Everything music & ear training related

ToneGym

How can I stay sane with the vocals here? It's such a stressful thing, mainly cause of the technical issues. Any tips on how not to go absolutely nuts doing the vocal exercises? I have normal vocals and good hearing, but the exercises constantly catch some different intervals and notes or just write out of range. I'm about to exclude these exercises from my daily routine
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Lisa Welmarz
May 08
I believe you can set your range in some settings, it will adapt the exercises so you don't sing too high or too low :)
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Petr Hartmann
May 08
I was OK with all vocal exercises until now because I hit a wall with Solfegiator at lvl 36. It is driving me nuts! Cannot progress further because often P1 gets evaluated as wrong - it is at the edge of my registers. Does the accuracy threshold gets tighter with higher levels? I am about to record my attempts in Cubase and analyze the pitch manually 😂 I am fairly confident in my intonation.
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Petr Hartmann
May 08
@Mike Ortynskiy sorry for rant. My tips: use headset, warm-up before the exercise and adjust the range. I want to build-up my head-voice (~falsetto) and the algorithm is much quicker and more precise with higher pitches, so I use tenor instead of my baritone range.
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its a little tricky but you will master it over time we believe in u
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Jon Sarjanen
May 08
try humming !
:)
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I also find that with the solfege exercise, the game says I sing a sharp note when I haven't. I also sang against the piano and I wasn't singing a sharp note. maybe I should use a proper mic instead of my laptop one?
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Solfegiator started off being iffy for me, but then I was able to get to about 40 without issue. Now I've just about written it off. Interval Barks works like a charm. I like Petr's suggestion of changing the range and I gotta work on my mixed voice so thank you for that

Although it was also recommended to me to bring up a tuner to reference and just be sure that you're hitting the note, but at this point when it tells me I'm sharp, I sing it intentionally flat and it works, but not the whole semitone.... it's kind of painful. So grantedit only happens once or twice and you make no unforced errors, you can game it doing that. Which sucks but if you're in the middle of the round and you're sure you actually got that one right, try that.

It was also suggested that Macs are going to have more trouble with this than PCs. All in all it kind of sucks but I imagine using a higher quality microphone would help. Haven't actually tried this yet though.
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Petr Hartmann
May 09
@Filippo Blasi Foglietti I don't think that the problem is 'sound quality'. I am guessing that the main issue is 'signal-to-noise ratio' - meaning the amount of unrelated noise (hum of the pc/appliances, outside noise, room reverberation etc.) your mic picks. Every element other than your voice makes it harder for the algorithm to detect the pitch properly. This is why I recommended headset - mic is next to your mouth - should yield best results without the hassle of setting up studio equipment.
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Solfège game is just bad in my opinion. Says I’m off when I’m not, I check my self with my piano and other platform. I’ve tried all the browsers, pitch adjustments and different microphones. Tech support was of no help either.
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I'm gonna try again with a headset and hopefully get better results, has anyone informed tone gym on this issue?
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j m
May 09
i just took em out of the workouts, theyre pretty bad
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I logged a ticket with their tech support but they just sent me their help page that didn't resolve my issue. I use a site called sight reading factory for solfege now. i'm sure there are other better sites as well.
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UPD: I was trying to find a position for the laptop to accept the signal through the built-in mic with less noise. I found out that it starts to work perfectly when you stand in the corner, holding the laptop in your hands. I think that the problem is that the sound reflects from the table, creating some kind of noise or smth like that
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UPD2: no, I tried to do it again and I tried to connect the microphone and started Logic Pro to check the note I sang. The exercise is deadly wrong and I highly advise everyone to turn it off, because you can start adjusting your vocals to this exercise's standards and you will lose the correct way of musical hearing