Bug with rhythmic dictation

[mhch]

Hi
I write in English, despite being French, as I'm bilingual

I recently bought a licence for EM7 iPad courses (all of them) with the intent to follow the complete curriculum over a long time as this is far easier to do so than when using a computer (in the past I followed the EM6 interval recognition lessons on a Windows PC, but I found that too constraining and not very comfortable).

I then started at beginner's course, but more than one time it happened that after going through a lesson and being suggested to retake it, when I rettok it, generally later in the day, EM7 staying active in the background) there are serious inconsistencies in that retaken lesson. For instance in lesson 9.5 (I think, this is a 1 bar rhythm dictation) when retaking it I clearly heard a 2 bar rhythm while the shown staff was totally empty with no barlines. I killed EM7 and relaunched it but this time after restarting, I heard a whole note, but EM7 says it expects a half-note and a half-note rest !!

As I said this isn't the first time something like that happened, but restarting EM7 always put it back to correct behaviour. For sure I could try to reboot the iPad which is a pain. Anyway I think (as a retired software developper) this is quite a serious problem to investigate, since that EM7 behaviour is clearly not correct and I'm now blocked since I can't get a correct grade and I don't trust EM7 anymore with regards to consistency between lessons ... Can only wait until EM7 behaves OK after being restarted or if I reboot the iPad.

Unfortunately that seems to be a random kind of bug, which is very hard to investigate. Is this an OS or EM7 related problem ??

Too bad as this is really an oustanding piece of software which I really like.

FYI, I have the latest EM7 app version 1.1.103 running on a iPad Pro 11 2020 under iPadOS 13.6

[mhch]

Further to my previous message, after a reboot (in fact the update from iPadOS 13.6 to 13.6.1) EM7 restarted to work OK so I can proceed.

Nevertheless, there is a weird problem behind that

[Quentin]

Hi, thank you very much for your feedback. We will investigate that. If you need to contact the developers directly, the easiest and best way to contact us is by using the Send feedback" button in the App's preferences. Emails you send that way end directly in the dev team's mailbox

[Quentin]

Hi again,

After discussing it internally, we are having a hard time understanding how the problem you describe can happen. I think there is some information missing in order for us to fully understand the problem. Do you see an error message when this happens? If yes, what does it say exactly? Have you made sure that you are still in lesson 9.5 when this happens and not in another lesson?

After a long period of inactivity (one hour or more), the app should open at the welcome screen when you reopen it. How long time are you leaving it closed before you retake the lesson?

FInally, the easiest way for us to understand completely the problem and fix it would be a video showing the issue happen. This would give us precious details as to what is happening inside the app. So if you can reproduce the problem, we would greatly appreciate it if you could send us a video to support@earmaster.com

[mhch]

Hi

Thanks for your replies

Another example of such a weird behaviour. I don't remember exactly which lesson it was (before 9.5 no doubt), sorry, the first question for a dictation involving whole, half and (may be, not sure) quartet notes. I ran it in the morning, being suggested it retake it. I left Earmaster open for a couple of hours for sure. When I retook the lesson later in the afternoon probably, as I said a couple of hours later, at first question I clearly heard a whole note but Earmaster kept on saying I was wrong, expecting a half note. I had no other message than the typical Earmaster "incorrect answer" message.

Since this seems to be a random bug happening occasionnally, the only way to provide a video would be to shoot my repeated attempts to answer a question when the problem appears and if it does. So far it didn't since my initial message in this thread (I'm running Earmaster every day, first piece of work I do every morning).


I was totally surprised, specially since the question was so simple (whole note vs half note ..) and that I repeated the hearing several times to be sure of my perception, and that my notation know-how is good enough to be sure of what I describe: I've been playing jazz for 7 ot 8 years now, being able to decipher music notation, althought not to fluently sight read and play as a pro musician can do.

Put another way, what Earmaster was expecting was not what it was played. When I restarted Earmaster everything ran fine, but I'm not 100% sure the exact same question was asked for the first lesson.

So my understanding of an experienced retired software engineer, is that there was an inconsistency between question and expected answer, a bit like if some value in memory (whatever the value is, for instance index of question or index of expected answer) had been erased or modified during the period Earmaster was left open between two successive runs the same day. That inconsistency may have many possible reasons, a hardware problem, another app patching some inappropriate memory space, the OS ..

As I said, this kind of problem appeared more than once, maybe two or three times since I installed the app on my iPad (received in June 2020) always after retaking a lesson, Earmaster being left open before it for a few hours.

I definitely agree this is very hard to debug, given the randomness of the issue and I'm really sorry from not being able to provide any more specific information, again because of this randomness. I'll be more precise if I can and I'll try shooting a video of my repeated attempt to answer the involved Earmaster question, if the problem occurs again,

[Quentin]

Thanks a lot for your understanding. I can guarantee you that as soon as we can identify and reproduce the error, we will fix it. We will try to reproduce it on our end also, but so far no luck. If you manage to capture it on video, that would be fantastic!

[mhch]

Hi
Funnily the problem appeared this morning, just when I launched EarMaster to retake a lesson. One point: I have no idea if EarMaster had been left open on my iPad 11 2020 of if no app was left open in between yesterday and this morning.

What happened is that when playing the question, there was no notation shown on the display while a rhythm being played, so no way to click a notation errror. I shooted a video, but for some unknown reason the sound wasn't captured ? was that an inadequate configuration of my smartphone Samsung S9+ , or that the sound wasn't loud enough, or my hands were blocking the microphone .. Anyway you can see what is displayed

Anyway, I then went to photo my lesson history to be sure of which lesson it was. Shot the photo and went back to the lesson, and then it worked OK !!

Then explored the statistics display again and shot the whole lesson hierarchy to describe what I did. Lesson graded 88 is the one who led to myself being suggested to retake it. Last entry is the retaken lesson, the one which worked OK as indicated

Really bad that no sound has been recorded. You have to trust my saying.
I have a zip file containing video and photos, but this forum says it's too big to be attached (3.5 Mbytes !)

[mhch]

Further to my last message, can you please let me know how to send you a video .. No point asking for one if it can be transmitted to you.

[Quentin]

Hi

Thank you for taking the time to make the video. Please send it to support(AT)earmaster.com and we'll look further into this