Tuning

Piano Tuning โ€” historical temperament ear-training simulator

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Ivan Pisino

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Opening post by Ivan Pisino

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3
City
Torino
Hello everyone,

I wanted to share with you a tool I developed: it's called Piano Tuning and it is an ear-training simulator designed to train the ear on twelve historical temperament systems, in addition to equal temperament.

The thing I cared about most is that the synthesis does not use theoretical pure frequencies, but an additive model that takes into account the real inharmonicity of the strings (Fletcher model) โ€” so what you hear is much closer to how an instrument tuned in those temperaments would actually sound, rather than a textbook approximation.

Here is a short video showing it:

I initially built it for personal use as a piano technician, but I think it could also be useful to others for training the ear before working on non-standard tunings. I would love to know what you think, and if any of you already work with historical temperaments, how you do it.

Available for questions.

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Reply 2 by martello

Posts
18

Good morning,

the approach to inharmonicity is interesting... simulators are often too "clean" and do not give the idea of a real instrument, especially when talking about upright pianos where the strings are shorter.

I wonder if it is possible to test these differences also on digital or hybrid models, to understand how well the software manages to simulate 20th-century temperaments... thanks for sharing!

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