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It's worth noting that our user classes do not explicitly address the needs of a cappella singers, because they are more interested in learning how to produce notes that are written, and those of people with perfect pitch, who don't have such needs.
Needs & Goals
From the interviews described above, we extracted the following goals.
- Train your ear: Many users have difficulty transitioning from "read and play" to "listen and play". As such, a tool which could help them train their ear in order to be able help people learn or train their ability to distinguish musical notes
- provide a way to start learning / playing music without the need of a musical instrument or trainer
- make the platform interactive and social (yet personal) enough so that people don't drop-out
- is much desired.
- Low cost music education: Many users, especially beginners, have mentioned that they have delayed learning piano due to the costs associated with buying a piano or having a tutor. As such, it would help then if we could provide music education (especially beginner level) at low cost.
- Address the 'feeling lonely' problem: Learning things alone sitting in a room is boring, and much more in the case of music which is such an aesthetic and creative subject. Users have mentioned time and again how having other people around is a much better experience.
- (optional) Precise pitch training: Users have also expressed interest in learning not only the art of distinguishing notes being played on an instrument, but rather also having a tool which would give them feedback on the pitch at which they themselves are singing. However, since real-time pitch analysis is an open problem with its own conference dedicated to it, we have marked this goal as optional. (optional) allow people to compare / detect speech from audio files of music / singing