Sing Thing

About

Sing a few bars. A band plays them back with you.

Sing Thing listens to a short melody you sing, finds chords that fit it, and turns it into a little song with a band around your voice.

How it works

1.  Choose the tempo, the beats per bar and how many bars, or keep 90 · 4/4 · 4.

2.  Tap the dot. After four clicks, sing your loop. Tap again to stop.

3.  The band plays it back with chords. Change the band, the mood or any chord, while it plays.

Before you sing

Tempo

How fast: 90 BPM is a relaxed walk, 120 is upbeat.

Beats per bar

4 for most songs, 3 for a waltz.

Bars

How long your loop is. 4 bars last about 10 s at 90 BPM.

In the playroom

The wheel

One slice per bar, coloured by its chord. Tap a slice to change its chord.

Parts

Verse, chorus… Tap one to play it next, hold it to switch now.

Band and mood

Swipe the band name, or the mood under the wheel, to try another.

Settings

The sliders icon, bottom right: band, mood, lead, voice, instruments, display.

Tips

Sing close to the phone in a quiet room. With headphones the band does not leak into your take.

Sounds

The instruments are recordings their makers share freely. Thank you to Alexander Holm for the Salamander Grand Piano (CC BY 3.0), the Musyng Kite soundfont (CC BY-SA 3.0), the Philharmonia Orchestra, Versilian Studios (VSCO 2 and the Versilian Community Sample Library), Karoryfer Samples (Emily guitar), jRhodes3d, the Hydrogen drum kits and Tone.js.

Bar 1

Tap a chord to put it in this bar. The chords after it follow when that fits better; the ones before stay.
Band

Band

Folk-pop

Mood

Swipe to hear another mood: its chords and its lead change at once.

Lead

An instrument that plays along with your melody. It comes with the mood. Pick another and it stays yours, even when you change mood.

Sound

Voice

How your recorded voice sounds in the loop.

Instruments

The lights pulse with each part, so you can tell who plays what. Tap a part to change its instrument.

Display
Lab

Lab

Experimental settings. They may change or disappear. Until the chord page and the Lab are redesigned, a few playroom controls wait here too.

Mode

Key: none yet

The key the band plays in. Auto follows what you sang; the others are the church modes that fit your notes.

Recording

A soft pip on every beat while you sing, to keep you on time. The app learns it during the count-in and takes it out of your take. Before recording, the click can tick the tempo too.

Synth follows your voice

On speakers the app ignores its own synth. Bluetooth headphones add over 100 ms.

Latency

Use the speaker, not headphones, and keep quiet while it clicks.

Now singing: – ·

Device

How this phone or computer keeps up, to find out why the sound stutters or the page starts over. The figures update every second while the Lab is open.

Now

Instruments in memory

This device

Browsers keep most hardware private: Safari tells no memory size, battery or temperature. For those on an iPhone, connect it to a Mac and open Safari › Develop › your iPhone › Timelines.