“How do I actually learn my part?”
One phrase at a time. A phrase is one short piece of the song, from one big breath mark to the next. The app plays your notes, lights up each word as it comes, and stays with you until the phrase feels like yours. Then we take the helpers away, one by one, until it is just you and the song.
Please wear headphones while the microphone is on, so it hears only you.
Tempo
Who do you hear?
Take the helpers away
Caroling happens by heart. Hide the notes and test if you know what to sing. Hide the words and test if you know what comes next. Hide both when you are ready.
First word shows only the first word of each phrase, to get you started. A dot holds the place of each hidden word part, so you can still see where you are.
This one is yours to check. The app cannot hear if the words and notes came from your memory. Check it when you have sung the whole song with the words hidden and the notes hidden. It lights the fourth window on this song’s door.
Listen, look, breathe: how to read them
The switches for these four tools are up by your words and notes, so you can watch everything at once. Tap a name below to read what that tool shows you.
Pitch feedback
Please wear headphones for this. Without them the mic hears the app’s notes too, and the app may grade its own playing instead of your singing.
Green on the line means you are on the note. Rose means sharp (too high). Blue means flat (too low). Under each word, the note name turns green when you sang that note and not a different one, even if you were a little sharp or flat. If you sang a different note, the app writes the note you sang in rose. The meter counts in cents. A cent is a tiny step. It takes 100 cents to get from one piano key to the very next one.
Picture of my sound
A spectrogram is a moving picture of your sound. Low notes sit at the bottom, high shimmer at the top. The numbers on the side are in Hz. Hz counts how many times the sound wiggles in one second, and 1 kHz means 1,000 Hz. Each stripe is one of the hidden notes inside your voice. The gold band is the ring band you meet in The Resonance Lab. Nothing is recorded. The sound never leaves this page.
Expression marks
The loud and soft marks: very soft, soft, medium soft, medium loud, loud, very loud. A wedge that opens is a crescendo: grow louder. A wedge that closes is a decrescendo: get softer. The app plays the song with these louds and softs so you can hear them, and long notes swell or fade. Sometimes your part has its own mark, like a soft echo under a louder tune.
The touch words: legato means smooth and connected. Staccato means short and detached. Marcato means each note gets a firm, clear start. When a phrase has a touch word, the app plays your notes that way so you can hear it. A phrase with no touch word is played plain.
Turn on “Listen to my louds and softs,” up by your notes, and the app listens for change in loudness: did you grow, fade, or stay even? Please wear headphones for this too. The app cannot measure soft or loud in real numbers, because every microphone is different. The app does not grade legato, staccato, or marcato. Your ears and I are the judges of those. These are starter marks. If I mark it differently in rehearsal, follow that.
Breath marks
A big blue mark ❜ shows where a phrase ends. Plan your breath for it. A small mark shows a comma, a period, or another stop in the words. If I mark a different breath in rehearsal, follow that.
Playing along on an instrument?
Sheet music for this song
Need music in your hands while you learn? The app can draw all four parts from the very same notes you hear in this room, so the page and the practice always match.
