Atari Mega Archive 2/Atari Mega Archive CD - Volume 2.iso/8bit/cislib_a/eartrn.doc

Text File | 1995-04-22 | 7KB | 129 lines

1859 Concord Ave.
Stockton, CA  95204
August 24, 1987


EARTRN ("eartraining") is a musical percpetion and ear training
program.  It does not have any fancy graphics, it doesn't keep score, and
it is not very game-like,  but in terms of flexibility, ease of use,
range of difficulty, sensitivity to the task, and variety of exercises, I
have never seen a better ear trainnig program. I spent many hours
practicing all of the exercises as I wrote them over the past two years,
so I became sensitive to what features facilitate the learning task, and
what might be distracting or annoying.  I experimented with many other
exercises that were ultimately discarded, and the five exercises included
in the final version of the program have been carefully polished.  The
range of difficulty between the easiest and hardest exercises is vast.
The hardest exercises would really challenge the best professional
musicians.  The easiest would be comfortable for a seven year old child.
There are innumerable possible shades of difficulty in between.  The
program is pretty user friendly and I think it is bug-free.  All of the
exercises run in double-precision sound, so the intonation is better than
that of a piano.

EARTRN was written with the intention that it could be easily
transported to other machines.  I learned to program by writing this
program;  I know the programming is inelegant, and there are probably
several orphan lines and orphan variables lost in it.  Nevertheless, I
think the tangles are few enough that most programmers could undertand
it without too much difficulty.  Except for a few miscellaneous pokes and
peeks it is in the most basic BASIC.  It would not be hard for someone to
add graphics (musical notation and a piano keyboard) and develop a really
exciting versions for the Atari ST or other machines.  I have donated the
program to the public domain with the hope that other programmers will do
this.  I will do what I can to help serious programmers to develop new
versions of EARTRN.  I once hoped to sell a version of this program
commercially, but that turned out to be unrealistic in several respects.

Here is a brief description of how the program works.  There are five
basic exercises displayed in the opening menu:  Name That Interval;  Tune
It Up; Play That Interval;  Fine Tuning; and, Name That Note.

In Name That Interval the computer plays the tonic note, then a second
note.  You decide what the interval or the second note is, press RETURN,
and the computer tells you the answer.

In Tune It UP the computer plays the tonic note and a second note, and
then displays the names of the notes and the interval name.  The second
note may be correct or slightly out of tune.  You decide if the second
note is correct, sharp, or flat, and enters your response via the
keyboard.  The computer tells you if you are right or wrong.

In Play That Interval the computer plays the tonic note and then asks
you to play a particular second note (or interval).  The pitch of the
second note is determined by the up and down cursor keys.  The tone
changes slowly when you use the cursor keys alone, and more rapidly if
you use the cursor key plus the SHIFT key. When you think you have the
right second note, you hit RETURN.  The computer tells you if you are
right, and if not right, whether you were sharp or flat, and to what
degree.

In Fine Tuning you select one interval you want to practice repeatedly
in order to develop more accurate pitch perception.  The computer plays
the same interval in different keys, and you choose correct, sharp, or
flat, as in Tune It Up.  You select exactly how far out of tune the
out-of-tune notes will be, so extremely fine degrees of pitch perception
can be developed.  You specify how out of tune you want the out-of-tune
notes to be in terms of "cents".  One hundred cents equals one half
step.

In Name That Note you select a key and the computer plays notes in that
key.  You select the maximum size of the jumps between notes you want
(larger jumps are much harder) and the number of notes you want played in
sequence (one to nine).  Beginners should definitely start with one note
at a time.  The computer plays the notes and when you think you have the
figured out what the notes were, you hit RETURN and the computer displays
the note names.

I have not mentioned the variations possible within each exercise as
well as other convenient features built into the exercises, but these are
self explanatory.

Exercises such as these have two very valuable purposes.  First, if you
are a vocal EARTRN or play a string instrument you must be able to "hear
the note in your head before you sing (play) it" if there is to be much
hope of consistently singing (playing) in tune.  If you want to improvise
on any instrument you must be able to hear the notes in your head before
you play them.  This is also true if you want to compose music.
Dilligent ear training can actually install a piano in the brain of a
former musical imbecile so that it becomes possible to hear the notes in
your head.

Second, music is a language.  It contains beauty and truth accessible
only to people who understand the language.  A few lucky people learn the
language effortlessly in childhood.  The rest of us are able only to
recognize a few common phrases, to the extent that we are perhaps able to
appreciate Loretta Lynn's latest ditty.  The vocabulary of the language
of music is intervals (the musical distance between notes).  (For example
the distance between a C and a G is a "perfect fifth".)  When people
become able to consistently recognize, name, remember, and reproduce a
series of intervals, they start to become fluent in this wonderful
language.  At that point many previously impossible things start to
become possible:  greatly expanded musical appreciation, greatly expanded
musical memory, the ability to sing on pitch, the ability to learn to
play an instrument much more rapidly, and so on.

For these reasons, all music majors in college are required to take
several semesters of ear training classes.  The usual methods of teaching
ear training are cumbersome and inefficient, and most students flunk it,
which prematurely ends their careers as musicians.  An ear training
program like EARTRN makes it possible for the first time in human history
for almost anyone to become proficient in the language of music, even in
adulthood, in their own home, without an inordinate investment of time
and effort, and without having to take college-level classes (only
available to music majors).

I would like to get feedback on this program.  I don't use CompuServe
much, so I would appreciate letters via the U.S. Postal Service.  I will
check my CompuServe Email occasionally.  I hope you like my program.  I
am happy with the result, but I found out that the process of programming
makes me psychotic and I doubt that I will ever write another one.  I
have written a similar program, though simpler, that teaches chord
recognition.  If there is a demand for it I will debug it and send it to
Compuserve.  There is also a very buggy and partly developed version of
EARTRN that displays musical notation.  It would have to be compiled to
run fast enough.  Send me a Disk in a mailer and I will send you a copy.

Tim Miller