Why Pitch Diagram

If you are improving your aerobic fitness, you might use a smartwatch. If you are into golf, you can go to those indoor simulators that carefully analyze the trajectory of your ball. If you are learning to drive, the speedometer tells you exactly how fast you are going before your instincts can.

All of these tools have one thing in common: they don't take away the hard work and joy of learning. They get you to your goals faster, because they help you understand where you are, how far off you are from the mark, and where you need to improve.

Musicians deserve the same thing.

The Feedback Gap

Music has a unique problem that most other skills don't. When a golfer swings, they see where the ball lands. When a runner checks their pace, the number is right there on their wrist. But when you sing or play an instrument, you can't fully hear yourself the way others hear you.

Your voice resonates inside your skull differently from how it reaches the room. Your brain compensates in real time, smoothing over small errors you might not notice. You think you hit the note, but did you really?

Pitch Diagram bridges that gap. It gives you an objective, visual reference for what you actually sound like, note by note, in real time. No guessing.

Two Senses Are Better Than One

Music is traditionally an auditory art. You listen, you adjust, you listen again. But many musicians are visual learners, and even those who aren't can benefit from adding a second sense to the feedback loop.

When you can see your pitch alongside hearing it, something clicks. You notice patterns you couldn't hear: a consistent tendency to go flat on certain intervals, a vibrato that's wider than you thought, a pitch drift you didn't know was there.

You are not replacing your ear, you are giving it a partner.

A Mirror, Not a Teacher

There are apps that tell you what to play and grade you on it. That is not what Pitch Diagram is.

Pitch Diagram doesn't tell you what to play. It shows you what you are playing. It is a mirror for your sound. It works for your music, your practice, your goals, not a preset lesson plan someone else designed.

That's a fundamentally different philosophy. A gamified app chooses the path for you. A mirror lets you trace your own journey. Musicians need a tool that works under many circumstances, whether you are practicing scales, learning a song by ear, analyzing a chord progression, or just checking if your guitar is in tune.

How I Use It

I am not a professional musician. I have not been classically trained. I never took lessons as a child. My passion sprang up on its own, first through obsessively listening, and later through creating my own music. I produce electronic music as Signal Flux, and I taught myself singing over the course of years.

Here is how I actually use Pitch Diagram:

• Turning melodies in my head into notes. I am not good enough to recognize melodic intervals on the spot, so I sing the melody, see what it is in the Pitch Diagram, and then play it back on my instrument.

• Reverse engineering melodies. Same idea, but for melodies I didn't make up, songs I have heard and want to understand or learn.

• Understanding harmony. When I hear a chord progression I love and want to know why, I use Pitch Spectrogram to detect the less obvious notes in the harmony, the ones that give it its character.

• Tuning my guitars. This one is straightforward, I use the Tuner.

• Checking my intonation. To see how far off each note is from center pitch, I use the Intonation Tracker.

• Practicing singing. This is the big one. I practiced singing for years and use the Pitch Diagram to see whether I am hitting the melody correctly. It is the single most valuable use case for me, and the reason Pitch Diagram exists.

Feedback for Everyone

Not everyone has access to a vocal coach who can tell you "you are 20 cents flat on that F#." Not everyone can afford weekly lessons or has a teacher nearby who specializes in their instrument.

Pitch Diagram gives everyone access to that level of real-time feedback, whether you are in a studio, a practice room, or just your bedroom. All you need is a microphone.

Pitch Diagram is not an opinionated tutorial app. It is not a practice app. It is a third eye, an additional musical sense that helps you become a better musician faster.

Ideally, one that you won't even need in the long run.