Today we’re excited to launch SingTrue™, the new iPhone app which teaches you to sing in tune reliably and confidently – even if you think you’re “tone deaf” or unmusical. After months of development we’re very excited to finally share it with you.
You can download SingTrue from the iTunes App Store now!
Since we announced SingTrue ten days ago, the app’s page on PreApps has been “Liked” over 1000 times and upvoted into the Top Apps category, we’ve received countless excited emails, seen ongoing shares on Twitter and Facebook, and had dozens of choir directors and music teachers take us up on our offer to give free copies of the app to all music educators. It seems like you’re all as excited as we are about this new way to learn to sing!
If you missed our previous announcement, you might be wondering: “What is SingTrue? Can an app really teach you to sing?”
SingTrue is a new kind of singing app. Of course there have been some great singing apps and games before, like SingStar, Rock Band and Smule’s Sing! The problem? They all assume that you can already sing (and are happy to) and then just build an entertaining experience around that.
After seeing tens of thousands of people take our Tone Deaf Test, we knew there were a lot of people who would never try these singing games. Certainly not in front of other people! These were people who were worried that they were fundamentally incapable of singing – so why would they try an app like that?
Fortunately the test proved that 98% of them can be singers – and SingTrue is our way of helping them get started.
→ Learn more about how the SingTrue project was born
How SingTrue Teaches You To Sing
The app starts from the very basics of hearing whether notes are high or low, and encourages you to start singing your first notes. SingTrue’s approach was inspired by conversations with leading vocal instructor George Bevan, Tune It Up creator Amy Nielsen, Edara Method founders Joe Perry and Thomas Kay, Kodály instructor Cyrilla Rowsell, choir director Elizabeth Swain, and many others who kindly shared their experience and expertise to ensure that SingTrue would benefit from the latest thinking in effective vocal instruction.
We knew the app would need to demonstrate good singing too, so we sought out the very best. We’re probably not allowed to reveal who we managed to persuade to be the voices of SingTrue – but the a cappella fans among you might recognise their voices! After singing literally hundreds of do‘s, re‘s and mi‘s for us, I think they may have regretted agreeing to do it… But we hope when you hear the app in action you’ll agree their hard work was well worth it.
It was clear the app would also have to do some pretty sophisticated audio processing to be able to act as your personal singing tutor. Fortunately modern iPhones are powerful devices, and the team had previous experience developing vocal melody transcription algorithms which gave us a good headstart in developing the interactive singing exercises.
Watch SingTrue in action:
The Essential Trifecta: Voice, Mind and Ears
Through our conversations with students about ear training in the first few years of Easy Ear Training we knew that singing was a powerful way to develop musicianship, and those who used their voice typically made much faster progress than those who didn’t. As we started researching “tone deafness” and how people learn to sing in tune, it emerged that it wasn’t ever solely the ears or the voice which caused people problems, they needed to develop both.
Each was dependent on the other: to sing well you need good ears, and to have good ears you need to start singing.
This wasn’t quite the whole story though, because more often than not, the explanations given by our students weren’t just practical issues of ears and voice. They were emotional or psychological issues. I confess that at first, being a scientific sort of guy, I didn’t pay much attention. I thought that once people made a start those issues would fade away.
As we focused more on this subject over the last year, I realised this emotional side of things could not be ignored. Too many times I would start talking to someone about tone deafness or learning to sing, and they would immediately recount the terrible experience they had as a child auditioning for choir, or how they know they’re not a singer because of the comments their friends made. If I couldn’t even have a conversation without hitting these barriers I knew our new method for learning to sing had no chance!
This vague understanding that it was a combination of ears, voice and emotion became suddenly clearer when I found the writings of George Bevan about his “Choir who can’t sing” and had the chance to discuss it all with him. His words might have been a bit different, but he too had honed in on just these three factors: Voice, Mind and Ears.
That’s why every module in SingTrue is divided into those three aspects, providing exercises for each. For example, in the first module, Pitch, you can practice Ears exercises which solely test your ability to distinguish different pitches by ear, a Mind exercise which gets you past your anxiety to start singing your first note, and Voice exercises which build on that ability, refining your vocal pitch skills.
Even having consulted with all the experts we could find, we weren’t 100% sure that this would work. So we called on our team of Beta testers and spent a month working with them to refine and improve the app. We were excited (and a little relieved!) to discover that it really did seem to work:
SingTrue Launches Today
Finally, SingTrue is now live in the iTunes App Store around the world!
We’ve made the app available as a free download so that as many people as possible can take the first steps towards becoming a confident, capable singer. Then the more advanced exercises are available as affordable in-app purchases.
We’re launching with a very special offer:
For 3 days only
all in-app purchases are FREE!
That means if you are interested in SingTrue you should act fast:
I couldn’t be more proud and excited to share SingTrue with the world. At Easy Ear Training we believe this app has the potential to help a huge number of people take their first steps into the world of musicianship and singing, as well as helping even experienced musicians discover and develop their voice.
If you’ve ever been unsure of your own voice I hope you will give it a try and discover what you’re truly capable of!
