Tuner recommendations

[matt g]

@Beyond16, that’s pretty cool!

What language are you doing the processing in? Also, there’s probably some stuff, like the size of the spectrum, that could be tweaked to get things moving a bit faster also.

Regardless, that’s a fun project and good “brain practice”.

[Pauvog1]

Tonal energy app. Great tuner and metronome combo

I use the same app on my smart phone / tablet.

[bloke]

I would still encourage anyone with a standalone tuner featuring a quarter inch phone jack to get the Denis Wick-marketed Bluetooth microphone rig, as it’s not expensive.
In the past, when I have had a wire connected from my instrument to the music stand, I felt like the music stand was then part of me, and that sucked.

I would guess that – with a plug size adapter – that this thing would work with a phone app.

…and yeah, I love my Korg 60 - which does most of the things that fancy metronomes do and offers a very responsive tuner… and I’m sure that I will never stop hating my phone’s guts.

[Rick Denney]

I have an app for my phone, iStroboSoft, that is a pretty solid mimic of a strobe tuner.

Most tuners struggle in the lower range of the tuba, mainly because the fundamental is on a bad spot in the response curve, and the tuba, in particular, throws a lot of strong overtones that the tuner picks up instead.

The strobe tuner does alright, but I find the best result is to get the horn close in the register where the tuner works and then use something that can put out a clean “drone” and work from ear on those really low and lots of valves notes.

It's not just the overtones. It's also the loss of sensitivity in those tiny, cheap microphones, which roll off sharply below 100 Hz (a low Bb is 58 Hz, for reference). When I attach my Audio-Technica AT-822 to the external microphone input of my ancient Korg tuner, I can read the low range with good responsiveness and accuracy. That's what I use for figuring stuff out in the practice room.

I like the analog needle on that old Korg, but it's big and clunky and I don't want to break it by carrying it around. For location stuff, however, an iphone app works, and I have several of them that all seem to agree.

That said, I rarely use a tuner on location.

Rick "who has been misled by tuners reading overtones" Denney

[donn]

The spectrum viewer might be fun for looking at the various harmonics.

Yes, indeed! Unfortunately I have no means to run it here, but someone with a Windows computer could sure get on this for lots of fun.

An incomplete list of questions I think are interesting:

• is the pitch frequency itself represented reasonably well - i.e., first partial - or do we infer it from higher partials?
• what variation in actual frequency can occur between the partials, and what relationship if any does that have with tone?
• do the partials above the first partial, have anything to do with the acoustic length of the tuba?

That last one -- we're accustomed to using "partial" for what we might otherwise call a "register" on the tuba, where for example the D below the bass clef would be a "3rd partial" note on the BBb tuba. That D would however be a harmonic series with its own partials, and I think the consensus as informed by some audio analysis years ago, is that it would be a full normal partial series with for example its own 3nd partial at the frequency of A below middle C (hope I got that right?)

But as we produce that note by overblowing to the 3rd partial, we could also guess that the series might that of pedal G, minus the lower partials. In this case all the frequencies line up with the acoustic length of the instrument. The partial near the top of the bass clef would be G, which can resonate in that length of tubing, not A which can't. An Eb tuba would present a different harmonic series as it plays the same note in the "2nd partial", and that's where this might be seen to be a little more than purely academic -- long ago, a tuba bulletin board luminary, since deceased, held that a mix of Eb and BBb tubas (for example) yielded a full tonal mix that you wouldn't get with one key alone, for this reason specifically (as I understood it, anyway.)

[matt g]

I have an app for my phone, iStroboSoft, that is a pretty solid mimic of a strobe tuner.

Most tuners struggle in the lower range of the tuba, mainly because the fundamental is on a bad spot in the response curve, and the tuba, in particular, throws a lot of strong overtones that the tuner picks up instead.

The strobe tuner does alright, but I find the best result is to get the horn close in the register where the tuner works and then use something that can put out a clean “drone” and work from ear on those really low and lots of valves notes.

It's not just the overtones. It's also the loss of sensitivity in those tiny, cheap microphones, which roll off sharply below 100 Hz (a low Bb is 58 Hz, for reference). When I attach my Audio-Technica AT-822 to the external microphone input of my ancient Korg tuner, I can read the low range with good responsiveness and accuracy. That's what I use for figuring stuff out in the practice room.

I like the analog needle on that old Korg, but it's big and clunky and I don't want to break it by carrying it around. For location stuff, however, an iphone app works, and I have several of them that all seem to agree.

That said, I rarely use a tuner on location.

Rick "who has been misled by tuners reading overtones" Denney

Agreed! :’)

[The Big Ben]

phone apps...OK...but my tuner - from time-to-time - falls off my music stand.
My phone is - not only annoying (which is why it stays on my nightstand) but expensive (were I to have to replace it - which is why I still have it - though I despise it)...so I'd rather not prop it on a music stand.

Agreed. I use one of the Korg tuners. I have a tuner/metronome app on the phone I "don't hate". If I forget my tuner (It happens) I have a backup on my phone which I pretty much always have.

[Mary Ann]

You know what this would be fabulous for? All those questions about "lacquer vs no lacquer" "silver vs brass" and on and on --- assuming a program could be easily written to compare/contrast two outputs.

Could even be used to determine the change in frequency spectrum of using different amounts of air, lip, etc., to play a note. Try this, try that, measure what happens. oooh -- and this mouthpiece vs that mouthpiece!

I wonder what Walter Lawson used to analyze the frequency spectrum of the horns he tested, pre-lacquer and post-lacquer. (horn horns, not tuba horns.) He said the difference was that the lacquer killed some of the highs, which on a horn horn meant that you could open your right hand just a bit to get the sound back to where it was pre-lacquer, if that was what you wanted to do.

And pre-and-post cryogenic treatment too. (When I bought my horn, she said it had been "cryogenetically treated." I always wondered what that did to its genetics. But I wasn't planning to breed it, so no matter.)

[bloke]

Myron Bloom vs. Barry Tuckwell (playing lacquered vs. unlacquered otherwise-deemed-to-be-identical Lawson horns - had that even been an "event")...

Those behind the screen would have immediately laughed, as the only noticeable difference would have been Myron Bloom vs. Barry Tuckwell.

bloke "I choose Tuckwell, fwiw."

[Mary Ann]

I choose Bloom. Tuckwell's one CD that I have listened to sounds like he has his hand stuck in all the way up to the valve section.

I was at a horn camp where he was instructor along with Kendall Betts. The two of them pretty much stayed drunk.

[bloke]

I choose Bloom. Tuckwell's one CD that I have listened to sounds like he has his hand stuck in all the way up to the valve section.

I was at a horn camp where he was instructor along with Kendall Betts. The two of them pretty much stayed drunk.

Bloom (on a Philadelphia brass principals' solo l.p.) sounds like a mule (and on Music Minus One as well - to my ears).

Admittedly, I only heard Tuckwell in-person, but three-or-so times...as well as some really nice recordings with St. Martin in the Fields.

[Beyond16]

Hello Matt, it's written in plain C. I'm old school. With an 8 core processor, it can easily update the model and rebuild the display 60 times per second.

[matt g]

Hello Matt, it's written in plain C. I'm old school. With an 8 core processor, it can easily update the model and rebuild the display 60 times per second.

Nice! Just curious.