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Phonature -> Useful Information -> Articles -> Using PhonTuner In Unaccompanied Singing
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Using PhonTuner In Unaccompanied Singing
Introduction
Unaccompanied singing, also called a-cappella singing or a-capella singing,
is a very refined form of musical performance. The church choir makes
soul-touching sounds and the ringing of Barbershop Quartet is the goal of
barbershop quartet members. This high degree of human skill development and
coordination can be more enjoyable and effectively with PhonTuner. PhonTuner
is a PDA / mobile phone software for accurate real-time pitch display. It
also incorporates a pitch pipe tone generator to create a reference tone and
a sound texture pattern to show the timbre and beating of voices. Let us see
here how these functions make the PhonTuner excellent a-cappella singing
software.
Simply put, the PhonTuner is your faithful feedback tool that shows accurately
the instantaneous pitch of your voice or the effect of mixing voices with your
barbershop quartet members. Such feedback enables you to experiment with your
voices and keep track of progress. How to achieve certain singing skills or
improvement is left to you, the coach, or the conductor. The software is a
means for you to get direct feedback and a common ground that you and others
can point to and discuss on the various aspects of the singing. It adds some
quantifiable and visually enriched options to our music vocabulary.
To begin with, let's see how the PhonTuner can do as singing software by just
running it on your PDA or mobile phone.
Find your vocal range
Just start the software by clicking on the spiral shaped PhonTuner icon,
you will see an orange spiral of 3 circles occupying most part of the screen.
Use the menu item to set INSTRUMENT to SINGING so that its settings are best
to measure singing. Sing and you can see immediately a pointer showing up on
top of this spiral and jumps around as you sing, tracking voices from
C2 (65.5Hz) to C7 or C8 (over 4,000Hz) as you sing or whistle. A circle on
the pointer indicates the octave your note belongs to. This is our way of
showing the pitch of any note sequence accurately such that you can also
intuitively see them very quickly without difficulty. This is the
Mathematical Cochlea
display method of Phonature Technology.
The Mathematical Cochlea uses the spiral scale of one octave per circle to
show your vocal range. The 12 division marks along this scale corresponds
to the 12 semitones of an octave. In the PhonTuner, it is marked such that
the top position at 12 O'clock corresponds to the key C and goes closewise
for high pitch keys. You can read out the key of the note you are singing
with ease. Now make your lowest pitch sound all the way up to the highest
pitch. The pointer will sweep out your vocal range as you do this. To be
practice, only count the range that you can hold the pointer steady at the
end points, meaning that it is a pitch that you can use in singing. Try this
with different methods of singing : chest, mixed, head and falsetto. Then
you know your vocal range when singing in different ways.
Below is the approximate vocal range of different parts of barbershop quartet
or mixed barbershop quartet.
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Bass
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Baritone
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Lead
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Tenor
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Male
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F2 - C4
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C3 - E4
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D3 - F4
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B3 - C5
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Female
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D3 - G4
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G3 - B4
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A3 - C5
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E4 - G5
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In general, any part of a barbershop quartet requires a vocal range of less
than 2 octaves which is well covered by the 3 octave spiral scale of
Mathematical Cochlea.
Know your voice in detail
The pitch of a note that you sing varies over time. Without the aid of
equipment, this is always a mystery. Now the PhonTuner reveals this mystery
for you. It measures the pitch of your singing many times a second, and uses
a fading pointer to show the variation over time. Often we tell people that
they sing a certain note sharp or flat. But when you check the movement of
the pointer, you may notice the subtle changes commonly happening near the
beginning and the end of a note, and how smoothly or abruptly your singing
jumps from one note to the next. When you get a steady note, the pointer is
sharp and clear. A little bit of jitter makes it look fat and a bit blurred.
For even wider variation, you can see multiple pointers and their spacing is
an indication of your ability to hold onto a steady tone or create vibrato.
Check intervals
Perfect pitch hearing or singing requires a lot of practice. But to get an
interval correct is much easier. In fact, most people can get most singing
intervals quite accurately and only need minor adjustment to sing with correct
intervals. PhonTuner provides a simple means for you to check the interval
between two notes. The Mathematical Cochlea divides an octave into 12
semitones round the along the spiral scale. So the interval of a whole note
is 2 dvisions; third is 4 divisions and fifth is 7 divisions. If you
alternate between two notes, then the after image of both notes can be seen
for you to estimate their interval easily.
If you sing do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do without stopping, you can see the pointer
jumping clockwise in divisions of 2-2-1-2-2-2-1. The direction of the pointer
where you begin is exactly where you end if you get them all correct. This
beginning direction is the key that you sing. Now, check for where the steps
are not correct and you only need to focus your exercise there. You can just
alternate between the two notes until you are satisfied with the feedback you
get from PhonTuner. Alternatively, find some of your favorite songs where
such note combinations happen repeatedly for you to practice and pay attention
to the part of the spiral scale where you know needs most practice. For
instance, in "The Sounds of Music", you can find melodies where you can sing
from "do" to "do" going through all the keys of C-D-E-F-G-A-B. You can
check your tonal accuracy for the first word of each lyric. As a side note,
there is a lyric "TEA a drink with jam and bread" which is easy to
tempt you sing "ti" or "si" sharper than the correct tone.
Tune your voice
When you are preparing for a performance or group practice, you can use the
PhonTuner as a pitch pipe with a bonus. A pitch pipe can only give you a
reference tone. PhonTuner can also show you whether your voice matches the
generated tone as you sing.
Before beginning, make sure the A4 reference is correct. It is shown in small
print like A4=440Hz and can be adjusted to suit your need. When done, just
use your finger or stylus to touch any point in the spiral shaped Mathematical
Cochlea scale to hear the tone output. (For bass sound, it is advised to use
an earphone) You can make your own voice upon hearing the tone to see whether
you can get it right. If you do, the PhonTuner's pointer will appear at the
same place of the Mathematical Cochlea where you press the stylus.
Use in Barbershop Quartet Practice
There is a funny pattern showing up in the middle as you sing. It is briefly
mentioned in the HELP menu as the Sound Texture showing the quality of voice
input. If you have a reasonably good PDA and reasonably quiet surrounding,
this sound texture is a clear convoluted line when you sing. The complexity
is related to the timbre of the individual note. When there is more than one
voice, it often gets messy. Not so for barbershop quartet because voices in
harmony is fused into one! To avoid too much confusion, it is best to have
only two barbershop quartet members singing near the microphone of the PDA.
Towards this end, the Phonviso freeware also provides a sound texture mode
with rainbow color lines that draws out even more wonderful sound texture
for barbershop harmony. It is an excellent "ringing" indicator.
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