pianoscope User Manual

pianoscope requires an iPhone or iPad with at least iOS 15.

You download the app via the Apple App Store onto your iPad or iPhone. The mere download is free of charge. Via this link you can quickly and easily access pianoscope in the App Store.

On the first start the In-App Purchases panel appears with the options to test and buy pianoscope.

When you start pianoscope for the first time, the document browser appears as you know it from other apps like Pages or Numbers. To create a new document, tap on the plus symbol in the upper right corner:

In the following panel you can define the basic settings for the new document. You can exit at any time by tapping on Cancel in the upper left corner.

First you choose a name under which the document will be listed in the Documents Browser.

In pianoscope pro you can enter additional information such as the manufacturer, the model name or the serial number of an instrument. However, you may also leave these fields empty.

You can enter additional information about an instrument in pianoscope pro under Notes. To do so, tap on the row named Notes and enter any text in the following dialog. You finish the input by tapping on the back arrow in the upper left corner.

By choosing the tuning style you determine which slow-beating intervals pianoscope should tune as pure as possible. The following styles are available:

The default setting Balanced strives for a balance of as pure octaves and twelfths as possible.

To select a different tuning style, tap on the corresponding row. In the following dialog, select the row with the desired style and then tap the back arrow in the upper left corner.

By default, pianoscope uses an equal temperament to calculate the tuning curve. If you want to use a different one, tap on the line Temperament. In the following dialog you can select one of about 70 common temperaments from older and more recent history or create your own.

The offered temperaments are divided into the following categories:

By default, the temperaments are sorted by the year of their publication within their categories. However, you can also sort them by name using the menu.

If you swipe down further at the top of the list, a search field appears. Enter a search term to reduce the content of the list accordingly.

To select a temperament, simply tap on the corresponding line. Your selection will be indicated by a red check mark.

If you are interested in the details of a temperament, tap the information icon at the end of a line. The following dialog contains the offsets that pianoscope uses when calculating the tuning curve with this temperament.

You can also use pianoscope to tune instruments such as harpsichords and spinets, which have a much smaller range than regular pianos. To do this, select the lowest and highest note of their compass. pianoscope will then consider only the notes from this range in all calculations and in all views.

Here you define the frequency to which the concert pitch A4 should be tuned. Around this tone, pianoscope calculates the individual tuning for the instrument.

The default value is 440 Hz. To change it, tap on the concert pitch row. In the following dialog, you can select a frequency between 370 Hz and 524 Hz with up to two decimal places by turning the selection wheels on the left. Alternatively, you can use the selection wheels on the right to specify the offset from the 440 Hz default concert pitch in cents.

If you frequently tune instruments in the same way, you can make your settings the default for new documents. To do this, simply set the desired values for the concert pitch, tuning style, temperament, and range, and then tap the Make Default button. From now on, new documents will automatically receive these settings.

When you are satisfied with all settings, tap the Create button in the upper right corner. This creates a new document with the selected settings.

The document will then open automatically and you will be taken to the Tuning View.

To reopen the document browser, tap the documents icon in the upper left corner of the toolbar.

In the upcoming view you can manage existing documents. To open a document, simply tap on a document icon. To rename, move, duplicate and delete, tap and hold a document icon. Folders can be created using the menu in the upper right corner.

Before pianoscope can calculate a tuning for a piano, it must know the inharmonicity of all strings and the relative intensities of the most important partials. You measure both in the inharmonicity view when you tune an instrument for the first time. If no measurement is available yet, the tuning view will ask you to perform it.

If you have already measured the inharmonicity before, you can open the corresponding view via the Inharmonicity item in the menu.

By default, pianoscope prepares a measurement for fine tuning and asks you to play all notes from A0 to C7 for one second each. The range to be played is grayed out on the keyboard.

However, if you only want to tune an instrument coarsely, tap the Fine Tuning button and switch to a Coarse Tuning in the appearing menu.

pianoscope will now mark only all As and Es of the first six octaves for the coarse measurement.

A coarse tuning saves you time because you only measure a sample of notes, from which pianoscope automatically creates a model for all other notes. A coarse measurement does not fully reflect the characteristics of an instrument, especially in the bass range, but it is sufficient for many purposes.

If you often start with coarse tunings, you can also make this setting the default for new documents in the pro edition of pianoscope. To do this, tap the Coarse tuning button again and select Make Default in the menu that appears.

The following measurement procedure is the same for fine and coarse tunings.

Play the first tone A0 and hold it for one second. While the tone sounds, the current key slowly fills with green color.

If the whole key is green, the measurement was successful and pianoscope asks you to play the next key.

For each successful measurement a point is drawn in the chart. The higher up a point is drawn, the greater the inharmonicity. The horizontal grey lines represent a factor of ten.

After you have measured the first two notes, pianoscope calculates the expected idealized progression of inharmonicity for all keys. The more notes you measure, the more accurately the displayed curve reflects the reality of the instrument.

You can interrupt a measurement at any time by pressing the pause icon in the function bar at the top left. To resume, press the switch again.

While measuring the inharmonicity of a string, pianoscope simultaneously determines the relative intensity of each of the first ten partials. However, the values measured in this process are not displayed in the inharmonicity view, but appear as color gradients of the Deviation Curves in the Tuning Curve View.

If you have decided on a coarse measurement, you can play any other notes in addition to the required notes at any time. You also do not have to adhere to the order specified by pianoscope. In this example, the bass range was measured more finely, but the tenor and treble were only measured with samples.

You do not need to measure the high treble above C7, since the position of the partials there is irrelevant for the calculation of the tuning.

From the inharmonicity values of the measured notes pianoscope constructs an idealized curve from which it derives the inharmonicities of the other keys. For the measured notes it directly uses the measured values by default. Via the menu you can display the resulting curve that pianoscope will use for the calculation of the tuning.

If the measured inharmonicities contain many jumps, the Tuning Curve calculated by pianoscope will also contain discontinuities which reflect the characteristics of the instrument. If you prefer smoother tuning curves, pianoscope can alternatively use a weighted average of measured and idealized inharmonicities. To do this, select the Weighting item in the menu. In the following dialog you can use the slider to set the desired weighting.

By default pianoscope recognizes which note you are playing and automatically selects the corresponding key in the tuning view. However, this is not always desirable. Therefore pianoscope offers different settings. The second symbol from the right in the toolbar indicates the currently active mode for the automatic key selection. When you tap on the icon, a menu appears that allows you to change this setting.

The chromatic settings are useful if you like to use other notes for comparison while tuning. They can also prevent the selection from skipping when there is background noise.

In all of the settings you can always directly change the selection by tapping the on-screen keyboard.

You can freely change the size of the on-screen keyboard by pinching.

The scale with the red pointer represents the deviation of the currently sounding tone from its target pitch in cents. The target - the zero - lies in the middle. If the indicator is to the left of it, the tone is flat; on the right it is sharp.

The scale is not linear: the closer the indicator is to the center, the more sensitive it is to pitch changes. In the area directly around zero, the resolution is better than 0.05 cents, in the outer area it is about 2 cents. If you also want a textual representation of the deviation, you can activate it in the Settings. It will then appear below the indicator.

Via the Settings in the menu you can activate the strobe, which also shows the deviation of the currently sounding note from its target pitch. Its movement mimics the audible beats between two strings sounding simultaneously. If it runs to the left, the tone is too low. If it moves to the right, it is too high - the faster, the stronger. If it comes to rest, you have reached the tuning target. The movement can also be spotted from the corner of your eye, so you don’t have to permanently focus on the screen.

If you like it tidy, you can also display the stroboscope without scale and pointer. In this display you can purely focus on the movement of the strobe without distraction.

By default, the tuning view only shows the pitch of the currently sounding note when you play an A4. This is helpful to decide which concert pitch is appropriate for an instrument when starting a tuning. In the Settings you can activate the display of the current frequency for all other notes.

Since pianoscope knows the inharmonicity of all strings and always calculates a complete tuning, you can tune the notes in any order. An exception is the automatic Pitch Raising, in which you have to work strictly from the bottom up.

For unison strings, you should tune a first string of the unison with pianoscope while the others are muted. The remaining strings should then be tuned by ear. Basically, with an accuracy of more than 0.01 cent, pianoscope is precise enough to allow you to tune the remaining unison strings via the display. However, you have more control over the sound and decay of a unison by using your hearing.

The pitch of a piano tone is not always constant during its decay. In the midrange, it can fluctuate by a few cents depending on the force of the keystroke. In the treble, undamped and duplex strings also influence the perceived pitch and the display of pianoscope. As a piano tuner, you decide in such situations which sound phase of the note to focus on. In the midrange, it is common to use a later phase of the tone, for example, from 2 seconds after the strike. In this phase, the pitch variations are less pronounced between different keystroke strengths. Using your eyes, you then determine the center around which the red pointer or the stroboscope moves.

However, tuning according to this late phase does not necessarily lead to optimal tuning results, as it occurs less frequently in played music. Therefore, it is advisable to orient yourself to the pitches shortly after the strike, as our musical perception is particularly sensitive to the beginning of tones.

The Freeze function of the pianoscope allows you to do just that. It fixes the position of the red pointer at a defined time shortly after the strike with a gray line.

Depending on the register, the freeze time varies between 300 and 500 milliseconds.

You can activate the freezing of the indicator under Settings > Pitch > Freeze.

Use the Freeze function as follows:

If required, you can additionally display the relative strengths of the first ten partials in the tuning view. You activate this via the General Settings.

Each of the orange bars shows a partial tone. The bar with the number 1 is for the fundamental and the numbers 2-10 for the respective overtones. The strengths of any other partials with higher numbers are not displayed. By default, the horizontal position of the bars represents the musical pitch of the partials. The vertical height, however, does not indicate absolute intensities, but only the relative strengths of the individual partials to each other.

By default, the pianoscope pro toolbar contains the name of the current tuning document and the following buttons from left to right:

On iPads with iOS 16 or later, the content of the toolbar is grouped slightly differently.

If you would like to have direct access to additional or other functions, you can customize the buttons shown in the toolbar. The following buttons are available:

To customize the toolbar, tap on Customize Toolbar in the main menu.

How the customization works depends on your device and the operating system version.

Here you can configure the content of the pitch display in detail and customize its display.

By default, the tuning view contains an area for displaying the current pitch.

With the main switch Pitch you can hide it completely. This is helpful if on small devices you want more space for the representation of the partials, for example to voice hammer felts.

The Tuning View can show the deviation of the current pitch from the target frequency in two different ways: As a cent scale with indicator and as a moving strobe. Here you can make settings for both display modes.

Activate the switch for the Partial Spectrum to display the relative strengths of the first ten partials in the Tuning View.

If you tune many different instruments, it can be helpful if you always keep an eye on the selected concert pitch, tuning style or temperament. To do this, you can display the settings of the current instrument in the header area of the tuning view.

Select up to three fields each for the left and right sides of the header area. To do this, tap the Add Field row for the desired side.

A list of available fields appears. Tap on a row to select the corresponding field.

iPhones hide the general system status bar in all apps in landscape mode. To keep an eye on time and battery charge while tuning with pianoscope, the fields Battery Charge and Time are available on iPhones. If you select them, they will appear in the header of the tuning view as soon as you work in landscape mode.

If you have selected multiple fields, you can also rearrange them later. To do this, tap and hold the handle at the right end of a row, and then drag it to the desired position.

To remove a header field, swipe to the left on the corresponding row and select the Delete button.

As soon as you exit the settings, the selected fields appear in the header area of the tuning view. However, Manufacturer and Model only appear if you have also entered values for them in the settings of the currently active instrument.

By default, a keyboard is shown at the bottom of the tuning view, indicating the currently tuned tone. If you have turned off Automatic Key Selection, tapping the keyboard will also change the current note. If the Automatic Key Selection,swipe gestures for changing the note are good enough for you, you can hide the keyboard via the switch.

Here you will find all settings to configure the sound recording and output of pianoscope.

The way of naming notes is different in various countries. By default, pianoscope uses the most common way of the region selected on your iPhone or iPad.

In the settings for note names, however, you can also freely choose how the notes and octave numbers should be displayed.

The user interface of pianoscope supports the following languages:

From them pianoscope selects the language that is first in the list of preferred system languages. This list can be found in the Settings app of your iPhone or iPad under General > Language & Region.

By default, this list contains only one language. However, you can add more at any time via the item Other languages …​ and put them in a preferred order.

If this list contains more than one language, you can even set a desired language for each app on your device individually, also for pianoscope under Settings App > pianoscope > Language.

With the item Change Language… you can also switch directly to the system language setting from the settings in the pianoscope app.

This function resets the general settings to default values. The instrument settings for the currently opened tuning document are not affected.

To open the tuning curve view select Tuning Curve from the menu.

Based on the chosen tuning style and the measured inharmonicity, pianoscope calculates an individual tuning for each instrument. In this view the result of this calculation is displayed graphically as a so-called tuning curve or Railsback curve.

The curve shows for each tone in cents how much the calculated pitch deviates from an equal temperament. Since the concert pitch is fixed, it is always located on the zero line. The tuning curve shows how much pianoscope has to stretch a tuning to compensate for the inharmonicity of an instrument.

Tap a key on the on-screen keyboard to show the exact value for pitch and deviation of a tone.

Jumps and irregularities in the inharmonicity curve are also reflected in the tuning curve, as in this example.

By tapping on the Styles button in the toolbar at the top left you open the list of tuning styles.

The basic styles displayed here are the same as in the Instrument Settings.

If you select an interval in the left list, the right side shows the so-called deviation curves. They indicate how much the frequencies of the respective partials in the interval deviate from each other. The closer a curve is to the zero line, the less beating will be audible for the corresponding partial combination in this range. The deviations are always mapped to the lower tone of an interval in the curves.

In this example you can see that the 4:2 octaves are tuned almost pure in their central range, while the 2:1 octaves are about 2 cents wider.

As an alternative to the dynamically calculated tuning curves, you can record the current tuning of an instrument as a so-called static tuning. Static tunings are an excellent way to save aural tunings and restore them later.

The cast frame of a piano can bear up to 20 tons of force. If an instrument is not tuned for a long time, this force decreases significantly and the tuning goes flat. When the pitch is raised again, the soundboard and plate deform, so that the pitches of strings that have already been tuned immediately drop again. The strings themselves also take a while to adjust to the new tension. This makes it difficult to reach the tuning target in a single pass.

If pianoscope knows the current tuning of a piano, it can calculate how much you need to overpull the actual tuning target to compensate for the interaction of soundboard, frame and strings. This means that a single pass is sufficient for a coarse tuning. A fine-tuning pass can be performed independently of the pitch raising after a couple of days.

You start the automatic pitch raising via the item Pitch Raise in the -menu.

To calculate the overpull, pianoscope first needs the following information about the instrument:

Tap Continue to advance to the next setting. By tapping on the flag symbol, you can skip all the following settings and directly start measuring the current tuning.

When the last setting is complete, tap Continue in the upper right corner of the toolbar.

Before pitch raising can really start, pianoscope must measure the current tuning of the instrument. For this you play the marked notes for one second each as samples. The procedure is similar to measuring the inharmonicity. By default, pianoscope marks every major second starting from the lowest note.

This provides a very good estimate of the current tuning state for most instruments. If you want to measure more or fewer notes, you can select a different note pattern using the note symbol in the main toolbar:

If an instrument is very unevenly out of tune, it is worth measuring as many notes as possible, for example with the patterns All white keys or All keys. If the instrument is very evenly out of tune, you can choose a pattern with fewer notes to save some time.

For each measured note, a point is added to the diagram above the keyboard. It indicates the deviation from an equal temperament. For comparison, the pitches of the intended tuning are shown in grey.

When you have finished measuring, tap on Done in the toolbar to start the actual tuning.

In order for the strings, soundboard and plate to move as calculated, you must tune the piano in a fixed order from bottom to top - from A0 to C8. You also tune the associated unisons as you go. In pitch-raise mode, the scale now shows an individual overpull marker for each note, which is located above middle zero. Instead of tuning to zero, you now tune to the marker to overpull the strings as calculated.

When pitch raising, the scale is linear because the target is no longer in the middle. Thus, the scale is accurate enough for a coarse pitch raise, even in the outer areas.

Alternatively, you can also use a scale with variable resolution during pitch-raising for very precise tuning. To do this, you need to set the Overpull target setting for the pitch-scale to At zero. The target pitch is then always at zero, and the original pitch is represented by a gray marker to the left of zero.

While pitch raising, the corresponding item in the -menu will appear in red to indicate that you are in pitch raise mode.

When you select the red menu item, a submenu opens with additional functions.

With the first item End you leave the pitch raise mode. If you were in the middle of a tuning, you can restart it at any time via the Resume item. However, make sure that you continue tuning with the note you left off with.

With the menu item New Pitch Raise you start a pitch raise with a new measurement.

Via the item Measurements you can view the results of the last measurement again at any time.

Via the menu item Settings you can change the settings before the next pitch raise up of the instrument.

You can change these settings at any time. But remember that this is usually not useful in the middle of a tuning. A warning dialog will alert you in this case.

Contrary to its name, you can also use the Pitch Raise function to lower instruments that are too sharp. Proceed in the same way as described above for pitch raising. pianoscope now shows markers in the tuning view that are below the actual tuning targets.

You start the tone generation by tapping the speaker icon in the main toolbar.

If you do not have a headset connected to your device, pianoscope now plays a continuous, synthetic tone. Its pitch, inharmonicity and partial strengths will correspond to the selected tuning curve and the characteristics determined during the inharmonicity measurement. Alternatively, if you prefer a pure sine tone, you can change this via the Settings.

To change the tone, simply select another key on the on-screen keyboard, or swipe & tap in the tuning scale.

As long as the sound generation is active, the speaker symbol in the function bar appears filled with color.

To stop sound generation, tap the speaker icon again.

When using headphones, the tone generator is now automatically reacting to notes played on an instrument and adjusts the generated pitch accordingly. This enables a novel way of electronically assisted tuning or training in which the tuner simply aurally matches the current pitch to the guiding tone played by pianoscope, similar to aurally tuning unisons.

If you tap the speaker icon while holding your finger down, a menu appears with more settings for the tone generator. If you activate the option As long as piano tone sounds, tones are only playing while you are actually tuning a note

To respond to the notes you play on the instrument, pianoscope uses either the microphone built into your device or the microphone on your headset. You can select this in the Audio Settings.