Five ways you can benefit from Vocal Monitor!

Today let’s talk about one of the recent additions in our Riyaz app, the Vocal Monitor. This feature is requested by many Riyazers like you. So how does it help you improve singing?  I’ll tell you a few usage scenarios and leave the rest to your creativity and imagination!

Scenario 1: Sing and visualise what you prefer

As you know, there are many exercises in Riyaz which you should practice everyday to sing better. But, a lot of you asked us to create an interface which lets you sing whatever you want to, apart from the already existing exercises. For example, if you want to sing just one svara for a long time without having to worry about the time, you can do that now! Go to Vocal Monitor in Riyaz application and start singing! It will show what you sing without any time restrictions.

Scenario 2: Practice the tough ones

You can also sing complex melodies and see how they look, and whether you are consistent when you sing them again and again. Practice those jumps you always had a doubt whether you are doing right. With vocal monitor checking whether you touched your highest and lowest pitches becomes the easiest task. Determine your exact pitch range and keep repeating it now that you can see when it hits and misses. Let’s see how it looks in the Riyaz’s vocal monitor:

Scenario 3: See what your friend sings

We all have that friend who sings so well that we are jealous! Sometimes, we don’t exactly get the notes/svaras she/he is singing in a song. With the Vocal Monitor, you can now know what notes/svaras your friend is singing! Just set the scale/sruti to what your friend is singing in before they sing. Then you can see the exact notes/svaras your friend is singing. Knowing the notes/svaras in a song helps you to sing it more accurately.

Scenario 4: Use with instruments!

Vocal Monitor is a also a great place to checkout how you play an instrument! With no time constraints on each note you play, it is the best place to practice your instrument. From checking if you have hit the correct notes, to visualizing more complex melodies, vocal monitor comes in handy. Especially for those of you who practice fretless instruments like violin and sarangi, I would highly recommend gaining the maximum benefit out of vocal monitor.  Unlike guitars where each fret represents one semitone, playing fretless instruments is challenging as besides getting the right sound, one also needs to get a feel for the semitonal positions. Vocal monitor helps you to figure all this out with great ease!

Scenario 5: Hold notes for as long as you want!

With Vocal monitor to the rescue, you can now analyse yourself accurately on those tiring exercises where you hold a note steady for a long time. Hold on to your breath and practice the long swaras, and figure out easily where you waver, how long you are able to hold, your strongest point and breaking point. Vocal Monitor provides the best chance to analyse all of this, visually.

Try them all out and let us know how it worked out for you!

Also published on Medium.