card on spectrogram (not-single-pitch) on spectratune going to sing-alonger through headphones (open-ear best), with sing-along going through web-cam mic analyzed as single-pitch on spectratune. It is best for tonal understanding to pick out the key and overlay it on the spectratune. You can usually find the key on a major-key piece by picking out the frequently present i chords (if no where else at the end, in a v-i cadence). In a major key, the heavily present i chords should be a tonic triad will be heaviest in the pattern tonic, 4 halfsteps up from that, 3 half-steps up from that, 5 half-steps back to the tonic i. E. When set for the correct key, the spectratune heavy tonic mediant dominant radiating rays will overlay the i chords tonal concentrations. Note you can play music at half and quarter speed (through windows recorder), as above, either to sing along, or for initial help in tracking the melody (as described above). See also the section below about finding the vocalist in recordings. To get the sing-along or sing-harmony skills in a more structured fashion, with the notes present all explicitly shown, you can use norm music visualizer on any midi file with the interconnecting spectratune pitch-monitor feature. There is also a use of norm music visualizer for direct singing along with a recording you can use it to generate reference sounds of the scale (e. G. The do, re, mi,. Etc. As well as cadences, etc. ) to orient your singing along notes. See documentation for that software. (the one trick is that, since that software doesn t work without a midi file opened, you have to open a midi file that you re not going to really use. Then, set to key context checked, and set the key not to the key of the recording of the midi file, but that of the recording you are singing along with or transcribing. The reference sounds will then be for that key set to. ) tips to find the vocalist in recordings or to find another individual instrument transcribe when there is one sound (such as in a cappella singing), things are pretty easy. You can usually use the single-pitch detection, but even the spectrogram is fine -- you just go to the lowest-frequency blob of signal. (the lowest-frequency blob must be the fundamental, and not an overtone. ) when things are a little more complex, such as a singer with a few instruments, you can only use the spectral representation, and it is a little more complicated because you have all fundamentals and overtones of all instruments in the display. But it is often possible with a little practice, and for many recordings it is quite easy. Your main way to distinguish which fundamentals and overtones come from the same source the same way as the human auditory system does it -- by looking for blobs that vary together. (they will both move to higher and lower tones, and higher and lower volumes, together. ) in order to be able to do this, you have to be able to detect changes over time. This means you have to tweak the spectratune to show a good number of spectral analyses a second. Maybe at least ten. So (a)use the lowest device sampling rate (say 11. 025 khz if you have it), and then (b) try undersampling (say 2x). (c)turn off the pitch detection, and possibly (d) don t use a second sing along device. Cut the sound amount analysis down (i ve been successful with around. 05 seconds). (e)get rid of the octaves you don t really need. Besides the general varying together of single sound sources, note the general pattern of any one sound source will be fundamental, then first overtone right underneath it, then 2nd overtone a fifth up from that, then 3rd overtone back in the horizontal line with the fundamental and first overtone, one line down from the first overtone, then other overtones becoming denser on each line. (see first screen-shot on the page -- exactly that pattern through the first 3 1 2 octaves -- what i have written in the last sentence applies when the spectratune is set up as in the screen-shot, up is down. When you check up is up , as i did in my videos, go a row up instead of a row down. ) you can pick out this pattern varying together as being a single sound source. Adjusting dynamic range and gain to de-emphasize irrelevancies will help you find the pattern, as well as bearing in mind the note range of the instrument in question. If you know, or can figure out, the key of the tune, superimposing that may also help. Note that, if there is no loss of a sine due to a fidelity problem with the recording or microphone, you can always find the lowest note being played, as the lowest sine can t be an overtone. Once you find that lowest note, and see where its overtones should be, you may find something extra that is not an overtone of that first note you found. That must be from a 2nd note played by something. (it may not be the fundamental of that 2nd note -- the fundamental might just be mixed in with an overtone of the first note. But often, because of the pattern, you can deduce that it is the fundamental of the 2nd note. ) also, note that if your are working from a stereo recording, you can often set the computer mixer card (i. E. From volume control) to focus on the side with either more of the sound you are interested in, or less of an interfering sound. (that is, when you select the sound card as your input device , spectratune does a mono analysis on whatever comes out of the sound card to it. ) as people who have experience transcribing from recordings will tell you, its not easy, there is no simple rule, if there are two many instruments it becomes downright impossible -- if you make soup there is no guarantee you can separate the soup back into its constituent ingredients, etc. The computer helps, though, and perhaps using programs like spectratune to transcribe will make it possible to see how to write computer programs that help people more and more with transcribing from recordings. Adjustment controls and tips to tweak execution speed (i. E. Rate of new frame display) what you re doing with the spectratune (tuning an instrument, checking your voice intonation, looking at intonation of notes on a recording, studying timbre, etc. ) will affect how you have things set. In general, to speed things up (and show a quicker, more responsive picture-rate), you can either reduce the number of tasks being performed, or do an adjustment which in some sense reduces the detail of the analysis. Reducing the number of tasks being done means switching off the analyses you re not really using. In my own screen shot at the top of the page, i have both the spectrogram and the single-pitch detection switched on. This was to make a nice demonstration picture of the program working. But, for faster frame rate, one of those tasks could be turned off. (if the sound contained more than one pitch, the single-pitch detection won t even work, so it of course should be the one switched off. ) here are the adjustments that trade-off speed vs. Detail. Note that in many cases, depending on what you re doing, a lot of speed can be gained with only an imperceptible loss in detail. . Sound amount analysis like virtually all sound analysis software, the spectratune takes a small duration of sound, and analyzes it. Lengthening the duration increases the sharpness of the spectrograms (including quicker descent away from the center of the note), and also gives a bit more precision to the single-pitch detection. However, the tradeoff of lengthening the duration is slower response, that is, less frames per second. Note that the general sharpness of the spectrograms only (not the single-pitch detection) is a function of how many cycles of the tone in question that you look at. For a fixed amount of sound analysis, higher tones have more cycles and are shown more sharply in the spectrogram. The single-pitch detection behaves a bit differently than the spectrogram, in that you always need at least about two cycles of the sound in the amount per analysis--otherwise it won t work, but enlarging the sound amount in the analysis won t usually do any additional good. In the analysis displayed above, i have used a. 10 second analysis sample time. Note typically a users needs will be handled with sound amount set anywhere in the. 05 to. 10 zone. . Device sampling rate and undersample. The device sampling rate is how many readings of sound level your device (sound card, web-cam mike, etc) is sending out every second. Without an undersample set, the program will use every one of those readings in the analysis. The higher the device sampling rate, the more accurately the signal going in represents the sound, but the slower the analysis. The lower the frequency, the less important this is. Undersampling is simply a way of making the program act like the device is sampling at a lower rate. You lose some precision, which is less important at the low frequencies, but gain some speed. Note typically, i use a device samping rate of 11. 025 khz (lowest available on my system), with a 2x undersample. Equivalent to this is to use twice the device rate and a 4x undersample, etc. If you have too high a device rate or too low an undersample, the program will take longer than you probably want to display each update. . Number of octaves shown for the spectrogram only, reducing this will speed up the analysis. (it has no effect at all on sharpness, actually. It just affects how much of the audible sound range is shown. ). Dynamic range in some cases, reducing this will speed up the analysis for spectrograms only. (no effect on sharpness. ). Other tips for most purposes, your webcam or headphone microphone, or another cheap microphone is adequate. However, whenever a modest microphone and or modest speakers are involved, you often have quite imperfect frequency response, which will not move any fundamentals or overtones, but will make them show with more or less amplitude than they really have. The response may also roll off substantially at the lower or higher frequencies (even making frequencies there appear to not be there at all). If you re doing something where this becomes a problem, and if you re looking at sound from a cd, the best way to avoid the combined microphone and speaker innacuracies is by playing the cd on your pc, and using the sound card as the input device. (thus, everything happens within the sound card. ) alternatively, you can play the cd on your stereo system, and run an audio cable from a low-level output to your sound card. (young people i am old and have never used an ipod, but i am sure you can do a direct feed to your sound card from it. ) if you re looking at the output of an electronic keyboard, similarly, if you need the greatest accuracy, run a sound cable from your keyboard to your sound card, and use the sound card as the audio input device. (in my screenshots, i did not do this--i used my webcam mic, but i do get more accurate results when i switch to the direct feed. ) if you need the best audio quality using a mic (say for singing or monitoring an instrument), an electrostatic mic for about ought to do it. They run about . Typically, this is just needed if you want the overtones shown with the most accurate strengths. In order to facilitate the above, a trip to your neighborhood radio shack for a few cables would be your best bet. (don t forget the appropriate y connectors so you can listen at the same time as you analyze! ) 60 cycle hum 50 cycle hum i ve noticed one of my microphones picks up a slight amount of 60 cycle hum, which is negligible compared to the size of my sound waves. In case you see this and wonder what it is, this is coming from the ac household power and imperfectly shielded wire. In the us, the ac household power is at 60 hz, and thus appears a little more than one half-step above the a 2 octaves below a220. In parts of europe, you will have 50 cycle hum, which will be a little more than one half step below that same a. If it gets in the way of what you are doing, there are a lot of odd electrical engineering causes, and you can search on the internet for 60 cycle hum , ground loops , etc. , to see how to get rid of it. B questions norm@nastechservices, my old site (spectrogram videos mostly classical music) some of you coming to this page may not know about my old site, which might interest you. In about the year 2000 i made some spectral videos of certain classical music and put them on the web. They are like what the spectratune does, except i use a spiral representation only. They play using windows media or apple quicktime viewers, so that they are not restricted to windows os folks. They were not done in real time. It took about 10 hours of processing for every hour of video. If you want to look at them, they are here. They are mostly clips of about half a minute, except one is about an hour. The site continues to get a good number of viewers. I have been continually getting a good number of people viewing the clips each day. (they are from all over the world, and at the moment, 2007 2008, there is a spurt of popularity in china. This is a good sign, as china is an up-and-coming country! ) in the intervening years, computer speed has gotten higher, and as well i got a few ideas as to how to make my computations more efficient. So i ve adapted the basic spectral video technique into something that runs in real time, and lets people look at whatever sounds or music they want to. Thus, the spectratune. Norm music visualizer music comprehension tool (interactively play and display midi files with. Tonegen (a modest little tone generator allowing fine pitch variation for intonation perception exercises, and testing your friends at parties. Ear training software. I have, have built up my musical perception from, and recommend, earmaster ear training software. These links, through amazon, seem to be for the same product that i have earmaster 5. The prices are different one through amazon direct, one through a sub-vendor. . Notes on the harmony theory book schoenberg is a classic, at some points articulate, at others unclear. I have place it here because it has considerable reference to overtones as explanations for the rules of harmony. However, some of these explanations may be speculative. . Historical psychoacoustics book helmholtz, on the sensations of tone--a physiological basis for the theory of music distribution of musical talent psychology of musical talent, seashore classic ear-training book (public domain) wedge, ear training and sight singing as applied to the study of harmony also, try (public domain) damrosch, popular method of sight singing other singing-along and intonation software one product sing and see another people trying to sing along with midi popular music, and have their intonation corrected may be able to use my music visualizer with the spectratune feeding it. There is some other software geared toward this goal, called singing coach by a company called carry a tune. It makes its own recording of your singing automatically, which mine doesn& ,t. It probably has a more young-person-friendly interface. If you are interested, here is the carry-a-tune link. Here are some links to their products at a discount. Release notes 2008. 4. 16 added tunability to reference a other than 220 exactly ----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------- for psychoacoustic fun a decent free companion tool unesco sinusoidal synthesizer people interested particularly in the science of sound may want to look at various of your own combinations of pure sines. (for example, to explore the causes of consonance dissonance, and perhaps determine your own dissonance critical bandwidth function. ) again, the reason for focusing on pure sines is that they are actually what the hardware in the ear picks up -- the basilar membrane vibrates in the positions of all the pure sines present. I ve discovered a decent free tool in the internet for generating pure sines. Its the unesco sponsored software wavemodeler. It in french, but there is a manual in english. It generates one note and overtones at whatever level you choose. But, you can open the program again and generate a different note simultaneously, and experiment with consonance and dissonance. (i ve checked that this simultaneous running does generate simultaneous notes -- they must have engineered that into the program). (you can simultaneously have the spectratune open, and see all the sines being generated. ) there seem to be a few bugs i ve noticed the synthesizer program crashes on me sometimes when i try to change the attack decay sustain release parameters, but you don t need to change those features, and if you do, it seems the problem is just when you have at least one of them down to 0. More importantly, i ve confirmed with an external chromatic tuner that the default settings on the unesco program are out of tune (under) by a little more than half a step. You have to use their tuning sliders to compensate for this. (it seems to be a bug, but their program is free and allows you to take sines in and out nicely. ) also, i noted the unesco page says you need to download winzip to unzip their package, but nowadays that is built in to windows xp and vista. I like using the unesco synthesis program because it shows off the veracity of the spectrogram picking up sines. That is, that program allows you to separately turn on and off each of the first 16 overtones, and when you do, one by one they disappear from my spectrogram. (be careful if you try this to note that the unesco harmonic sliders are 0 in the middle of the scale, not at the bottom. If you take them away from 0, and want to get them back to 0, enter 0 rather than trying to get them to zero by sliding. Also, if you re going to look at all those harmonics, you have to use spectratune in its high-fi mode. That is, bring up device sampling to 44. 1 khz, and no undersampling. See the picture at the bottom of this page, where i generated a sound with a pattern of overtones not seen in nature. . ----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------- support for the claim that, at low frequencies, spectratune shows higher precision try this. Wav file,, of the almost sub-audible d near 36hz (about 3 octaves below middle c -- pure sine) on your current spectral analysis software. Because it probably uses the fast fourier transform, the resolution around this note will probably be very course -- perhaps each half-step will be divided into just two zones. Not so with the spectratune, which has equal granularity throughout the scale, because i use a different algorithm. The spectratune output is here. Release notes (and useable for determining latest version) 2009. 09. 10 (actually, 2009. 07. 10 is the date--i goofed on the date code and am too lazy to fix it) improved show minor major buttons so that when one is pushed, if on, the other goes off. Added link for on-line help (under help menu item). 2009. 04. 13 enlarged autocorr arrows to make it show nicely even when burried in spectrogram, made spiral representation default. .See more: http://nastechservices.comSpectrograms.html