Sing a scale in tune

How the scale exercise works

Press Play the reference and listen. The microphone is not needed for that, and while the reference sounds the microphone’s readings are thrown away, so the page never grades its own tone.

Then start the microphone and press Sing it back. After a count-in of one note length, every note has a box on the grid and a slot of time. Sing each note while its box is lit. The slots do not wait: what you sang inside each slot is what is reported.

Pick a starting note that puts the whole scale inside your voice. The vocal range test will tell you where that is. Ticking Any octave counts lets you sing the scale an octave away from the reference.

Reading the result

For each slot the page takes the readings from the middle of the slot, leaving out the first fifth and the last tenth where one note turns into the next, and reports their median as the note you sang. Cents off is counted from the note asked for, or from its nearest octave if Any octave counts is ticked. Heard is the share of the slot in which the page heard a pitch at all. Under 30% the slot is reported as not heard instead of being graded.

The reference tones and the grading both use equal temperament, in which every semitone is 100 cents (Wikipedia, Cent (music)). This is a measurement of pitch, not vocal coaching, and the page makes no judgement of a voice.

The 6 scales

Each scale is built from the rule its source gives, and the octave is added on top so that the run ends where it began. The major scale, for example, is “whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole, half” steps, which from C gives C D E F G A B C.