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Re: Sounds of Music C
Posted: January 25th, 2019, 6:28 am
by dragonfruit35
Raleway wrote:Two cents (literally two things):
I feel like the average is quite possibly the WORST way to judge the pitch of an instrument. If the player starts off flat (or very flat) but is able to correct the pitch, it doesn't matter. The average is not a resistant measure of the center. Median would be better, but still, not great. Why not stick with the best? It's perfectly fine as it is and gives the player an opportunity to recover.
Building on that, I strongly believe those with perfect pitch have a strong inherent advantage over those without perfect pitch. It's my very strong opinion (and recommendation), that each note (obviously from the tuner) be played for about 3 seconds prior to the player actually playing the note. It levels the playing field better and gives those that aren't blessed with perfect pitch (like me) a more fair chance at getting a better pitch score.
TLDR:
1. Taking the average is terrible or any measure in that sense; the best is still the best
2. Play the in tune pitch before each note to mitigate the advantage of perfect pitch
It seems like maybe you’re using a wind instrument? If you wanted to counteract this, you could choose a style of instrument that doesn’t vary in pitch all that much depending on how you initiate the note (eg. percussion).
Also, I agree that average pitch is not a great method of measuring pitch, due to a whole host of aforementioned issues, but best pitch doesn’t really work either. Even if your instrument is wildly out of tune if it either doesn’t hold steady or is adjustable on the fly, it’s possible to pass through the correct pitch briefly, which seems kind of unfair compared to the instruments that can be carefully tuned to hit the correct pitch steadily (that seems like it should get a higher score than one that just so happened to hit the correct pitch, at least to me).
Re: Sounds of Music C
Posted: January 25th, 2019, 7:03 am
by markuswso17
dragonfruit35 wrote:Raleway wrote:Two cents (literally two things):
I feel like the average is quite possibly the WORST way to judge the pitch of an instrument. If the player starts off flat (or very flat) but is able to correct the pitch, it doesn't matter. The average is not a resistant measure of the center. Median would be better, but still, not great. Why not stick with the best? It's perfectly fine as it is and gives the player an opportunity to recover.
Building on that, I strongly believe those with perfect pitch have a strong inherent advantage over those without perfect pitch. It's my very strong opinion (and recommendation), that each note (obviously from the tuner) be played for about 3 seconds prior to the player actually playing the note. It levels the playing field better and gives those that aren't blessed with perfect pitch (like me) a more fair chance at getting a better pitch score.
TLDR:
1. Taking the average is terrible or any measure in that sense; the best is still the best
2. Play the in tune pitch before each note to mitigate the advantage of perfect pitch
It seems like maybe you’re using a wind instrument? If you wanted to counteract this, you could choose a style of instrument that doesn’t vary in pitch all that much depending on how you initiate the note (eg. percussion).
Also, I agree that average pitch is not a great method of measuring pitch, due to a whole host of aforementioned issues, but best pitch doesn’t really work either. Even if your instrument is wildly out of tune if it either doesn’t hold steady or is adjustable on the fly, it’s possible to pass through the correct pitch briefly, which seems kind of unfair compared to the instruments that can be carefully tuned to hit the correct pitch steadily (that seems like it should get a higher score than one that just so happened to hit the correct pitch, at least to me).
The problem with most percussion instruments is that they decay so quickly, and you don't know how good each ESs microphone will be tournament to tournament. You need a steady source of sound so it can fill the room for 5 seconds. Yes, you can play multiple attacks on the instrument, but that will mess up the average pitch, and like I said earlier, you don't know when to play the note each time with different microphones.
Re: Sounds of Music C
Posted: January 25th, 2019, 7:10 am
by smayya337
dragonfruit35 wrote:Raleway wrote:Two cents (literally two things):
I feel like the average is quite possibly the WORST way to judge the pitch of an instrument. If the player starts off flat (or very flat) but is able to correct the pitch, it doesn't matter. The average is not a resistant measure of the center. Median would be better, but still, not great. Why not stick with the best? It's perfectly fine as it is and gives the player an opportunity to recover.
Building on that, I strongly believe those with perfect pitch have a strong inherent advantage over those without perfect pitch. It's my very strong opinion (and recommendation), that each note (obviously from the tuner) be played for about 3 seconds prior to the player actually playing the note. It levels the playing field better and gives those that aren't blessed with perfect pitch (like me) a more fair chance at getting a better pitch score.
TLDR:
1. Taking the average is terrible or any measure in that sense; the best is still the best
2. Play the in tune pitch before each note to mitigate the advantage of perfect pitch
It seems like maybe you’re using a wind instrument? If you wanted to counteract this, you could choose a style of instrument that doesn’t vary in pitch all that much depending on how you initiate the note (eg. percussion).
Also, I agree that average pitch is not a great method of measuring pitch, due to a whole host of aforementioned issues, but best pitch doesn’t really work either. Even if your instrument is wildly out of tune if it either doesn’t hold steady or is adjustable on the fly, it’s possible to pass through the correct pitch briefly, which seems kind of unfair compared to the instruments that can be carefully tuned to hit the correct pitch steadily (that seems like it should get a higher score than one that just so happened to hit the correct pitch, at least to me).
Perfect pitch isn't as much of a help as it seems. Many people who have the ability of perfect pitch (myself included) can't precisely determine whether the note is in tune or not - my perfect pitch helps me know if I'm within 20ish cents, and that's about it. 20 cents is a noticeable difference to any listener, perfect pitch or not, and everything I can do is achievable by someone with relative pitch. Those who can use perfect pitch to get within 5 cents tend to be professional musicians who have put in a lot of work into honing this skill.
I also think that playing the note removes some of the difficulty of the event. My instrument is a string instrument, and if I hear the note before playing, I can easily adjust the location of my fingers to bring the instrument in tune. Part of Sounds's challenge is in getting the instrument in tune before you play, and by giving players an easy way to see if they're in tune or not, SO would be watering down the build portion. Of course, that's just my opinion.
Re: Sounds of Music C
Posted: January 26th, 2019, 8:37 pm
by terence.tan
2 questions:
1.the rules say that you can use a mobile app to tune within the 2 minute setup period, so would using an ipad be allowed?
2.if you had 8 bottles with different amounts of water as you instrument, can you have a really loud drum for the volume test that plays the same sound as one of the bottles?
Re: Sounds of Music C
Posted: January 27th, 2019, 4:51 am
by TheSquaad
terence.tan wrote:2 questions:
1.the rules say that you can use a mobile app to tune within the 2 minute setup period, so would using an ipad be allowed?
2.if you had 8 bottles with different amounts of water as you instrument, can you have a really loud drum for the volume test that plays the same sound as one of the bottles?
To answer 2, the part of your instrument you play for the volume test must have been played in the pitch test. So no, you can’t have a separate bottle just for the volume test.
Re: Sounds of Music C
Posted: January 27th, 2019, 11:22 am
by eagerlearner102
Sorry if this post isn't really related to the building aspect, but I took the Ohio test
(http://homepages.bw.edu/~phoekje/olymp ... usicT2.pdf and for #12, I am very confused. If you want to play a higher frequency, wouldn't that mean shortening the string, tube, etc.? The answer key instead says that it should be longer.
Re: Sounds of Music C
Posted: January 27th, 2019, 3:16 pm
by Birdmusic
So my partner and I have been using Sci Journal, and I agree with everyone who says average doesn’t really work for this event.
As someone earlier calculated, a single 0 moment can bring the pitch score down to 0. There’s really no way to circumvent this.
Even when placing the tuner next to our instrument, it still goes to zero sometimes. I honestly don’t know what do do anymore since invitationals is in 2 weeks and we can’t build a new instrument that fast. (Copper pipe xylophone)
Re: Sounds of Music C
Posted: January 28th, 2019, 7:17 am
by TheSquaad
Birdmusic wrote:So my partner and I have been using Sci Journal, and I agree with everyone who says average doesn’t really work for this event.
As someone earlier calculated, a single 0 moment can bring the pitch score down to 0. There’s really no way to circumvent this.
Even when placing the tuner next to our instrument, it still goes to zero sometimes. I honestly don’t know what do do anymore since invitationals is in 2 weeks and we can’t build a new instrument that fast. (Copper pipe xylophone)
In your case, your best bet is probably hitting each pitch fast and constantly enough to ensure it never reads 0.
Re: Sounds of Music C
Posted: January 28th, 2019, 8:32 pm
by hippo9
Birdmusic wrote:So my partner and I have been using Sci Journal, and I agree with everyone who says average doesn’t really work for this event.
As someone earlier calculated, a single 0 moment can bring the pitch score down to 0. There’s really no way to circumvent this.
Even when placing the tuner next to our instrument, it still goes to zero sometimes. I honestly don’t know what do do anymore since invitationals is in 2 weeks and we can’t build a new instrument that fast. (Copper pipe xylophone)
Also, you can crop data out of the science journal recording, so if you let the ES know that, they'll most likely do that for you for all of the time's it dips to 0.
Re: Sounds of Music C
Posted: January 29th, 2019, 7:08 am
by dragonfruit35
The ES at my regional on Saturday used SciJournal, but he counted down to us playing the note, then waited a second before actually starting the recording, and we just played multiple attacks on the note until five seconds had passed. I think this worked better than trying to start both at the same time, since there weren't any zeroes at the beginning, although it became more important to make sure you were attacking the note the same every time so that it didn't go out of tune.