Our Technology

While recording, the student only sees the progress bar which aligns to where they are within the piece or exercise. The primary function is to confirm that the computer is listening. Feedback is displayed only after the system determines that the student has finished playing. This feedback model is called the Knowledge of Results (evaluative feedback from an external source) in research. It also emulates the classical teaching practices in music education, where teachers usually let the student finish playing before giving their comments and suggestions. In MatchMySound’s case, not providing real-time feedback is a conscious and deliberate design choice to avoid problems, such as disrupting the eye movement of the learner.

One of the main design considerations was to avoid giving binary judgments of correct or incorrect, instead favoring a more continuous approach that stresses musicality. Music education is historically based around apprenticeships where students learn to imitate their teachers before developing their own style. This tool follows the same tradition by trying to match what the student is playing to what the teacher played or the author published, going beyond mere pitches and rhythms to enter the area of expressive qualities of a musical performance. As such, it just reports the musical differences between the two recordings.
Another design consideration for the system was that it worked for as many musical instruments as possible. Considering the range of musical instruments tested, we believe it will work with all pitched instruments, including the most popular polyphonic instruments such as guitar and piano.