This is an attempt to predict how much the pitch will drop and thereby lessen the tweaking you have to do. ETD Overpull is a mode where the ETD measures how flat a note is, and then tells you to tune it sharper than the final goal. As the soundboard flattens, the notes that have already been tuned, flatten. When a piano is flat and we tune it up to concert pitch, the soundboard flattens as we increase the tension on more and more strings.
The treble will sound flat and lifeless if a piano is tuned with a guitar app. A guitar tuner can be off by as much as 50 cents in the treble. Upper partials are not harmonic on a piano. Ok, since ClearTune is a guitar app, here is what an expensive ETD will do that ClearTune cannot. I am _so_ impressed with what's required to do this well by ear, and I think that's what I aspire to. The biggest mystery to me is listening to the work of tuners I admire on my own piano at home - I've had some pretty length discussions, and even asked, "couldn't that be flatter/sharper" in situations where the only solution is a compromise, and it always turns out that my tuner's choice works better than my intently listening to a couple of notes. OTOH, I feel like I learn a lot by listening to all these partials, and when i find myself tuning a string and saying, "Well, it could be here, or it could be this other way," which I believe is me listening to different coincident partials and deciding which to match or not, I feel like I'm going through the things I need to in order to learn this craft. So it sounds like ClearTune is just a measurement device, but these real piano tuning apps do most of the work for you - it's certainly an interesting thing to consider.
Given that these capabilities are relatively recent things, isn't it accurate to say that everyone tuned "by ear" a few decades ago? I also find it's helpful to look at sometimes, e.g., even in my temperament octave, if it say a note isn't where I think it is, it'll cause me to tune that string again.īut I listen for partials by ear and have never had a device that does what these apps say they do. I use ClearTune for my A4 and for what I call a sanity check - just to see what it has to say about how far a note is off so that, e.g., I can confirm that I'm generally where I think I should be as I move out from the middle. Throw in the variety of tunings available and calculated pitch adjustments and that's just 'icing on the cake'. I believe a custom style Verituner calculation beats most aural tuners on what they produce on a day to day basis.
You might even hear that electronics can't do as well as ears alone. You'll get lots of different testimonials from people who are happy with many different platforms.
That's where the software made for pianos comes in - taking measurements from individual strings to then manipulate the math to come up with a more 'harmonious', or more predictable result for any particular piano. "Close" is often quite a bit better than many untuned pianos.īut - there is a whole 'nuther level of matching the tuning to the specific piano. It gets things close - based on the math of how things might work in a perfect world. it's complicated the more specific we get.Įssentially an app like cleartune is like a "paint by numbers" project.