EM7 - Sight Singing Pitch Recognition

[Quentin]

When you have answered an exercise, could you press the "Play my answer" button to hear if the sound captured by EarMaster is as expected. If you hear glitches, cracks or pops, there might be a technical issue. In that case, please record those sounds so that we may try to determine what may be their cause.

[Essenjul]

MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6
Mic: AKG C214
Audi interface: Apogee Duet

The pitch recognition software is off by a semitone. In the video below I'm playing the note on a keyboard for perfect pitch match but it's still saying the tone is off. I'm not sure if this can be adjusted somehow but it's not the mic level. I turned up the monitor speakers to the point that the mic was clipping causing distortion and it didn't pick up the right key. What's odd is even though I played the wrong note on the keyboard the playback is in pretty much the right key but with some subtle off key harmonics. Hopefully your engineers can fix this issue.

Note: The pitch recognition works great for me on iOS.


Regards,

Jules

Video showing the issue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O51zMtnDlBU&feature=youtu.be

[Quentin]

Thanks for the video. It looks like this is related to MIDI.

1. Could you please open EarMaster's preferences and make sure that the "Transposing Instruments" option is set to 0. That would be the most logical explanation what the discrepancy between the input and the playback.

2. Another possibility is that your keyboard is transposing tones. Please make sure that the transposing options of your MIDI device are set to default.

3. Are you experiencing this problem when singing the tones or playing them on the on-screen piano of EarMaster?

[Essenjul]

Yes, I get the same incorrect response when vocally singing the responses. Also I've played back pitched vocals and instruments that match the note shown and it's registered sharp. When playing back these tones I did this from a completely separate system that was not connected to the system Earmaster is on.


I've tried delivering the responses through both my audio interface and a USB mic and Earmaster still gives me an incorrect reading.

It's not possible to be MIDI. Since Earmaster is set to microphone Earmaster is not picking up MIDI it's responding to tone from my monitor speakers. I've also tried disconnecting my MIDI device and got the same results.

The note I'm playing is E and you can hear that in the video and Earmaster registers the tone as being sharp

Earmaster plays back a completely different tone than what I recorded.

When I set the "Lower Instrument" to piano and turn MIDI on in the settings it recognizes the tone fine.

The transposition settings in Earmaster are set to 0.

Regards,

Jules

[Hans]

It is a bit unclear how your setup is working. The way I understand it, you are playing tones on a keyboards, which is sounding through your monitor speakers. Then you let the microphone catch that sound which is then recorded by EarMaster?

Please open the Microphone Wizard in EarMaster and click the "Configure" button to go to the advanced page. This will show the VU-meter and the actual frequency being detected. If possible please record another video showing you playing a tone and then showing what frequency is detected by EarMaster and the peak level.

[Essenjul]

Ok so after resetting the app a few times it is now registering the pitch correctly. I had tried this in the past but it didn't fix the issue. Now that I know it's possible to correct the issue with this method I'll try to fix it this way in the future. Maybe you can log this as a bug report and see if your development team can reproduce the issue. If it happens again I'll record the pitch mis-read in the configuration page and send it to you. Just fyi I've been doing music for 20 years and am currently in my 3rd year at Berklee. I also work as customer support for a very well know music software company, so I deal with this type of stuff on a daily basis and just trying to help. Thanks for your support!

[luisca]

I think I got to the bottom of it, I did hear a few noises when replaying my singing. I had been using the software with the laptop resting in my legs and on soft surfaces, it seems like when the laptop rests on a hard surface the pitch detection works fine. A mystery to me why this would affect just a single pitch, always the same, but I think this is working fine now, I'll let you know if I run into problems again, thanks for the help!

[Quentin]

Good to hear from both of you that mic input is up and running again on your devices

[luisca]

Unfortunately, declared victory too early... apparently I get the recording noises even when using hard surfaces, so I was on a red herring.

Check this video where I replay what I singed as you requested:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/qX8Tju7vbZpxFwpC6

I am not paying attention to the notes, just singing Do-Re-Do, you can see the Do at the beggining and end was very well recognized but the Re was crazy. However the telling part is that you can clearly hear noise artifacts, which may be the source of the problem (even if they only affect the Re pitch). I recorded some audio on Logic Pro X with the same setup and I have no noise at all there.

Any idea why EarMaster could be recording poorly?

[Quentin]

Thank you.

It sounds like EarMaster is receiving sound in a higher sample rate than it's expecting. I just tested this by setting an Audient ID14 to 96khz and the conversion was handled as expected by CoreAudio, serving 44.1khz to EarMaster. The pitch curve is super stable and there are no audible glitches in the played back sound. Maybe your audio interface is enforcing a higher sample rate. Can you check in the software of your interface if there's an option to set the sample rate to 44.1khz? If there's one, please enable 44.1khz and restart EarMaster to see if that solved the problem.

As for the problem with the Re note, EarMaster matches the detected pitch with the octave of the note that you are supposed to sing. So if you are too far from the expected note, EarMaster might transpose your pith an octave up or down in an attempt to get nearer to the correct note.

[luisca]

I am not using any interface, just the laptop mic and headphones connected to the laptop jack. Is there a way to control the setting for that?

[Quentin]

Ok, thanks. Could you please open the Mic Calibration Tool from the HELP menu once you are inside a singing exercise, and then sing and hold a few pitches while filming. This will enable us to see exactly what frequencies are recognized when you sing. Please sing and hold a tone for a few seconds at least 3 times so that we can find a pattern in the problem.

Also make sure we can see the frequency numbers, they're quite small

[luisca]

Here you go:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/xdA4SzhWhToo3DDc8

Please note I can't find how to get to the mic settings from any "Help" menu, I get here only when calibrating the mic each time I am going to use the mic for the first time since opening the program.

[Quentin]

Thank you. It's very stable, but maybe it's just that pitch. You will find the "Mic calibration tool" in the HELP once you are inside the exercise. Please try to record different tones and give it some time, as this particular tone was recognized without problem. It looks like the input level is fine as well. Thank you for your help!

[luisca]

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ajKGKKAry4vDFfb47

As you can see, C3 is recognized fine, but D3 gets recognized as A4. I still hear artifacts when I play back what I recorded, no idea where those come from.