Pitch Matching Game

About Pitch Match

Pitch Match plays a pure tone and asks you to reproduce its pitch. A slider controls a second tone: as you drag it, you hear the tone change live. You can replay the reference tone as often as you like and also listen to your own tone with the button next to it. When you are sure that the two sound the same, press Lock in.

The game is scored in cents, the unit used in music for tiny differences in pitch: 100 cents is one semitone, the step between two neighbouring piano keys. On the first level you may be up to 3.5 semitones off and still earn some points. On the last level the limit is one semitone, and a good ear gets close to the real pitch.

How to play

1. Turn on sound and listen to the reference tone. It plays automatically after the round begins and you can replay it with Hear again.
2. Drag the slider. A tone follows your finger, and it rises when you slide right and falls when you slide left.
3. Compare your tone with the reference. When the two merge into one, with no wobble between them, you are close.
4. Press Lock in. The result shows your error in cents and the real frequency.

You hear a tone. Slide your own tone until it sounds the same, then lock in. You may replay the reference tone as often as you like. Sound is needed.

How scoring works

The score depends on how many cents your tone is from the reference. A perfect match scores 100 and the score falls in a straight line to 0 at 350 cents on level 1 and 100 cents on level 10. For example, being 25 cents off earns about 75 points on level 10 and 93 points on level 1.

The reference pitch is drawn at random between 260 and 720 hertz, roughly from middle C to the F on a piano, about 260 to 720 Hz, and the slider covers 180 to 1000 hertz. The slider starts at a random place a few semitones away. You have 28 seconds on level 1 and 22 seconds on level 10. The game needs sound; it also works if sound effects are muted, because the tones are the game.

What it trains

The game trains pitch perception and matching, the base of singing in tune, tuning an instrument and hearing whether two notes are the same. Pitch matching is something that most people can do much better than they believe, and practice with direct feedback makes a noticeable difference.

It also trains careful listening. Many players find that they hear more detail in a tone after a few rounds, such as the slow wobble that appears when two nearly equal pitches are played together.

Tips for a higher score

• Listen for beating: when two tones are very close but not identical, you hear a slow wobble in the loudness. The closer you get, the slower the wobble, and at a perfect match it vanishes.
• Hum or sing the reference tone before you move the slider. Your voice gives you a feeling of where the pitch is.
• Move the slider slowly near the end and use the plus and minus buttons for small steps.
• Take short breaks. Your ears tire after a few minutes of listening to pure tones.
• Use headphones if you can. They remove room noise and make small differences easier to hear.

The idea behind it

The smallest difference in pitch that a listener can tell apart, called the just-noticeable difference, is about a few cents for well-trained listeners at mid frequencies and often 10 to 30 cents for untrained ones, depending on the task and the volume. A cent is one hundredth of a semitone, and a semitone is a frequency ratio of about 1.059 in the equal-tempered scale used on modern pianos.

When two pure tones with a small frequency difference are played together, the sound waves interfere and produce beats at a rate equal to the difference in frequency. Piano tuners use this effect to tune strings. Studies with singers show that most people with no musical training can match a given pitch to within a semitone and that feedback and practice improve this.

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Free, no account. Your best scores are saved on your device.