--- title: A Mobile Voice Choir date: 2026-10-26T05:06:29+01:00 categories: - visualization description: I tested a mobile voice choir where about 20 Straive participants hummed along to a tone on their phones. After 45 seconds, they had barely converged, prompting a question about whether people differ sharply in their ability to match pitch. tags: [experiments, convergence, data-visualization, mobile-phones] cover: image: https://files.s-anand.net/images/2026-10-26-a-mobile-voice-choir.avif hiddenInSingle: true --- I've been playing around with mobile sensors recently and one such experiment is the [voice choir](https://sanand0.github.io/mobile-games/voice-choir/). Here's how it works. 1. I'm the presenter. I visit [voice choir](https://sanand0.github.io/mobile-games/voice-choir/), create a room, and show the QR code. 2. People see the QR code (via screen-sharing or projector) and open on their mobile phones to join my room. 3. I press "Start". They hear a tone and they should hum at the same pitch. 4. They can see if their pitch is above or below and adjust. I get a data stream of their pitch. 5. Over time, we see if we can hum at the same pitch, or how close we converge. 6. I record this as a visualization. We played this in Straive across about 20 people who joined the room. Here's the video:

What surprised me most was how little convergence there was even after 45 seconds. People were still humming all over the place. In the early days of Gramener, I learned that there are some people who find it hard to pick up a "design" sense. Even after repeated guidance, I found them violating rules like keeping edges aligned. Research also suggests that some people find it hard to pick up mathematics - and that the population may be bi-modal (i.e. some people get it, some just don't.) Maybe this true for music as well? I think it's cool that we can test this: get 100 students into this room, have them hum a tone, and see if the alignment / convergence is bimodal!