sigmund~ for pitch tracking

The sigmund~ object is not a standard Max object; it’s a “third-party” object for Macintosh by Miller Puckette that you you can download and install on your computer so that it behaves just like any standard MSP object.

This patch shows sigmund~ in its most basic usage: to detect the pitch and amplitude of specific notes of an input sound.

Pitch and amplitude detection

Note that it reports the pitch as a quasi-MIDI key number value, but it includes a fractional part (which does not exist in true MIDI) for greater specificity of pitch evaluation. It’s wise, therefore, to round that value to the nearest integer if you want to detect a particular played pitch and/or you want to use that pitch as a MIDI key number. The amplitude is reported in (positive) decibels aboveĀ a minimum threshold. Here we use scale to recast that amplitude as a MIDI velocity.