Purpose of the shadow player
It shadows and follows your music, but it plays the exact note of the selected musical scale, the same way a harmonium player shadows and supports a vocalist. This is also a wonderful tool to practice and to improve your tonation:
- Play a note, an instant later, the shadow players plays it and you can hear properly the right pitch to match.
- Play repetitively notes and try to touch the perfect pitch as fast as possible, in a slow manner.
During this exercise, you can recognize by ear the frequencies and their interferences up to the perfect match (surel).
A microphone plus a headphone are required for a proper use of the shadow player. You may read the page 👆 In-ear input monitor,
at the paragraph about Audio input monitoring example which details an equipment configuration which works nicely:
You may also use a microphone plus a speaker. It’s important to separate physically by some distance the audio input (microphone) from the audio output (speaker/headphone).
Master the shadow player
First of all, the shadow player needs you to select an appropriate rāga and flavour so it know exactly which swaras to play.
The shadow player is controlled by simple parameters:
- Instrument note range: from lowest note to highest note to play
- Microphone input volume
- Output octave offset
- The play mode
1 - Instrument Note range
First, you need to select the musical range of your voice or musical instrument, from lower to higher note, not more. It the interval is too broad, the shadow player will need more calculations, and thus battery, and more time to recognize the notes to play.
Example for bansuri
You may select lowest:
ml
and highest:
sU
Example for sitar
You may select lowest:
sL
and highest:
sU
Even if the whole range is not covered, most of it will be. Also, the shadow harmonium may sound weird if you go too low or too high in pitch.
2 - Microphone input volume
Adjust the minimum volume of the sound to be recognize as a note to play. If you select a very low minimum, any sound caught by the microphone will be played as an unwanted note. (However, it will be a note of the selected räga or scale).
A value between -30 Db and -10 Db should be fine, depending on the microphone attached to the device.
3 - Output octave offset
It adjusts the octave of the recognized note by shifting it with the octave offset. For example, if you select:
- offset 1 then
s
will be played
su
- offset zero then
s
will be played
s
- offset -1 then
s
will be played
sl
4 - Play mode
For all details about the manual and automatic play modes, see: 👆 The Shadow player play modes
This page will also explain how to use a page turner, MIDI keyboard or footboard for the manual play mode.
5 - Stop playing mode
The following page explains the two ways the Shadow player can stop playing a note: 👆 The Shadow player stop modes
Configuration of the shadow player harmonium
See 👆 The Harmonium.
Few words about Tonation
Tonation refers to the act or process of adjusting or regulating the tonal qualities of something, such as the voice, a musical instrument or a sound system.
It involves ensuring that the desired pitch, volume, balance, and overall quality of sound are achieved and maintained. Tonation can also refer to the process of tuning or fine-tuning an instrument or voice to produce specific musical tones or intervals.
Work in progress
The Shadow player is a work in progress… Enjoy it, and send us your ideas to make it better suit your music practice and maybe concerts.