Purrfect Pitch: Exploring Pitch Interval Learning through an Audio-Haptic Interface
Name
3745900.3746079.pdf
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9.41 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
e28b87bc7a343616d3f8310bdbed9b8d
Author(s)
Chin, Sam
Fang, Cathy Mengying
Singh, Nikhil
Ibrahim, Ibrahim
Paradiso, Joe
Maes, Pattie
Date Issued
October 9, 2025
Publisher
ACM|The Augmented Humans International Conference 2025
Citation
Sam Chin, Cathy Mengying Fang, Nikhil Singh, Ibrahim Ibrahim, Joe Paradiso, and Pattie Maes. 2025. Purrfect Pitch: Exploring Pitch Interval Learning through an Audio-Haptic Interface. In Proceedings of the Augmented Humans International Conference 2025 (AHs '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 241–252.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We introduce Purrfect Pitch, a system consisting of a wearable haptic device and a custom-designed learning interface for musical ear training. We focus on the ability to identify pitch intervals (sequences of two musical notes), a perceptually ambiguous task that usually requires rote training. With our system, users hear two tones while simultaneously receiving two corresponding vibrotactile stimuli on the back. Providing haptic feedback on the back makes the auditory distance between tones salient, and the back-worn design is comfortable and unobtrusive. During training, users receive multi-sensory feedback from our system and input their guessed interval value on our web-based learning interface. Our study with 18 participants shows that our system enables novice learners to identify intervals more accurately and consistently than those who only received audio feedback, even after removing the haptic feedback. We also share further insights on designing a multisensory learning system.
Description
AHs 2025, Masdar City, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1145/3745900.3746079
