black & white demo

Our [black and white demo], which presently runs in the Mozilla FireFox web-browser even on phones, shows e.g. between 4 & 8 seconds of sound on the screen at a time as it scrolls (depending on your device speed) once you give it the OK to access your microphone. In this version of the app, sounds leave a wake as they move leftward (like water skiers) across the screen.

The [Pause] button, followed e.g. by SnippingTool→File or by PrtScr→Clipboard→Paint, allows you to archive a sound capture for storage, as well as for sharing on social media or attachment to e-mails. The [Capture] button allows for easier sharing via RightClick→SaveImageAs or Press→Share although it presently drops the image "bookends" and requires backout/restart to get the app running again.

The frequency information in the vertical direction is quite precise as shown in the analysis of two screen captures from a singing wineglass using ImageJ, a free scientific image analysis program available from Wayne Rasband at the NIH. 

How does the pitch of a singing wineglass change when you remove liquid?

A more visceral use for this may be to use your visual pattern-recognition to refine your skills at imitating a whole variety of sounds, whether they be made by celebrities, animals, equipment, or mother nature herself. 

For example, how good are you at imitating birds?

For those who play musical instruments, it might be fun to see if you can tell them apart by eye as well as by ear. Did you know, for example, that violin notes may have a hundred harmonics or that single and double reed instruments reinforce first and second harmonics quite differently?

Do scales played on real instruments differ in the way these do here?

Whistling, on the other hand, may involve no harmonics at all. 

If you can whistle two notes at once, you might be able to write your name in sound!

What kinds of sound snippets might you be able to capture that would be fun to look at, to think about, to discuss and/or to analyze quantitatively?