Sustaining notes without the pitchiness...

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Stackalee
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Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2010 1:15 am

Sustaining notes without the pitchiness...

Post by Stackalee »

Hi there,

RE. Voice Band

I've listened to just about everything that has been posted on here and youtube and have been using it a lot since purchasing it. it seems to me though that in truth, although this is designed to make creating music more accessible, and it certainly does do that to a degree, it is still very hard to get really good (accurate) results unless you are a very talented singer.

The reason for this is that whilst a lot of people are able to hit the notes they want initially, the majority of non-musicians become quite pitchy when they try to sustain a note for any length. This means getting good quality results is actually out of the grasp of a lot of the kind of people that would actually use this app. The vast majority of music that has been posted by people using Voice Band demonstrates this quite clearly.

I have a suggestion:
An option to turn 'Slur' On/Off.

Slur is when you move seamlessly from one note to another with no break between the notes. If there was an option to turn this off then the App could take the initial sound input as the Note and then any subsequent length to that sound ("Baah" seems to be the standard) as just adding length to the already SET note.

This would massively simplify the process because users would only need to get the initial sound right as opposed to being pitch perfect throughout the entire piece, which is out of the reach of most people.

I imagine that people would then record with the 'Slur' option turned off making the process much easier and then if there was a note that really needed slurring then it could be done in the right place on a separate voice track.

I really think if this is achievable from a tech perspective then we would finally see some really good quality results from this app. In my opinion I think that this is a minimum requirement for this app to really meet it's potential.

As additional suggestions though ;) --- A more aggressive Auto Tune would also help, particularly for when the 'Slur' option is set to 'On'.

Also being able to see the notes that you are playing/singing would help - not only when trying to create a song but also with using the App as a sketch pad to then flesh out the ideas on real instruments at home. Being able to see in real time and then retrospectively in text/tab/notation what you have played would be a real asset.

Because this app is targeted at a broad audience as opposed to a smaller niche of talented singers, it really needs to help those people use the only instrument they need for this app - they're voice.

This is a great app, with big potential, and I'm hoping it will be supported and updated regularly - A 'Slur' On/Off option, would be really nice to see. I'm a big fan of your drums too...

Stack
Rim
Site Admin
Posts: 408
Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 11:08 pm

Re: Sustaining notes without the pitchiness...

Post by Rim »

Hi,

Many of these features will be included in the pro version of voice band. The current version is targeted at a broad audience, so it lacks many of the parameters you mentioned for simplicity.

Thanks,
Rim
MikeM
New Member
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Jan 20, 2010 11:24 pm

Re: Sustaining notes without the pitchiness...

Post by MikeM »

As a pro musician for many years (over 3 decades) and reasonably decent singer, I found that keeping the app on a single note to be nearly impossible because of my natural vibrato. It just follows every inflection. Good if you can sing w/o vib, but makes the app pretty useless. BTW, I got an iPhone and sold the iPod Touch...
Rim
Site Admin
Posts: 408
Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2005 11:08 pm

Re: Sustaining notes without the pitchiness...

Post by Rim »

If you set Voice Band to a scale, for example C Major, your vibrato shouldn't affect Voice Band very much.

Rim
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