Chiff and Fipple Forums

As a concertina player, my involvement in tuning has been to play an A for the rest of the session to tune to. One of my biggest learning curves is ow hearing the out of tune and knowing which tuning slide needs attention. My ear is improving and will be the ultimate solution, but I use a digital tuner to give me some clues. It just broke...

In this amazing age of Tunepal, surely there must be a smartphone app that does the deed, no need to go spend $80 on a Peterson Tuner when $1.98 will get me one on the phone...

This app allows for equal temperament tuning as well as Kimberger3, Meantone, Pythagorean, Neidhard 1724, Neidhard 1729, Valotti, Silberman, Back Barnes, Bach Kellner, Rameau, and Lambert.

What the heck is all that? Any idea which one would be more useful to the piper attempting to tune the regs?

thanks
Mike

I like this one a lot.

Stroboscopic Tuner

I fancy PitchLab, https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... c.pitchlab, again an Android app.

For the flute, equal temperament will do the job. Not sure about regs on a pipe, but Just Intonation might be useful. I doubt you'll use the rest of those temperaments until you start working on harpsichords.

Any of that "Kirnberger" and "valloti 3" stuff is no use to you and even "Just intonation" is no use unless it relates to the key that your pipes are in... so the best advice is to use the Equal Temperament setting to get your A or D ( your preference... I use D) and tune the rest by ear or use the following off sets for your regulators, which will get you in the ballpark and then you pull the rest in by ear with your chanter:

offfsets from ET for Regulator notes:

D= 0 , F#= -14, G= -1, A= +1, B= -16 and C = -4 ......

sometimes I perfer to set things a wee bit closer to ET for B and F#... sometimes I prefer G and A slightly wider apart and sometimes I like the C a lot flater..... let your ear and your chanter tell you where this all should be.

Geoff.

Edit to add: of course the pipes are not like a concertina in that they will not keep very closely to the pitch standard with variances in temperature. Even when a set has been allowed to warm (or cool) to the room temperature before commencement , the chanter will rise in pitch after a few minutes of playing. So, any tuner that you choose to use should have the facility to infinately adjust its reference pitch so you can follow the pipes as they warm up.

Next point is that the chanter reed will rise in pitch more than the regulator reeds because it is in constant use , so some allowance might be called for when setting their pitch.... this is where the tuning pins come in to use , as they can be pulled out slightly to raise the regulator pitch as the chanter warms up and it gets sharper.

It's all about the Ears in the end

I like the Cleartune app. Seems to be fairly good at detecting pitch for pipes, even the bass drone.

It has Just Intonation settings but they appear to be buggy for tonics other than C :-/ so I follow Geoff's advice.

Cleartune includes a pitch pipe which I find more useful than the meter 90% of the time; I set the waveform to sawtooth which makes it easier to hear above noise and easier to tune to, as it mimics a drone.

If you want something dedicated, the TurboTuner hybrid analog/digital strobotuner is the best I've come across in years. Only complaint is that it eats 9v batteries.

ClearTune - simple, effective, lots of scale options, does exactly what it's supposed to for almost any instrument

Cleartune

It's also very easy to see, which is a big plus for old eyes.

On my phone I use one called TuneUp by D'Addario in the strobe mode. Seems to work well but lately when I turn it on I have to set it to default (deafault?) before I can use it.

I use a "Super Snark" for pipes and whistles and everything else. Works well.

Patrick