Use Instrument For Rhythm Exercises?

[NEWGUY]

Can I use a bass guitar in place of the space bar, or clapping into a mic for rhythm reading, rhythm imitation?

I did a search, and found nothing on the subject.

Yes, I did try calibrating the spacebar. It is still delayed.

If this is possible, what kind of hardware would I need?



Thanks!

[Quentin]

The clapping exercises expect a percussive sound, so a bass is not ideal for that purpose. I have managed to do rhythmic exercises with a guitar a few times by holding the strings with my left hand so that I got a short, not sustained sound, but it sometimes triggered two notes if I played too hard. Clapping in front of a mic or using the space bar or the mouse is definitely a better alternative.

Are you using EarMaster 5 or 6? In EarMaster 6, we made sure that the delay was minimal for rhythmic activities, very close to the delay produced when playing a note on an acoustic piano (3-5ms). In the Windows version, there are automatic latency compensation settings that change with the buffer size you have selected (in EarMaster's Preferences, under "MIDI Devices"), but those can also be adjusted. With a buffer size of 256, the default latency compensation is set to 46ms. You could try to set it to 50ms and see if that helps.