Pianotech

  • 1.  Pianoscope App

    Posted 03-15-2021 19:55
    Colleagues, I'd like to call your attention to a newly created tuning app called Pianoscope.

    You can read about it in an extended discussion on PianoWorld
    Novel Piano Tuning App

    You can also go directly to the product site
    pianoscope | Professional piano tuning for iPad & iPhone

    The designer is offering a public beta test, two weeks free at no charge.
    He has been very responsive to suggestions and is improving the app almost daily.

    The program reads and produces a weighted average of up to 10 partials, and designs a tuning that balances large, medium and small intervals.
    It can read inharmonicity in one second, so you can use the default sampling of all As and Es in about 15 seconds, or you can add as many sampled notes as you want, up to all 88 notes, taking less than 2 minutes to sample. This makes the program potentially very useful for tuning spinets and poorly scaled pianos.

    It offers many options to design your desired tunings, including a pure twelfth tuning, and more are promised. It calibrates pitch raises and saves sampled pianos in transferable files. It produced a very clean pure 12th tuning on my 6' grand piano, and I will try it on a U-1 later this week.

    Since I'm not tuning outside my home, my choices of instruments are limited, but I'm impressed by my tunings of my piano and of a very odd harpsichord which did not tune well using my usual ETD. I actually wish I had a spinet for a test of the app.

    The program does not "buffer" the readout of the sound as much as most ETDs, so you get a picture that shows the pitch deviation of the sound over time. Once I understood what was happening and decided on my "target time," I became comfortable with the readout rather quickly. (You can choose up to three ways to display the pitch.)

    So, if you're interested in tuning pianos, I suggest you take a look.

    ------------------------------
    Ed Sutton
    ed440@me.com
    (980) 254-7413
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: Pianoscope App

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 03-16-2021 00:17
    Hi Ed:
    How does the Pianoscope compare to Pianometer? Do you like it better?
    Paul McCloud
    San Diego

    Ed Sutton
    Colleagues, I'd like to call your attention to a newly created tuning app called Pianoscope.

    You can read about it in an extended discussion on PianoWorld
    Novel Piano Tuning App

    You can also go directly to the product site
    pianoscope | Professional piano tuning for iPad & iPhone

    The designer is offering a public beta test, two weeks free at no charge.
    He has been very responsive to suggestions and is improving the app almost daily.

    The program reads and produces a weighted average of up to 10 partials, and designs a tuning that balances large, medium and small intervals.
    It can read inharmonicity in one second, so you can use the default sampling of all As and Es in about 15 seconds, or you can add as many sampled notes as you want, up to all 88 notes, taking less than 2 minutes to sample. This makes the program potentially very useful for tuning spinets and poorly scaled pianos.

    It offers many options to design your desired tunings, including a pure twelfth tuning, and more are promised. It calibrates pitch raises and saves sampled pianos in transferable files. It produced a very clean pure 12th tuning on my 6' grand piano, and I will try it on a U-1 later this week.

    Since I'm not tuning outside my home, my choices of instruments are limited, but I'm impressed by my tunings of my piano and of a very odd harpsichord which did not tune well using my usual ETD. I actually wish I had a spinet for a test of the app.

    The program does not "buffer" the readout of the sound as much as most ETDs, so you get a picture that shows the pitch deviation of the sound over time. Once I understood what was happening and decided on my "target time," I became comfortable with the readout rather quickly. (You can choose up to three ways to display the pitch.)

    So, if you're interested in tuning pianos, I suggest you take a look.

    ------------------------------
    Ed Sutton
    ed440@me.com
    (980) 254-7413





  • 3.  RE: Pianoscope App

    Posted 03-16-2021 11:00
    Paul-

    I can't really compare them.

    I have Pianometer, but I have trouble with visual/cognitive processing of the pitch display. The three forms of display, strobe, needle and cents offset, don't seem to be co-ordinated, and my brain is constantly trying to reconcile the three streams of information. I have a similar problem with TuneLab.

    Pianoscope seems to move the three information streams in parallel. I was surprised that I could use it. It also offers the option of turning off any of the display modes.
    The designer has been seeking feedback about this and has changed the display designs in response to suggestions.

    Incidentally, the beta test mode will be available at no charge until the designer activates version 1, so we may get more than 2 weeks free use.

    ------------------------------
    Ed Sutton
    ed440@me.com
    (980) 254-7413
    ------------------------------



  • 4.  RE: Pianoscope App

    Member
    Posted 03-18-2021 20:26
    I tuned my Kohler&Campbell with it today, just A0 through D#5. I tuned this piano a couple of weeks ago using TuneLab, and PianoScope agreed heartily with where everything was. We'll see how well they agree in the top section, maybe tomorrow. I like the display - the wandering tone after the attack is reassuring because that's what we hear. The inharmonicity reading is very impressive. I read every note up to C7. In the bass I strip muted the bichords for one pass of iH readings, then stripped the other member of the bichord and read them again. In some cases the reading moved significantly - this identified a mismatched bichord, a candidate for PitchLok. This will be a good fast way to identify such issues. 
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