Vocal Range Map — Intonation Heatmap and Session Score

How to use the Vocal Range Map

The strip is one MIDI window wide: each vertical band is a chromatic step between your chosen Low and High. Teal and purple markers show low/high extremes for this session; greens and opacity encode intonation quality and how much time you spent near each pitch. Everything runs locally in the browser from your microphone or a recorded take.

Before the strip looks useful

• Turn on the microphone from the Controller strip and allow access. If cells barely fill in, raise Sensitivity in the Range Map settings row, sing a bit louder or closer to the mic, or narrow the Low–High window so energy concentrates in fewer columns.
• Only frames that pass the detector and amplitude gate contribute; long silence, whispering, or noisy room tone may leave gaps — that is expected.
• If the canvas looks clipped on a small window, widen the browser or collapse side UI; the detail layout gives the strip the main column width.

Range Map settings row (above the strip)

• Low / High — Sets the MIDI span for the heatmap. Values are stored separately from the Pitch Analyzer page so you can frame passaggio work here without changing your pitch-graph defaults.
• Accuracy — When on, each filled column uses a color computed from the average 0–100 intonation score of all gated frames assigned to that semitone (nearest pitch to the target row). High averages read as green-dominant; low averages move toward red/amber in the same way the live readout rewards landing near the tempered grid.
• Coverage — When on, the same cells get an alpha (opacity) from relative use: your most-used chromatic step in the window is nearly opaque; quieter steps fade toward a light veil. That answers “which steps of the scale did I actually sing on?” without conflating it with volume.
• Accuracy on, Coverage off — Hue still shows intonation quality, but opacity is held high so differences in “how long you stayed” are de-emphasized.
• Coverage on, Accuracy off — Columns tint with a neutral cool gray; only opacity carries information so you read a pure “where did I dwell on the keyboard?” map.
• Both off — The colored overlay is hidden; you still see the column shading and teal/purple range markers when data exists.
• Sensitivity — Same style slider as other pitch tools (0.001–0.10) but persisted only for this Range Map panel; it does not sync to Pitch Analyzer sensitivity.
• Panel choices save automatically in local storage and reload on your next visit to this page.

How Accuracy and Coverage look on the canvas

• Under the hood, every gated frame votes for the nearest MIDI semitone inside Low–High; counts and score sums accumulate per column for the session (until you start a new recording).
• Accuracy drives RGB: the renderer runs your column average through a fixed palette so 50–100 trends green, below 50 warms through yellow toward red — always averaged per step, not a single live flash.
• Coverage scales alpha between about 0.22 and 0.94 from that column’s count divided by the largest count in the window — a compact picture of where you placed the voice most often across the chromatic grid.
• When both are enabled, hue and transparency multiply: you can spot a rarely touched but very in-tune step (bright but faint) versus a busy but rough step (darker green or splotchy).

Stats row: SCORE, LIVE, RANGE, VOICE

• SCORE — Session-wide average intonation (0–100) over frames that contributed to the map for this run.
• LIVE — Instant readout while you sing; during playback it follows the playhead so you can hear a moment and see the score that belonged to that instant without altering the heatmap.
• RANGE — Heard note span derived from detected hits with sparse noise filtered out; use it as a practice snapshot, not a clinical range test.
• VOICE — Rough hint from that span against typical overlaps in voice-pedagogy literature; use it for curiosity or lesson planning, not diagnosis.

Recording vs playback

• While recording, new hits keep updating the heatmap, markers, and SCORE as long as audio meets the gate.
• Stopping recording freezes the accumulated map for inspection; starting a new recording clears the visualization for the next pass (same idea as freezing the pitch graph between takes).
• During playback, scrub or play continuously: LIVE (and playback-time scoring) track the transport while the heatmap stays as the summary of what you already sang into the session.

Reading the strip

• With Accuracy on, favor green-dominant columns for notes you tended to sing in tune; drift toward amber/red flags steps where your average sat wide of the tempered target.
• With Coverage on, favor tall, solid-looking columns for steps that carried most of your musical time; faint ghosts are steps you only brushed.
• Markers at the strip ends highlight the lowest and highest notes touched in this session within the displayed window.

Pairing with other MusicalBoard tools

• Use the Controller for gain, monitoring, export, and precise scrubbing — identical workflow to the Pitch Analyzer page.
• Switch to Pitch Analyzer when you need a time-scrolling trace, vibrato width, highlight overlays, or browser fullscreen on the graph.
• Use Scale Generator or Virtual Piano when you want reference pitches while you fill the map across keys.

Good use cases

• Warmups and range checks: see which steps you actually hit in a drill versus which you avoid.
• Repertoire phrases: compare average intonation on difficult vowels or bridge notes after deliberate repetitions.
• Lesson prep: export audio from the Controller, then send both a clip and a screenshot mental model from the strip to a coach.

Vocal practice ideas

• Sing a five-note pattern slowly up and down; aim for even opacity across target steps and even green depth on sustained tones.
• Record a song section twice with different vowels; compare which lyric placements darken the heatmap on problem pitches.
• Narrow Low–High around your passaggio and repeat long tones; watch LIVE settle while SCORE climbs as you stabilize.
• Playback a take while watching LIVE jump at phrase corners — mark where support or consonants throw you sharp or flat, then re-record.

References (voice-type overlap)

Typical-range hints use overlap with broad pedagogical spans; see Richard Miller, The Structure of Singing, and Johan Sundberg, The Science of the Singing Voice, among others — not a substitute for a teacher or clinician.