Pitch trail
The pitch trail draws your note as you sing or play it. The dot at the top shows where your note is now; under it, the last seconds fall down as a line, so you can see how steady a long note is, how far a bend goes, and how wide your vibrato is.
Draw your note
- Open Practice and tap Pitch trail. Sing or play a note and hold it: the row of note names at the top names it, and the trail runs under it.
- The newest moment is the dot at the top, and the line falls away under it. Left is flat (♭), right is sharp (♯), and the edges are half a semitone off. The soft band down the middle is in tune: 5 cents either way, or 2 with Settings → Precise tuning on. The middle is drawn wider than the edges, so the last few cents are easy to see.
The dot and the word under the trail turn from amber to green as the note comes close, and green when it is in tune; the parts of the line that were in tune stay green. Between notes, and when the note changes, the line breaks.
What to try
- A long note. Hold it and keep the line in the band. Good practice for singers and for bowed strings, where your finger, not a fret, sets the pitch.
- A bend. Bend a note slowly and watch the dot move right. The trail shows half a semitone either way, so on a longer bend the line reaches the right edge and goes on around the next note. A good bend ends steady in its target note's band. Any note suits this best.
- Vibrato. The line becomes a wave: its width is how wide your vibrato is, the waves' spacing how fast. An even wave is an even vibrato.
- A plucked string. Pluck hard and the line starts a little sharp, then settles: a string sounds sharp for a moment when it is struck hard. Tune to where it settles.
Good to know
- The pitch trail listens for any note, on every instrument and for your voice: there is nothing to pick.
- It was the tuner's meter in early versions of Twangle 2.0. The tuner now shows a needle; Settings → Meter also offers the Light arc and the Strobe.
- With TalkBack on, Twangle adds how the line runs to the reading: E 2, 10 cents sharp, wavering, or bending up.
For the curious: what the line is made of
It is the tuner's own reading, about 47 a second, drawn as it comes in, so it is exactly as precise as the tuner. Left and right are cents from the nearest note, and the line falls 80 dp a second, so a phone upright shows a few seconds. The words TalkBack says come from the last second and a half: a straight line through the readings that rises or falls at least 15 cents is a bend; readings that stay within about 3½ cents of each other are steady; anything else wavers.