Request for Chorusing functionality

Clozemaster
#1

Chorusing is a well known and respected way to work on accent, intonation and flow of a language. Most common way to do it seems to be to put a clip into Audacity and copy and paste it 50 or 60 times, for about a minute or two of play time.

I have been trying to use Clozemaster for the same, but the size of the play button and the need to repeatedly click the button breaks the flow and rhythm of the process. It simply isn’t fit for purpose, but could be with a small change.

I would like to request the following setting option:

  1. User gets choice to turn on chorusing function in settings.
  2. If on, the play button starts a process of repeating the phrase until stop is pressed or x number of times is repeated.

This small change from single play to repeated play will add this very powerful tool for accent practice to Clozemaster with very little impact on UI or backend functionality.

Please consider @mike.

Even better: allow the user a choice of repeat multiples 3,5,10,25,50 for example.

Reference: I am currently taking the Outlier Linguistics Mandarin Chinese accent class and it basically is focused only on the power of Chorusing to improve accent. I’m convinced on the effectiveness of the process and believe this type of functionality would significantly improve Clozemaster and focus on accent training.

5 Likes
Llámame cuando sea terminado.
#2

This should be doable, cool idea, thanks for suggesting.

I think this aligns with what you’ve described, but to be sure

  1. Turn on Chorusing (also referred to as “shadowing”, is that right?) in the Game Settings.
  2. Answer sentence.
  3. Sentence audio repeats until you go to the next sentence or click the sentence audio button to turn it off. There are no pauses, the sentence audio just repeats/loops.

Does that sound right? A rep counter should also be doable, might save save a having a setting for repeat multiples for a future iteration.

Thanks again!

How do you feel about chorusing vs a feature to record your own voice and then be able to play it back to compare to the sentence audio?

2 Likes
#3

As I understand it Chorusing is saying the words directly on top of the recording (as heard in the speakers earphones) with the goal to sync the tone curve and inflection with the speaker. Shadowing is similar but following with a delay so it is getting used to speaking the words but not specifically matching the tone and inflection curves. I think Chorusing is specifically for accent, pronunciation, rhythm work as opposed to Shadowing’s focus on familiarity with the phrase and words.

In Clozemaster’s case, because we have the text in front of us as a crutch, Chorusing seems do-able.

I think I would prefer to set a certain number of repeats in advance so I will have fore knowledge of the number of times to repeat and have made a mental commitment for the process. So, I would prefer “set it for x times (3,5,10,15,20) spinner” rather than to have to press stop.

I don’t think a counter will be required if the user has already made a pre-committement to a chosen reps, but perhaps is a nice to have, though the UX will be more complicated. (I would prefer to do quick and easy change in settings to the behavior of the play button, and see if the function is used before changing main screen UI at all)

As you mention, pressing next should immediately kill it and move on to the next sentence.

There will need to be a small break between plays, which will depend on if the speech files have any included buffer or are exactly trimmed. Something like 1/2-1 second I think, but I’m guessing and this will need experimentation, but I am assuming that is can be a single global setting and not something complicated or variable.

With the current course I’m doing, we are recording a track of ourselves on every play and then going back to listen to it. It is valuable and instructive but comes with a bunch of complications. The sound curves for the user will not be matched in time to the voice file due to tech (Bluetooth for example), and human response time. Matching those curves is tricky and an art. The level of complexity to record, align, match the audio level etc to do that well vs. just simply repeat the play 5 times is in completely different realms.

Using Audacity, I spend a bunch of time aligning the recordings on the timeline, adjusting the soundtrack volumes so I can clearly hear myself, put the speaker at about the same volume - and all of that is specific to the devices used, speaker’s natural volume, volume of the sound file, etc etc dependant. I think that is far beyond the scope - and Pareto curve of value - for Clozemaster.

There is a big quick win here, and recording would be nice, but too many downsides for usability, compactness, programming etc.

1 Like
#4

An alternative implementation could be that : holding down play button for > 1 second causes the play button to be replaced with a stop button, and the sentence repeats until either stop or next is pressed .

That would make even more sense as it requires no setting page change or awareness, doesn’t force the user to Chorus all sentences, but only ones where they want to work on pronunciation / accent, and after you see or stumble on it once, is likely intuitive.

More elegant?

On ipad the play button is a bit small but probably still workable for this change.

#5

One datapoint for market demand / market-fit is a search on “shadowing” in the AppStore. It has clearly taken off in Japan and there are a large number of apps available for it. However after trying a good deal of them, I didn’t find any that worked well, had a broad set of languages, and had a broad set of content.

Clozemaster is uniquely fit for purpose on this and seemingly would require very little in terms of changes to make it best in class - presuming the last post above as implementation method which is least complex, and most intuitive.

I’m really hoping this function gets prioritized.

3 Likes
#6

First draft, curious to hear what you think!

Screenshot 2024-06-05 at 11.39.04 AM
Screenshot 2024-06-05 at 11.39.04 AM1102×768 35.3 KB

#7

Looks great, I can’t wait to try it

#8

It seems there’s a variable limit to the number of loops, with a maximum of about five, possibly dependent on the length of the sentence.

Update: The erratic behavior seems to depend on whether the sentence uses Clozemaster audio or the built-in TTS, only the latter giving uninterrupted looping. (Vivaldi browser on Android 10).

#9

@mike, love that this is getting worked on.

I like the implementation. On the ipad it looks like it will be natural to press next to “shut it up” so that is good.

I wonder if users would prefer this hard switch - ie repeat everything- to a softer switch -ie “I need to work on this ONE sentence, but everything else in this set is good” situation.

Thus I would probably prefer to have a “locked position” on the play button (hold for 5 seconds on a touch device) so I can chorus only the sentences which I struggle with.

If I can have both the lockable play button and an all sentences are chorused setting like this that is probably even better.

If there is only one option, then I’d rather have a lockable play button so this is on demand for some sentences as opposed to all.

1 Like
#11

@mike - after using the web version (beta) for several days, I must say it works really well! The current implementation does exactly what I was asking for in both of the scenarios above just by switching auto-play off.

In my case, I had two different use cases:

  1. I need to focus on my Portugese pronouncation, so with “autoplay” on, and “loop” on then I practice every sentence for a few repitions before pressing next to move forward.
  2. My Chinese needs less work, so I turn “autoplay” off, and “loop” on, so that for some sentences I need to work on, I’ll hit the “play” toggle to start the chorusing for that particular sentence.

Both of these worked perfectly for me, and frankly I can already feel the medicine working as it were. It is a big functional addition to the site!

I haven’t seen any real problems, so glowing reviews to this point!

I’ll be very curious if people use the function, and what others think.

I’m also excitedly looking forward to the App releases with the function as that is how I usually exclusively interact with Clozemaster.

1 Like
#12

I’m using it all the time already; I don’t often join the chorus, but I find it a great help for memorizing. I’ve noticed that for continuous looping I have to uncheck “Use Clozemaster voices” in the settings, though.

1 Like
#13

I’ve found a glitch: If I proceed immediately to the next cloze without stopping the loop, sometimes the audio for the new cloze will start looping before I’ve had a chance to answer. It’s a drag having to stop the looping before moving on.