Clarion is a simple tool for practicing the recognition of musical intervals. I wrote this application because I am not a music expert. I wrote it to practice my intervals! Hopefully this means it will be useful for others who wish to do the same. There are other applications out there for the Macintosh which allow interval practice, but in my view they are lacking because they fail to support the QuickTime music architecture. The QuickTime music architecture is a treasure chest of synthesized instrument sounds available on all Macintosh computers with a late enough version of QuickTime. I find it easier to practice intervals with familiar sounding noises than with the dull buzzing of a sine wave.
System Requirements
Clarion has only been tested on Power Macintoshes running Mac OS 8.1 or later, and therefore I only allow it to run on these machines.
I suspect that the program will work correctly on Power Macs running older Mac OS versions if you drop in an Appearance Manager extension and make sure a recent version of QuickTime is installed, but I can’t make any guarantees and I may have made some assumptions based on the requirement that 8.1 be installed. If you wish to try using the product on an earlier version of Mac OS, I have allowed a backdoor: remove the single resource of type ‘safe’ from the resource fork of Clarion, and it will allow itself to run despite its better judgement. You are on your own as far as this goes, as it may cause your entire computer to erupt into flames and incinerate you along with it.
Changes in version 1.1.1
Clarion 1.1.1 is a minor update to version 1.1 which addresses some incompatabilities between QuickTime 2.5 and Clarion. The method I was using to test for the availability of instruments was flawed. I now use an improved method and instead of forcing you to quit if there are no instruments available, I simply put up a warning alert and allow the launch to continue.
Changes in version 1.1
Clarion 1.1 is an update to an earlier release 1.0.2. This version of Clarion contains some substantial changes from that version, including the following:
-> Added support for randomizing the tonic tone in the interval
-> Added support for randomizing the consonance and direction of the interval
-> Added graphical feedback for wrong guesses - a sad face is drawn over the buttons that have been wrongly guessed.
-> Implemented proper support of required Apple Events to prevent poor behaviour when asked to quit via Apple Event.
-> Fixed a bug where an extremely long scale name could cause a crash
-> Polished up the preferences and about box dialogs
-> Minimized the size of the quiz window to eliminate unused space
-> Use a proper control hierarchy in the main dialog, so controls are enabled and disabled with layer switches
-> about box is movable modal so switching to URL helper can happen without dismissing about box
-> several other little quirky bugs and nuisances
Known Problems & Missing Features
The following are bugs and/or features which have been requested but not implemented in this release. I intend to address these in a future release of Clarion. If you have other suggestions that are not already listed here, please don't hesitate to contact me.
a. No sound even though the volume is on. This occurs from time to time and seems to be caused by a low memory situation on the system. However, the error happens deep within QuickTime, and QuickTime doesn’t even return an error when it happens. The best workaround I can offer is to quit Clarion, try to free up some memory, and launch Clarion again.
b. The "descending" intervals are just that: a normal ascending interval played in reverse. These are not to be mistaken for inverted intervals. I am aware of the desire for inverted intervals (intervals which are rooted at the high end of the scale and descend to one of the member notes for the given scale).
c. An option for having the quiz mode intelligently quiz you on the intervals you have the most trouble with.
d. A piano-style interface for selecting the interval to play/guess. Also suggested is the option of choosing from a selection of input styles (piano, guitar fretboard, buttons).
Contact Information
Updates to this program, if ever there are any, can be found at the Red Sweater Software homepage:
You are free to report bugs, enhancement requests, praise, or condemnation to the following email address:
mailto://sweater@sirius.com?Subject=Clarion
Please note, that while I will read your mail, I am not promising to address any bugs or enhancement requests that may arise.
Gifts, correspondence, copies of shareware collections, etc., can be mailed to the following snail-mail address:
Red Sweater Software
PO Box 31324
San Francisco, CA 94131
Credits
Clarion was created with the excellent Apple software development environment MPW, programming by Daniel Jalkut.
URL launching from the about box is performed with the assistance of Internet Config, written mainly by Quinn "The Eskimo" and Peter N Lewis. For more information try http://coos.dartmouth.edu/~emk/ic/index.html.
Thanks to Kelly Dean and Adam Korman for correcting some music notation errors in my interval buttons, and for scrutinizing the correctness of the built in scales.
You are granted a single user, unlimited use license, provided you are not making money off of the program. For site licenses or bundling agreements, contact sweater@sirius.com. Permission is granted for distribution on shareware/freeware collections, as long as the price charged for the collection does not exceed a reasonable cost for production and distribution. I would also appreciate it if you sent me a copy of the collection on which it is published. (Address listed above)
Warranty
There is no warranty specified or implied. You use this software at your own risk.
Wait, you're giving me this cool software for free?
That's right, but appease your guilt by granting me a free license to one of your shareware products. If you don't have any such product, then send me a postcard.
