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Does anyone here know of programs that make you play some notation into a mic and then the program tells you how close you were to the right pitch? I'm working on something like that for my own practice. I wrote a tuner program for myself once and decided to use that to make something that throws out some notation and then figures out how closely you followed it. I've noticed that although I can match pitches fairly well on single notes my pitch tends to go a little flat on some notes as I approach the end of a phrase. Catching this on a simple tuner is difficult but it should show up nicely in a program that asks you to play some simple phrases and calculates the average score over the whole duration.
I'm curious if such programs exist already. Odds are that I'll finish my program anyway since I can make it print out shakuhachi notation rather than western staff notation which I can't read. I figured that it might be possible, although no doubt difficult, to make it tell between different notes of same pitch when they are clearly different so that it could ask for really deep Chi Meri or Re and score them accordingly. The problem with most canned software out there is that it's made for western instruments and western music which isn't guaranteed to make any sense for a shakuhachi player who can't remember which line it was that had G on it and which notes didn't have a flat note between them.
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Ask and you will receive...
http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~tuner/tuner_e.html
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I tried to open the tuner on my Mac and it just opened as a new word document file (?).
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Tairaku wrote:
I tried to open the tuner on my Mac and it just opened as a new word document file (?).
You have to click on the shakuhachi root end icon. It's a .zip file with a few .dll's a .exe. and a few other files in it. With executable files like that it won't run on a mac.
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I guess you'll need a win machine to use that program?
Is there software around for other OSs (like MacOS or linux)?
Cheers, udo.
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Seth wrote:
Ask and you will receive...
http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~tuner/tuner_e.html
I know of the tuner program that simply displays the note you are currently playing. It was quite useful before I wrote my own some time ago. I checked the other program that seems to be designed for makers who want to test their flutes. It seemed useful but quite buggy. What I'm looking for, however, is something that can and does actually tell you if you did well or not. Of course you could just look at the screen while you play and keep track of things yourself but that might disturb playing and would give you an advantage since you could adjust to the correct pitch. I'm hoping to have something that simply tells me to play a long Ro followed by U and then a quick Tsu->Re. After I'm dong it tells me how close I was. Anyone who has ever played Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero knows what I'm talking about. The program should take my sound and compare it to the ideal sound and tell how far you are from that. I would like to get mostly random series of notes, perhaps based on patterns that are likely to come up in real music like Ri->U->Tsu->Re.
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udo.jeromin wrote:
I guess you'll need a win machine to use that program?
Is there software around for other OSs (like MacOS or linux)?
The tuner program runs fine under Wine. I assume the others should as well. There are various tuner programs on Linux as well but nothing that is aimed towards shakuhachi folk. Not that it matters much if you know western notation but it can be somewhat annoying if you don't. I wrote my own programs for this stuff. They aren't very user-friendly right now because I figured that it's a secondary concern for private use. I might polish them up a bit and release them so those of you who don't use Windows can get something nice as well.
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Hi Amokrun,
don't bother with "user-friendly" too much.
Cheers, udo.
P.S.: Just switched from vi to "the standard": ED
(at least for email ;-)
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udo.jeromin wrote:
don't bother with "user-friendly" too much.
P.S.: Just switched from vi to "the standard": ED
These programs make vi look like modern technology. At one point the tuner was simply printing out whatever it was hearing. Now it kind of makes an attempt at telling you things like how badly you are off and so forth. I'm constantly tweaking it and I'm hoping to eventually have something that is worth releasing. Since most of the people here are the artsy types I figured that decent interface is in order before that happens.
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That was my point: what's a decent interface?
Everybody has a different vision of what a good interface is...
ED has a great interface! And, as it sounds, your programs already have as well ;-)
Cheers, udo.
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Smart Music.
Thats the program you need.
www.SmartMusic.com
Its great!!! I love it.
It has play-alongs. Jazz...begging-intermediate clasical. You can learn to read there:-)
Its records your practise...it has a tuner...it shows in the screen the notes you played wrong..ear traing exercis..scales..intervales (with play-alongs)
Its has Suzuki method for violin..so,you can do it with shakuhachi if you can:-)
its endless.
It cost 9.99 a month. nothing!
Geni
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Geni-
This sounds quite interesting and exciting.
But how would it know how well one was playing a honkyoku? Could I feed it a recroding by Riley Lee and then have it tell me how well I was at trying to mimic his pitch?
Or does it have a set of pre-recorded tunes that the user needs to stick to?
do you use this for shakuhachi training and, if so, do you think it has been helpful?
Seth
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The best way to know 'how well you are playing a honkyoku' is to record yourself playing it.
A rich and humbling experience.
eB
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Just my opinion, but I think a tuner is next to useless. It is good for checking the mechanics of your playing, a biometric checking tool of sorts, but it doesnt help you refine your sense of pitch. As Kakizakai sensei says, such a machine only trains the eye.
A far more useful method is to use a tone generator. While it wont tell you when you are wrong, you train your ear to know when you are wrong without being told. It teaches you to listen and adjust in ways that are much more subtle, and gets you right down to listening to intonation. This is addressing the problem right at the root.
Playing with other people is the best practice though. (They might tell you when you are out!)
Sometimes karaoke machines in Japan give you a score depending on how good your average pitch was. They also tell you how many calories you burnt.
And +1 for recording self
Last edited by caffeind (2007-12-27 18:48:42)
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caffeind wrote:
Just my opinion, but I think a tuner is next to useless.
Second that advice, with oak leaf clusters.
There is a nice little app out there called Tuna Pitch. It may be Mac only; it is designed as a guitar tuner, but you can move
the master pitch around enough to get most important pitches through the included tone generator--just a simple sine wave.
It's a freebie on the SoundStudio 3 site: http://www.freeverse.com/apps/app/?id=5 … ew=goodies
eB
Last edited by edosan (2007-12-27 22:30:59)
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I use SmartMusic for shakuhachi "training". Its not Honkyoku related:-)
I practise scales-modes-intervales-play some clasical music.
I play the & record with the jazz play alongs. Take long solos...
After using it for sometimes I see that helped me a lot with the "basic" skills that one need to play with other musicians in Western music:-)
It helps because you got everything in one place. Its just a program-but somebody who want to practise & learn more will find very interesting stuff.
I don't work for SmartMusic.. Just sharing my humble experience.
Nowdays i don't use it as much as before-because I study @ New England Conservatory of Music & practice with "live" musicians.
geni
Last edited by geni (2007-12-28 00:10:45)
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udo.jeromin wrote:
I guess you'll need a win machine to use that program?
Is there software around for other OSs (like MacOS or linux)?
How about Parallels for Mac? I run several Windows applications on my Macs using this software
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