AudioKit has introduced Hey Metronome, an iOS metronome app that offers voice-control, without the need for Alexa or other cloud-based services.
With Hey Metronome, you can set the tempo, time signature, sounds, and more with commands like “Hey metronome, set tempo to 140”, “Hey Metronome 4/4 time” or even “Hey Metronome, random adagio tempo”, to give yourself a tempo within a certain range.
Hey Metronome is a culmination off a partnership between AudioKit and KeenASR Research (for the speech recognition), and AudioKit has plans for more development of voice-controller music applications.
“Hey Metronome’s speech recognition runs entirely on-device,” notes developer Aure Prochazka, PhD. “There is no impact on your bandwidth or internet usage fees. It’s also completely private. Even more importantly, the recognition is optimized for musical grammar handling words like “waltz” or “adagio,” and many others.”
Pricing and Availability
Hey Metronome is available now for $.99 USD. Proceeds go to support the AudioKit Open-Source Project.
The demo with the violinist is quite compelling. Good app!
Fortunately, you can access all the features via touch as well as voice. It doesn’t do 3/8, 6/8, 9/8, 12/8 with the correct dotted-quarter as beat (a quarter note is the beat basis), but you can still just use 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 and set the division to triplets. No individual control of steps, but there is a “beat emphasis” setting when you set up the time-signature.
It’s good. I bought it to support AudioKit. I expect this will improve and evolve over time.