Singscope Music Functions User Guide Addendum

1. My Song Book

When transferring a song's lead sheet file to Singscope for the first time, the app creates “My Song Book” folder under the “Contents” page and save the imported file in that folder, as shown in the screenshot.

Tap open the “My Song Book” folder to show the lead sheet file.

Tap open a file item to load the lead sheet in Singscope. All the functions for sheet music in “Scales and Arpeggios” are available for your song's lead sheet. For the information about these functions, please refer to the user guide below:

Music Functions User Guide

You can switch the music-note-name labels shown on the left- and right-hand-side of pitch graph. The labels on either side can be set separately. Simply tap and hold the music-note-name-label area on either side to invoke the popup menu.

* Among the six supported music note names shown above, the last four are Movable-Do type, where the key note is determined from the key signature in the sheet music.

3. Mixer Panel

The mixer panel contains four sections: Input, Mixer, Chord Play Mode, and Output.

The Input section shows the active microphone used by the app. If the microphone device supports manual gain adjustment, the Input Gain Slider can be used for adjusting the sensitivity of microphone. The slider may not be available for devices that utilize automatic gain control.

The Mixer section includes three channels:

Melody channel is for instrument playback according to the music notes described on the sheet music.

Chord channel is for instrument playback according to the chord symbols marked on the sheet music. We currently support simple Chord Play Mode as shown in the screenshot. The mode can be switched in real time during playback, by tapping the mode button.

Vocal channel is for playback of your singing voice recording.

The Output section shows the active playback device used by the app. For iPhone, there is a switch in this section for selecting playback output channel, either to Speaker, or to Receiver (the earpiece when you use iPhone as a handset during a phone call).

*1. When the Play function is active, the settings for all three channels are applied. When the Microphone function is active and picking up your singing voice, only the settings of two channels, Melody and Chord, are applied for the playback of instrument sound.

*2. When you are singing and recording with Microphone function without using earphones or headphones, it is recommended to use Receiver to avoid playback of instrument sound being picked up by the microphone and interfere the analysis of your singing voice. If you'd still like to use the Speaker for playback, please turn down the volume to be as small as possible.

Bluetooth headsets, including AirPods, are supported for iOS 10 and later. The connected Bluetooth headset will be used for audio playback only. Due to the limitation of audio sample rate of Bluetooth microphones, the app will still use iPhone/iPad built-in microphone to pick up your voice even if the Bluetooth headset is connected.

The Bluetooth audio delay could cause vocal and instruments channels to be out of sync. In the app, we include extra code to compensate this latency and make them in sync again. The default latency time is derived from the related information provided by the operating system. Depending on the manufactures and models, this information may not be accurate for all of Bluetooth headsets. To view and adjust the compensating latency time used in the app, tap the bluetooth button on the right hand side of the Bluetooth device name in the output section.

Different Bluetooth headset brand and model may have different latency time. If you use a Bluetooth headset and notice a signifcant sync issue, you can improve the condition by adjusting this "Latency" setting.

*3. It could be tricky to find out a good latency time setting. If you know the exact location of the active microphone on your iPhone or iPad, you can do the calibration by following steps: (1) connect the Bluethooth headset and open a sheet music; (2) put one Bluetooth headphone to be as close to the microphone hole as possible; (3) start the recording and make sure the instrument sound played on the headphone can be picked up by the microphone; (4) record for a few seconds and then stop, rewind to the beginning of the recording; (5) check the start time of the first recorded sound, by dragging the window on the waveform to the location where audio singal starts. The exact time is shown on the status bar below the graph. The ideal start time should be between 0.07 to 0.09 second, which is tipical latency time when using built-in or corded microphone and speaker/headphones. Adjust the "Latency" in the "Bluetooth Device" setting such that, after compensating, the first recorded sound start time is around 0.08 second.