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mmcirvinFor a long time I'd been borrowing Sam's nifty Korg TM-40 tuner/metronome to tune my guitar.
Actually, I've gotten pretty good at tuning by ear, judging from the relative pitches of the strings when I use the tuner. But since I don't have absolute pitch, the whole guitar gradually drifts off the beam without an external reference tone. In a pinch, Jorie's toy electronic keyboard actually isn't that bad. But every so often I go back to the electronic tuner.
I recently installed the gStrings Android app (the free ad-supported version) on my Sidekick 4G so that I'd have my own. It doesn't simultaneously double as a metronome like the Korg can (the author makes a separate metronome widget that I haven't tried), but otherwise it's a pretty nifty chromatic tuner with a bunch of tweakable settings.
I hadn't done the obvious experiment, though, to see if it agreed with the Korg.
I tried this today, both by measuring the pitch-pipe tones generated by one with the other, and by seeing if they agreed about my guitar. It appears that on my phone, gStrings' readings run about 2-3 cents sharp relative to the Korg, which is to say that its idea of correct pitch is 2-3 cents flatter. I'm guessing it will probably depend on the phone hardware, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were dead correct given a precisely calibrated clock chip in the phone. Of course I don't know which one is correct without a third standard, though if I had to choose I suppose I'd probably trust the Korg.
That's a difference on the order of 0.5 to 1 hertz at the frequencies I was testing. gStrings has an orchestral pitch adjustment that lets you tweak the pitch standard upward, but I think it goes in one-hertz increments.
Anyway, this difference isn't big enough for me to worry about, though a professional musician well might.
I suppose a really persnickety smartphone tuner could in principle use GPS as a means of precise frequency calibration.
Actually, I've gotten pretty good at tuning by ear, judging from the relative pitches of the strings when I use the tuner. But since I don't have absolute pitch, the whole guitar gradually drifts off the beam without an external reference tone. In a pinch, Jorie's toy electronic keyboard actually isn't that bad. But every so often I go back to the electronic tuner.
I recently installed the gStrings Android app (the free ad-supported version) on my Sidekick 4G so that I'd have my own. It doesn't simultaneously double as a metronome like the Korg can (the author makes a separate metronome widget that I haven't tried), but otherwise it's a pretty nifty chromatic tuner with a bunch of tweakable settings.
I hadn't done the obvious experiment, though, to see if it agreed with the Korg.
I tried this today, both by measuring the pitch-pipe tones generated by one with the other, and by seeing if they agreed about my guitar. It appears that on my phone, gStrings' readings run about 2-3 cents sharp relative to the Korg, which is to say that its idea of correct pitch is 2-3 cents flatter. I'm guessing it will probably depend on the phone hardware, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were dead correct given a precisely calibrated clock chip in the phone. Of course I don't know which one is correct without a third standard, though if I had to choose I suppose I'd probably trust the Korg.
That's a difference on the order of 0.5 to 1 hertz at the frequencies I was testing. gStrings has an orchestral pitch adjustment that lets you tweak the pitch standard upward, but I think it goes in one-hertz increments.
Anyway, this difference isn't big enough for me to worry about, though a professional musician well might.
I suppose a really persnickety smartphone tuner could in principle use GPS as a means of precise frequency calibration.
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no subject
Date: 2011-07-15 12:22 pm (UTC)