Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Novel Piano Tuning App

Thank you, Ed. I am glad you like it. What really confused me in other apps was that they had so many different numbers in their displays and I could not develop an intuition which number represented the current frequency/deviation and which the target. And the solution for me was simply to attach the current values to the indicator so that they move along with it. It immediately provides an intuition of what the numbers stand for.

I like your analogy to chiseling. Today I played with removing the zero from the scale. Different configurations somehow worked, but in all the cases the zero seemed to be missing. So I decided to leave it there and simply make the zero scale line a little bit bolder.

For accurately lining up a pointer with a scale I think I might try having the gradation line about 3x the thickness of the pointer, and having the middle third a slightly lighter shade. That way the use can either settle for just getting the pointer on the mark or try to actually hit the centre line.

Congratulations on the really good documentation by the way, really well done.

Gwing, thanks. I am glad you like the documentation.

Your suggestion for the pointer is interesting. But I don't think we really need this level of frequency resolution for tuning a piano. On my iPhone X, I have 74 screen pixels for the last one cent. If every pixel counted, this would be a resolution of 0.014 cents. No piano tone is that stable that you could center it with such high precision. So I think the current way of simply-bringing-the-pointer-to-the middle-line is quite sufficient.

In the latest build 377, I implemented some of your requested features and changes:

- The overpull target indicator triangles are now larger and have more constrast.
- There is a new setting for showing the tuning target pitch in Hertz, cents from ET or both.
- There is a new setting for the width of the tuning indicator line. Depending on this setting, the scale line for the zero gets thicker as well.

I haven't updated the manual yet. I hope next week I will have some time to look into more requests and to reliably reproduce and finally fix the hanging bug.

Ron, in the latest build 381 I added new settings for showing the name of the tuning style and/or the concert pitch of the current instrument in the top-right corner of the tuning view. I think an off-center placement is a good choice for this kind of information as you don't want to have it in focus all the time when you are tuning.

Hi Frank,

just a thought on the tuning curve display. Maybe you could add the name of the style selected to the header of that page rather than just "tuning curve" - then you can see at a glance what style you're actually using without having to go to the style selector sub-page?

Paul.

Hello Frank,

I am really enjoying the speed that the app takes measurements and the fact that inharmonicity and pitch raise are taken at the same time. I am sure I will have other things to add, but for the moment the spelling on the Pitch Raising window is written "Pitch Rasising". Just a typo I am sure.

A very nice app!

I've been doing a lot of pitch raises - for me, it would be good to have the scale numbers reduced in intensity to help focus on the arrows. Today I found myself focusing on the zero.. the new wider bar fits right inside and is a great help at finding the target!

As an explanation, I work based on time, not tunings for a local university with variable indoor humidity. I find that it is the best use of my time and results for the students is to do single pass 20-minute tunings for the practice rooms. That's been the reason for my search for an accurate mode of a single-pass pitch raise to use as a "touch-up" pitch-floating way to keep the practice room pianos in decent playing condition.

Ron Koval

I'm sure you are absolutely correct about the degree of achievable precision but there are patterns and shapes that make centering things more automatic and natural. My experience of that is from archery where having a round sight that surround the target naturally self centres and is demonstrably more effective than having something like a cross which you aim to put in the centre of the target. With the band and lighter toned middle I was trying to think of something along the same principles that would be easy to program ( I know more about both archery and programming than tuning :-) )

How did it work? Did pianoscope still overpull too much?


You can checkout your proposed dimming in build 385. Let me know if it works for you.

Thanks, Paul. This is a good idea. I've implemented it in build 385.

The pitch raises I have done recently were all pretty small - in the 10 -15 cent range. I ended up "close enough" today, so that one correction you made in the last week must've helped!

Ron Koval

Thank you, Jean. It's good to know that pianoscope can stand up to your professional requirements.


Thanks, I fixed the typo in build 385. Have you ever tried running the app in French? It would be interesting for me to know if I got the basic tuning terminology right.

The dimming looks great for pitch raises!

Ron Koval

Frank-
Today I used Pianoscope to tune a harpsichord with compass from C2-F6.
Pianoscope demands inharmonicity readings for A0, E1 and A1.
I worked around by playing those notes on a piano, but it would be better to have a way to tell Pianoscope to work with the given range of smaller keyboards.
Actually the instrument is a lautenwerke, a nylon-strung harpsichord. It is not easy to tune because the inharmonicity is irregular. Pianoscope did a pretty good job, though I did need to correct a few octaves aurally.

Hi Frank,

I just went thru the app in french and the only thing I saw is on the instrument page. "Concert pitch" is translated as "Pitch de concert". I would instead use "Diapason de concert".

Great work with the updates.

I am currently working on a setting with which you can limit the range so that tuning harpsichords should get easier.

Thanks, I will change it to your suggestion.

Ed, I've just released build 402 of pianoscope to Test Flight. I've added a new setting with which you can specify a custom range for an instrument. This should enable you to tune your harpsichord without any workarounds. The specified range gets nicely respected in all measurements, calculations and views.

For now, I only allow to REDUCE the range from the regular A0-C8. In principle, the calculations should be able to deal with extended ranges, like a Bösendorfer Grand Imperial or some Stuart & Sons. As I currently do not have access to such instruments, I cannot test it and so I am a bit reluctant. Does anybody encounter these beasts in the wild? Or does anybody have access to audio samples from them?

The other day I started tuning a piano with Pianoscope. It was an old upright, about 25 cents flat, and I couldn't seem to get decent readings on the inharmonicity, so opted to tune with Verituner.
This morning, my first appointment was a Kawai upright. I had difficulty again with inharmonicity readings so tuned the piano with Verituner. After tuning I decided to measure with Pianoscope as a way of getting used to the program. After measuring Ao, I played E1. Pianoscope read it as D#, A2 it measured as G#, and so on up the scale.
My Verituner is calibrated to A440 (which I double checked to be certain). Any idea why I'm not getting correct readings? IPad is running on 14.4.1
Thank you.