https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Htiuu7FO2U
In this video, my friend Steve demonstrates how he is able to tune his Fazioli 308 using the new Pianoscope app with the beta release of the freeze feature. Notice the absolutely clean result, not withstanding the comments about "detuning" the unisions. Note that he has only had a tuning hammer for about 3 months, and is able to simply use the app to tune perfect unisons and perfect intervals using the Perfect 12th style in Pianoscope. Of course, there are other options, but for a complete newbie to create such a good tuning, without tuning the unisons by ear is phenomenal. Literally, a deaf person could tune a piano with this. Ok yeah, when there are false beats, you have to listen. But on this ideal piano, he has created a tuning that any of us could be proud of. Too pure unisons? Well, ok, wait a day. But when you have this amazing tuning app at your disposal, a few months later a complete newbie could create the same tuning and compete with any experienced tuner.
In the first couple minutes, he explains how he is setting the options in the program to get the best input for the app. By default, the iOS uses a compression (AGC) mode to deal with various level transients. This is not ideal for a piano tuning app, so he has asked the author of Pianoscope to implement a work-around to turn off the Automatic Gain Control (compression) so the app will have pristine audio signals to work with. Then, using the Freeze Attack interval of 200 milliseconds, he tunes all the strings from the low tenor to the top. The white line of the indicator is for freeze interval tuning, the red line is the normal indicator for real time, and there's the background "strobe" which is useful to follow the tendency of normal string variation. Using these indicators, especially the freeze indicator, is the key to the precise tuning of this piano.
Later in the video, he demonstrates various musical intervals to show that they all sound exceptionally good. The scaling of his piano is of course almost perfect, and most other pianos will have inherent scaling compromises.
The freeze feature was his suggestion to the author of Pianoscope, and it has proven to be a very useful tool. I hope some of you appreciate what he has been able to do with his piano using it. Using my iPhone 6, I copied this technique to tune a 1920's Steinway L, and the result was just as accurate and it sounded amazing.
I would suggest anyone interested in this should download a trial of the app, and ask if you can be a beta tester. At least see what it can do. The author is open to suggestions, and is very interested to hear from users their experiences with it.
Respectfully submitted,
Paul McCloud
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Paul McCloud, RPT
Accutone Piano Service
www.AccutonePianoService.com
pavadasa@gmail.com
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