Pianotech

  • 1.  Tuners, Lend Me Your Ears

    Member
    Posted 11-28-2021 14:12
    Fellow tuners, lend me your ears.  

    I'm working with the PTG Education Committee to develop some online tuning-related "aural discernment" tests. In order to create these questions, I need not only good recordings of each note, but also well "de-tuned" notes so that I can create questions like "which of these fifths is too narrow?" So I need to take "good" notes and make copies that are 1, 2, or 3 cents sharp or flat.  

    Turns out detuning is a pretty complicated digital operation. I've tried several muscular audio editors, with mixed results until now. Maybe I've found one that will suffice. So please help me decide by taking a ten-question aural discrimination assessment. Here's the setup:  

    You hear a note (either D3 or C4) and have to decide if it is flat, sharp, or about right in relation to the fourths and fifths below and above. There are buttons to play the fourths and fifths. As you listen, for example to the G2-D3 and D3-A3 fifths, you decide whether the one of the fifths is noisier than the other. If the upper (D3-A3) fifth is noisy, that fifth is probably narrower than ET; and the G2-D3 fifth would sound relatively clean, since it's closer to a pure fifth than the normal 2-cents-narrow; so you'd say the D3 is sharp. Similarly with the fourths. It's a very interesting aural exercise, but is it accurate enough? (Kudos to Ed Sutton for suggesting this exercise)

    The test picks a random 10 from a total of fourteen of these slides. Seven of them are note D3 and seven are C4. The seven variations on each note are
    • One is "about right"
    • Three are sharp by 1, 2, and 3 cents
    • Three are flat by 1, 2, and 3 cents
    I need to know how accurate or inaccurate the resulting sounds are.
    There is a space at the right for you to add your comments, especially when you disagree with the "correct" answer. Your help will be invaluable.

    Here's the link:
    https://360.articulate.com/review/content/f3d6db0c-2930-42fa-9a3b-5a7d0d06fa0d/review
    Thanks in advance.

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    Jason Kanter
    Lynnwood WA
    425-830-1561
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  • 2.  RE: Tuners, Lend Me Your Ears

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 11-28-2021 22:10
    Even with my speakers turned up I had trouble hearing what I needed to hear. But as a result of (educated) guesswork I somehow managed to get four correct answers. Somehow that still gave me a score of 70%. 

    I think a helpful feature might be to include the partial note that the user is supposed to be listening to as a lit up note that could also be played for reference. Since I believe the test is supposed to be testing our ability to interpret beats it's important to know, or have access to a reminder, which partial note we need to dig out of all the partials sounding together so we can find it and use it.

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    Geoff Sykes, RPT
    Los Angeles CA
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  • 3.  RE: Tuners, Lend Me Your Ears

    Member
    Posted 11-29-2021 18:34
    Jason, if you are still looking for other possibilities for generating precisely detuned intervals, I just realized that I made a tuning simulator about five years ago that does the job.  Yesterday I updated the installation file.  It runs on Windows.  You can get it here:

    tunelab-world.com/ptsim

    Make sure to read the help file that comes with the app.

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    Robert Scott
    Real-Time Specialties (TuneLab)
    fixthatpiano@yahoo.com
    Hopkins MN
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