melodic/rhythmic sight singing idea

[BillM]

In Melodic sight singing (and rhythmic sight singing) the recording of the answer is not triggered until a sound or midi note is detected by EarMaster. Normally, I don't see this as a problem. However, I have seen some students of mine wait for several bars before doing the exercise so they could study the pattern on the staff first.

I thought it would have been a good idea if you had the option to set the maximum number of bars that could lapse before the recording of your answer is automatically triggered. This would be the equivalent of the time limit option that appears on some of the other activities.

[Quentin]

Hello,

We have plans to add a time limit to the sight-singing and rythmic sight-reading exercises, so that teachers can specify how much time students can spend on preparing each exercise.

It should be available in one of the updates planned for this year.

[BillM]

I see that the recording of the answer now begins automatically. That would be a nice option for some users at a particular level. The problem now is that the key on trigger for recording seems to be gone now.

I have many students with various levels of ability. Is there a way to get the key on recording option to work?

[Quentin]

Hi, this option is not gone, it should be enabled by default. Are you experiencing this with custom workbooks or with the built-in lessons of EarMaster?

[BillM]

I just tried it with a custom exercise, a workbook and a built-in general workshop.

I noticed that if Auto new question is set to always, then Auto begin record will be locked to the On position.

I then set Auto new question to Disabled and saw that I could turn Auto begin record on and off. However, when I turned Auto begin record off, it still did not wait for a key trigger to start recording.

[Quentin]

Thank you for the precise explanation. I tried to reproduce the problem, but no luck so far. On which platform/OS are you experiencing this?

[BillM]

EarMaster 7.3.58 BETA
I have Windows 10.

The way I see the current update:

When Auto new question is set to Always, Auto begin record is LOCKED to On. (One might like the flow of auto new questions, but might want the option to hear the metronome for more than one bar before recording.)

When Auto new question is disabled, you have the option to look at the question before hitting the record button.

I would prefer to trigger the recording the way it did before, but with the option to limit the number of measures before it automatically goes into record mode.

For example,
Maximum number of measures before recording:
1
2
4
no limit

[Quentin]

Yes, this is planned for the near future. It will be available in an upcoming update.

[BillM]

Will the Key on trigger for recording the answer be restored?

[Quentin]

It should already work like that again, though only for melodies without rhythmic note values (labelled "Pitch only" when setting up an exercise)

[BillM]

My problem with that is if you remove the rhythmic value, there is no melody.

[BillM]

I use EarMaster with a wide range of students.

In an earlier version, students were able to answer the question immediately or wait a bar or more to answer it. My critique was that the student could wait for several bars while studying the question. I found this to be ok for some situations, but for others I wanted to put a limit on the number of bars that pass before answering.

If I had to choose, I would go back to the earlier version.

[Tradesman]

Funny but I don't do any pre scanning at all I would practice looking ahead. I became so good at it before I left it to start sight reading. It equipped with a solid instinct for sight reading rhythm. I would sit for hours till it became almost second nature almost.
Now I'm returning back to rhythmic sight reading to forward sight reading I'm finding it a tad hard to get back to the standards I had.

[vitalluck]

I really liked the old version better where students could respond immediately instead of wasting time with the transition process.

[Quentin]

It's also possible to have EarMaster start the evaluation immediately without preparation time, and as a teacher you can get the your custom exercise to work like that for all your students. The option in question is called "Auto begin record".