Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Does anyone know of a free decent ETD for Checking Tuning

Thanks for all the replies - my tech has contacted me about the possibility of using the tunelab method.

Kamin - I agree - I probably chose my words carelessly. Free was not the correct word to use - most likely it should be "affordable." The reason being is the full tuning versions I have seen were ranging from $300-$1000 - this to me was not affordable for the job I want done.

Thanks again,

Jonathan

Tuning discrimination is an important aspect of developing musicianship. You would not be a complete musician without it.

Once you have found an ideal ETD, how are you going to use it? There are degrees of out of tune, at what amount of deviation will you declare the piano out of tune? Tuning is all relative and even if someone gave you a deviation figure, it will be different for you, one way or another. There is also the stack up of tolerances, that is, if one note registers within the tolerance limit and another note that forms an interval with that note registers within tolerance in the opposite direction, it would sound out of tune while the ETD is telling you everything is within tolerance.

Your tuning discrimination is most likely better than you think. While messing with EDTs is fun and can be useful if you fully understand pitch relationships, don't neglect your trust of your own perceptions and let your pitch discrimination develop with the rest of your musicianship.

Last night I tried Cy Shuster's excellent suggestion of playing octaves on the old grand I am tinkering with, then I noticed a persistent hum after playing F#3.

The piano needs tuning anyway after two moves, and setting the strings had put some of its unisons out, especially C5.

I decided to try electronics this morning for fun, spurred on by this thread. It was too much to move my laptop, rig up a microphone and run Tunelab 97 so I opted to see what n-Track Tuner would tell me on my iPhone:



The F#3 hum plot showed some sub harmonics and it turned out, by trial and error, the cause of the hum was the B0 damper.

To my surprise I found n-Track Tuner allows you to check unisons as it displays the frequencies it finds, one after the other. For instance my out of tune C5 ranged from 517 to 524 Hz compared to C4 at 261.5 to 261.7 Hz.

n-Track Tuner displays offsets as percentages in red or green. As a rough and ready rule of thumb everything above A4 should be green, and red below. You need to pay attention to the numbers too.

Best of all n-Track Tuner shows you the partials the piano produces for each note. This means you can see how they vary from soft to loud, from note to note, and from piano to piano. This could be a useful yardstick when thinking about voicing.

Not bad for a free app.

Does it show that your piano is tuned at 450 Hz , or is the Iphone in need of calibration ?

The range of frequencies the Iphone and other can check is OK for the mediums and up to some note in the 6th octave, but when going toward the basses the limit is soon attained (at last it was a few years ago, possibly the circuitry is better now)

Well spotted. The screen showing A at 450 Hz was from the web and the piano is actually at 440 Hz. I've changed it to another one to avoid confusing others.

This version on iPhone 3G worked up to Bb7 and appeared to fail at B7 until I noticed (and heard) that they were tuned the same.



I suppose the improved mic in the 3G (and presumably later versions) makes Tunelab possible for the iPhone.

The app tracked the notes down to about A1. Below that I believe fundamental partials are problematic anyway but the n-Track Tuner displayed the partials and followed the most prominent dynamically.

A simple way to check tuning with any app is to measure the frequency of any note, and then without changing the display, play the note an octave below. So let's say you're looking at C5 at 520 Hz. Don't touch the app, but play C4. If the piano's in tune, you should see a partial from C4 show up also right at 520 Hz (and also from C3 and maybe more, depending on your piano).

Also, to debug a damper problem like your F#, you can use the "chord of nature" to quickly find suspects (I just posted this; must have been in another thread). To find all the notes who have partials in common with your problem note, go down a fifth, and play a minor chord. So B minor would be the chord for your F#, and sure enough, the problem was with a B.

Keep investigating! You'll learn a lot. Record the pitch of your longest plain wire (uncovered) string. It will probably change the quickest due to humidity changes.

--Cy--