VIDEO SHOT NOTE: For all of these videos below, higher rows are higher notes. (As I have some inconsistency on the site as to how I had the Spectratune set.)

VIDEO SHOT 1 (Spectratune monitoring Solo Cello): This .wmv video file is a capture of what the Spectratune outputs on some Bach solo cello. (I have both the spectrum and the single-pitch running. The single-pitch will fail when there is the occasional two-strings being played. What I actually saw on the screen had a slightly higher frame rate--showing a little more of the short-term motion in the music. (The video capture software took a little less than every frame.)

VIDEO SHOT 1B (User Seeking Theoretical Ideas): This .wmv video file is a capture of a (simulated) advanced graduate student in Psychoacoustical Music Theory who is monkeying around with the Spectratune (spiral view) and Tonal Vision (playing a bit of a Brahms Piano Quintet), in an attempt to come up with insight into harmont. The student is playing select bits of the Brahms on the Tonal Vision, along with test notes, scale, etc, and this sound shows up spectrally in green on the Spectratune. As part of the testing out of ideas, grad student is also sometimes humming certain test notes. These are not heard on the video (as this is going through the web-cam mike channel which is not picked up by the recording software). The humming shows up on the Spectratune in blue (spectrum) and also you can see the single tone sometimes in a red arrow on the Spectratune. (The single-tone being hummed also is being passed to the Tonal Vision, where that little mark shows its pitch.) (The Spectratune is a bit slow to respond to the sound, partly because it is doing 3 things at once: two channels of spectrogram, and one of single pitch detection. Also, some of the adjustments on it are inoptimal.)

VIDEO SHOT 1C (User Seeking Theoretical Ideas About Tonic/Dominant/Sub-Dominant Function): This .wmv video file has the Spectratune responding more quickly, because it is a little better adjusted, and as well, it is only doing one thing: spectrogram of the Tonal Vision output sounds. The user is experimenting with chords, trying to figure out what's going on with the Tonic, Dominant, Sub-dominant categorization of chords.

VIDEO SHOT 2 (Looking for Psychoacoustic Insight into Bach): This .wmv video file shows a person trying to get some insight into the sounds of some music of Bach, and figure why the rules of traditional music theory work, by looking at the fundamentals and overtones of a C Minor prelude from a MIDI file played at a slowed-down pace through the Spectratune, with the key of C Minor overlaid. When they get to a point where most analysts remark on a temporary key shift, they may overlay that key. Because the source is a MIDI file with a decent editor, they can monkey around and play and move individual notes or whole sections of notes.

VIDEO SHOT 2B (Using my Other Free Software -- ToneGen -- To Vary Tone Continuously to Try To Develop a very Precise Sense of Scales and Tone): This .wmv video file has the Spectratune and the ToneGen on, with the user fumbling around a bit to try to tighten his sense of the major scale. Strictly speaking, the Spectratune is Superfluous, as the ToneGen will tell you its exact tone, though not graphically. (The ToneGen takes the place of your voice or a non-fretted string instrument for allowing you to generate continuous tones, but may be easier to control, and will not wake the neighbors if you use headphones.) ( Oh, here is the link to the ToneGen.)

VIDEO SHOT 3 (More Bach): This .wmv video file is of a section of a C# major prelude that is in G# major except for the last few notes, which is in C# major. (This on the authority of a skilled musicologist from a posting on the Net.) Thus, I have overlaid G# major, and relation to tonality should be apparent.

VIDEO SHOT 4 (Practicing Scales): This .wmv video file is a capture of a person practicing scales with the Spectratune, using a cheap mic. The spectrogram happens to be turned on for this, which is optional, as the single-pitch detection is really all you need. (The person, unfortunately, does not have a vocal gift.)

VIDEO SHOT 5 (Developing a Sense of Harmony in Singing): This .wmv video file shows a person trying to get a sense of singing harmony, using the Spectratune to show where they are against a triad they are trying to harmonize with. The triad is being played on a keyboard, with the spectrogram of the triad showing in blue. The triad is also being listened to in headphones. The person is singing along with the webcam mic, trying to get in harmony with the triad by listening, using the Spectratune for occasional guidance. The sing-along pitch is being displayed with they yellow arrow, which the person is using as an aid to figure out how to harmonize. The person is pretty successful getting into a nice harmony by listening alone, which happens to be when the yellow arrow is aligned with the center of any spectral peak for the triad. (The sing-along sound and thus the harmony involving the voice is not heard on the video, as the video-making software I used can only capture the sound of the sound-card.)

VIDEO SHOT 6 (Singing Along with Amazing Grace): This .wmv video file is a capture of a novice singer singing along, with modest success at this early point, with the melody track only of a MIDI file of "Amazing Grace". The red arrow is tracking the MIDI melody. It wavers a bit because of the vibrato in the MIDI instrument selected. The yellow arrow is the person trying to sing an octave below. You can not hear the person singing an octave below on the video, because they are doing it on the webcam mic and my video recording program only picks up the audio on the sound card. (For the sake of you viewers, that's a good thing!) With some practice, this person will be really good at singing along, we hope. (Incidentally, when using the Spectratune to actually pick up a sense of tone for singing along, rather than just have fun, the key is to listen without the visual information (typically with eyes closed), and only use the visual when confirmation or other guidance is needed.)

VIDEO SHOT 7 (Singing Along with a Blues Recording):
I've been having a lot of fun lately with the Spectratune singing an octave under Joni Mitchell ("Ladies of the Canyon" and "Clouds" albums), which is easy, because her voice is substantial and is frequency-wise away from any interfering instruments. I'm not going to break copyright laws and post images of that, so I looked for the little bit of public-domain recordings on the internet for an example I can show you. This .wmv video file is a capture of a person without the natural gift of being able to sing in tune singing along with a 1920s? public domain recording (Clara Smith -- "Deep Blue Sea Blues"). The blue is the spectrogram of the recording. It has the fundamentals and overtones of everything in the recording, so it is modestly of complex. Still, you can generally find the vocalist. The note itself (i.e. the fundamental) for the vocalist is almost always in that middle octave there. The yellow arrow is the person trying to sing any harmony when there is no vocal, and trying to sing an octave below the vocalist when the vocalist is on. Sometimes they're kinda close (but usually outside the permissible 1/4 semitone), and there are a lot of mis-steps. Again, you can not hear the person singing an octave below on the video, because they are using the webcam mic. Also note the overlaid key is not to be taken as correct for this recording -- the partitioning of the scale just made it easier for the person to stay on track. (Anyway, with practice, using the Spectratune with eyes closed, just opening eyes when guidance is needed, we expect said person to develop a better sense of singing along in tune, and that perhaps no aid at all will be needed.)

Incidentally, there are some other nice public domain blues recordings here at the Open Music Archive.

VIDEO SHOT 8 (Showing Spectral Mode Both Devices:):
Since this is not a public domain recording (it is "Suzanne" sung by Judy Collins), I've respected the copyright and excluded the audio. This .wmv video file shows the recording, spectralized, in blue, and a person singing an octave below Judy Collins as the yellow-arrow (single-pitch), with also full spectrum in green. The key for the recording was easily determinable by comparing the spectral image to the recording to the sheet music (i.e. finding out what transposition of the sheet music it is), and is correctly superimposed in this example as F#. The melody in the vocal on the recording starts on the dominant in that 3rd octave up of the 6 shown, and is mainly between that and the tonic up, though it occasionally goes outside that range by about a step.




MAKING YOUR OWN VIDEOS: The Spectratune functions for interactive viewing and does not have built in software to record a video, but you can do so with the Free Windows Media Encoder 9 Series from Microsoft. This is how I did all the video shots posted on this site. VIDEO SHOTS SHOWING THE MUSICAL RANGE OF THE SPECTRATUNE: Upper Range, Middle Range, Near Lower Range. The upper and middle range were done through my Microsoft GS Wavetable synthesizer. Down by the bottom of the middle range, you can see a slight tendency to be a little high. This would be normal near the beginning of the note, when the percussive sound interferes, and there is not truly a single-pitch for the single-pitch arrow to detect, but it should stabilize later in the note. When I got to the bottom of the range, it wasn't stabilizing. So I switched to a keyboard, and all was fine. (Thus, I think the MS GS-wavetable synthesizer is not so perfect.) My apologies for a bit of audio overload distortion on the bottom-of-range video.

You May Also Be Interested In: MUSIC-PERCEPTION TOOLKIT ITEM #2 TONAL VISION MIDI MUSIC ANALYSIS and LISTENING TOOL (Interactively play and display MIDI files with chord-view octave overlay to aid comprehension of tonal aspects of the music, with optional overlaid pitch feedback for humming, singing along. Free, donation-supported software. ) TONAL VISION page .

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