Playing mode: intonation feedback without distracting from the note reading

[coolt]

Thank you very much for your very valuable app.
Tuner supports me in my music practicing.

I have a wish that other users might also appreciate:
A playing mode.

This can be very valuable for violinists, trumpetists, flute players (like me), as well as singers.

Story

Currently, while I am playing, I use the "Chromatic" mode.
It provides immediate feedback, if I hit the note correctly.

While the app gives me the needed information, the display is way too busy and keeps changing (visual noise).

Proposal

• Add a Playing mode.
• In Playing mode, only a simplified Tuner View is visible.
• In the left side of the screen, an up/down triangle shows the direction of the correction towards the note (if the note is correct, nothing is shown)
• The current note is displayed in the right part of the screen.
• The background is green, when the intonation is correct,
  it's red, when the intonation is not.
• The vertical distance of the triangle to the middle line, shows how much the tone is off (this is similar to the circle with the triangle currently shown in the Tuner View).

Options

• In an alternative view mode, the background is white / black (depending on the light / dark mode) and the content is green or red (for a more discrete feedback).

Acceptance Criteria

• The user can start a "playing" mode
• In "Playing" mode, the user sees immediatly if the intonation is correct.
• The user also easily sees if the tone should be corrected upwards or downwards.
• The user gets the information without being distracted from reading the nodes.

I add some pictures of a possible implementation.

Note hit correctly:

Note slightly too high

Note too high

Note too low

Alternative "discrete" mode

[thetwom]

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I fear I cannot quickly provide any new modes, but I think it is still worth the discussion to understand how to improve the situation.

Simplicity like your design is nice to achieve, but it comes at the prices that we loose information, like e.g. the history and a bit how far off you really are. I mean, even when you change the distance of the triangle to the center line, there is a reference missing. While solutions could be found for such issues, I wonder if the current layout can be improved in such a way, that is better for all (ok, it is never better for all, but maybe for many :-)

If I see this correctly, you suggestion is a bit similar to #102. So a very simple tuner interface, just chromatic, and very easy to see, so large notes, ...

I also like the idea of moving the note inside the box, I was thinking about this actually before, since it makes the appearance more clean. So definitely some room for improvements.

[coolt]

Thank you for your kind replay.

The simpler tuner interface from #102 is a good alternative for me.
But, since it's a completely new interface, I fear it, will take some time to implement.

As far as I can tell, what I'm proposing is a copy of the existing Tuner, very much simplified.
(Seems to be a copy of it, with lot of things removed.)

It might be faster to add, waiting for the nicer visualization from #102 .

One more thing:
my main issue, is not that the information is not visible enough, but that the items on the screen keep on jumping around.
(making it easier to spot if the tone is correct, is a secondary goal, less important).

I attach a screencast, where you can see, that when I'm playing, the note keeps on moving up and down:

Visual_Noise_Tuner.mp4

Fixing the note by clicking on the frame does not improve the situation, because, it's then fixed on a single note and the current note is then out of the screen!
I need the current note being always at the same place.

If we can agree on a simple feature to implement, but you don't have the time to work on it, I can ask a programmer friend, if he can have a look at the code, and propose a patch.

Kind regards

[thetwom]

Hm, this indeed looks pretty annoying. It won't help much, I guess, to get another interface, but you would need a more stable behaviour. Should the whole video have the same note? Are you recording a voice? Or an instrument? Is there a lot of background noise?

Maybe you could also play a bit with the settings? Possible options are:

• Turning the sensitivity down, such that note detection stops if the signal is very quiet (but is it quiet?)
• Turning the window size up (e.g. 8192 samples). This is especially helpful for lower frequencies.
• Turn up the setting "jump to new note". This will delay jumping to newly detected notes.
• And maybe turning the moving average up. This smoothes out the detected signal a bit more.

Also always interesting would be when you could provide a sound sample. In the end of the setting there is this recording setting. This can be turned up to 5s. Then switch on scientific mode. Back to the tuner screen, you will find a record button. Note that this will save the LAST 5 seconds. So if you observed the jumping behaviour, you quickly press the button and save it. Make sure to listen to the sample before sharing it to make sure, that there is nothing confidential :-).

[coolt]

Should the whole video have the same note?
No.

I'm playing a score with a transverse flute.
It's about checking that the intonation is correct while I'm playing.
This is something players of flutes, violins, trombone, and singer might need.

The app should change the note as it is detected right now, but always put that note in the middle of the screen, at the same position. This could be a setting.
(My visualization proposal and the one from #102 make it easier to just see, if the note is correct; but for me the main point is really, that it should be possible to get the current note to always be displayed at the same height.)

The setting you're mentioning don't seem to do that.

[thetwom]

Thanks for the further explanation. This makes indeed the situation much more clear. Of course you are right and the settings I mentioned woudn't help at all :D.

I understand that in your case, the screen jumping is very distracting, also since it is not made with your use case in focus. I would rather think that for use case, it is not important to get the precise deviation from the different notes but rather a rough idea of how far you are off. In this case it seems much more important is to have a visualization which can be understood in a fraction of a second. Maybe also with kind of a history of the last notes be shown (something like a note line, which shows that last 4 notes with a rough indicator per note of how far you are off).

While definitely a lot of the current functionality would needed for such a described mode, in order to do it well, a specifically developed screen/UI would be needed. Otherwise it would always feel like a bad compromise. Unfortunately, that would be a lot of work, which I fear, I cannot provide at the moment. Even though it sounds like a very interesting trial :-).

Still, I think I can extract some takeaways here to further improve the tuner mode in future, which might also help using it during playalong, but as said, I fear, it will never feel ideal.