Practicing with a spectrograph
Practicing with a spectrograph
Shakuhachi players are often advised to practice with a tuner when working on pitch, but has anyone else found a spectrograph useful for timbre?
I downloaded a very simple iOS app called, er, "Spectrograph", and it is a helpful visual aid when working on my embouchure. There's a difference of course in that there is more likely to be a single correct pitch than a single correct timbre in a given context, but I found it quite illuminating to see the difference in timbre broken down into partials, and it has helped me to be more conscious of my tone in general. I would be interested to hear if anyone else here has tried this and/or have any useful advice in this area, especially makers.
I downloaded a very simple iOS app called, er, "Spectrograph", and it is a helpful visual aid when working on my embouchure. There's a difference of course in that there is more likely to be a single correct pitch than a single correct timbre in a given context, but I found it quite illuminating to see the difference in timbre broken down into partials, and it has helped me to be more conscious of my tone in general. I would be interested to hear if anyone else here has tried this and/or have any useful advice in this area, especially makers.
I personally use these kind of tools (tuner and spectrogram) occasionally with my students to help to realize of a component of a sound (pitch, timbre). And it's quite effective. The aim is to hear things you didn't hear before, and to do as quick as possible without these "technological crutches". I advise them to use in their practice, but very sparingly and always with a listening ear. The risk is obviously to make the eyes work more than ears... and to forget that sound aesthetic is not measurable. I think iOS "Trace Tuner" is a good app for tone stability and timbre (very simple and cheap app).
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