Tap Enter, then allow the microphone. Your sound stays on this device.
by Bryce Borden
Sound2Colorby Bryce Borden
Hear a sound, see its wave, sing it back.
📲 Make it a real app: tap Share → Add to Home Screen, and keep “Open as Web App” switched on. Then open it from the new icon, not from Safari.
Now sounding
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Train
0:00.0
The mic is blocked here.Browsers only allow the mic on a page with its own web address. Two ways around it:
Open Sound2Color from its own link (like your Netlify site) in Safari or Chrome, tap Listen, and allow the mic.
Use a recording. Pick a voice memo and it plays back with the notes shown.
Mic check
Input level–Background–Raw pitch–Fresh audio–Mic–
Mic mode
Sensitivity
Test tones play 200–600 Hz through your speaker and check what the mic hears. Use the speaker, not headphones, for this test.
Song mapTap Listen, then play a song
Keyboard
C4
1Pick the starting note
2Pick the chord type
3These notes play together
Tap notes to add or remove them. It names the chord you build.
Add one of these to make a chord
Key note
The 7 notes in this key
Chords in this key · tap to hear
Press Start, listen, then pick the note.
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Settings
Notes in rotation
How the recorder works
Record anything: a baby, crickets, a dog, a dolphin video, your own voice. It paints the whole sound as a color map you can scroll through and play back.
Brightness
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Spread
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Ceiling
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Change
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Tap the painting to play or pause. Drag it sideways to scroll.
Tap ▶ Play. The recording replays through this view, just like the live mic. Drag the slider to start from any point.
Color by
Show
Saved clips
Clips stay on this phone, inside this web app. Nothing is uploaded to Netlify. To keep iPhone from clearing them, use the app from your Home Screen (Share → Add to Home Screen). For a backup copy, open a clip with Map, then tap Save to Files.
What am I looking at?
Left to right is pitch, low to high. Mountain height is loudness, and anything quieter than the room's background stays flat. Time rolls toward you on the 3D road, or runs left to right on the flat map.
Mountain color (Harmonics) is the job each peak does: red is the main note wherever it sits, then orange, yellow and green overtones above it. Magenta is a tone that doesn't belong to that note, grey is noise, and a white flash is a sudden start.
Timbre, the tone color of the whole moment, has four gauges and shows on the ground:
Brightness (spectral centroid): the sound's center of mass. It's the color of the glowing ground lane, red/orange for dark sounds and blue/white for bright ones.
Spread (bandwidth): how wide the energy is spread. It's the width of that lane, thin for pure and wide for harsh or noisy.
Ceiling (rolloff): where 85% of the energy ends. It's the white ticks on the ground, and the dashed line on the flat map.
Change (spectral flux): how fast the sound is shifting. It shows as sparkles.
It shows what a sound is made of. It can't tell you what a baby or a dolphin means. Recordings go up to 2 minutes, files up to 3 minutes.
Hz graph
Left to right is Hz. Up is louder. The ball is the main Hz the phone hears. A small ball means it's dialed in on one pitch. A wide ball means it hears a mix or the pitch is wobbling.
Loudness
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Sure
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One pitch
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Steady
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Dots
Top Hz
Spacing
How to read it
Ball left/right = the main Hz. It uses the pitch tracker when it's confident, otherwise the loudest peak.
Ball height = mic level in dB, relative to the phone mic. 0 is the loudest the mic can take, −90 is near silence. This is not sound-meter dB (SPL), and every phone reads a little differently.
Ball width and the ± Hz = how unsure it is. It shrinks when one pitch owns the sound and holds steady.
White ring + LOCKED = held within about 1% for 0.7 seconds.
Green ▲ under the Hz line = where each A note sits (A3 = 220, A4 = 440, A5 = 880 Hz). Each one is an octave, double the Hz of the last, so you can line up Hz with notes.
Color: Tone (default) = what the sound is like: smooth/pure sounds are blue, rich ones green-yellow, sharp/buzzy/noisy ones red. A flute and a trumpet on the same note get different colors. Color: Note = the old way, one color per note name (all D's yellow, and so on). The note strip on top always shows notes.
Purple hills = every Hz it hears right now. Small dots = other strong pitches, like overtones or a second sound.
Tap the graph to drop a green target line, and the readout shows how far off you are. Play target tone plays that exact Hz, so you can check what the phone picks up.
A human hum has overtones at 2×, 3×, 4× the main Hz. Those count toward "one pitch", so a clean hum can still lock.
Name that note
Level 1Best 0Choices2
A note plays. Tap its name. Every right answer is a level. One miss and you start over.
Octave
Tap a key or a bar. After you answer, tap keys to hear them.
too lowtoo high
Settings & how levels work
My voice (for Match my voice)
Name that note: 2 choices far apart at first. Then 3, 4, 5 and 6 choices, packed closer together and spread over more octaves. Each button shows its Hz.
Match my voice: starts with easy notes (C, E, G) and any octave counts. Later it's every half step in your exact octave. "Close enough" tightens from ±50¢ to ±15¢, and you hold it longer (1 s → 2 s). You get 10 seconds per note.
One miss (or running out of time) sends you back to level 1. Your best level is saved on this phone.
Tune
Train your ear
Hold or slide
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🎤 Voice
Level 1Best 0Zone ±50¢Time –
Pick an instrument. It plays a real-sounding note, then you match it. Close enough, held long enough, levels you up.
▼▲
smoothTone: target ▼ · you ▲sharp
Bird painter
Point your phone at a bird and tap ▶. Catch notes is on, so each chirp leaves a dot. Tap ❚❚, then Save to keep the dots as points you can practice whistling. Switch the board to Painter for the old rolling landscape.
View
Where birds usually sing (rough ranges)
How to read it
Colors run through the rainbow once per octave, red at C up to violet at B, so the same note always gets the same color. Taller ridges are louder. Birds sing fast, so tap the painting to freeze it and look closer. Phone mics hear up to about 10–12 kHz, which covers most birdsong.
Sing · as in
too lowon targettoo high
Tap “Match it”, then hum. Headphones help.
Guess the Hz
A pure tone plays. Pick its frequency.
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Everyday pitches
Sounds people with perfect pitch notice all day. Tap to hear which notes they land on.