Skip to main content

I am getting an increasing number of keyboards and modules and constantly messing with the tuning and detuning etc as things are now beginning to sound wrong to my ears.

I was wondering does anyone know whether anything exists which automatically tunes keyboards/modules/ even other instruments such as guitars to each other without having to rely on your ears? i.e. probably some electronic tuner or something?

Comments

jonyoung Thu, 07/22/2004 - 13:41

Ya got me there! What kind of inputs are on the keys? do you have any recording software, PT or Sonar etc..? You might feed and record a MIDI track with keys, purest tone available from the voice menu. I mix in Sonar , and seem to recall (but not absolutely sure since I don't track on it) that there's a tone generator built in. You could compare the appropriate keyboard note and generated tone and adjust keyboard oscillators from there. Adjust until the "beat" frquency disappears.

KurtFoster Sun, 07/25/2004 - 11:36

Just be sure to vari-tune all the keyboards at middle C. Pianos and keyboards all employ tempered tunings, so if you tune one instrument at the higher notes and another at the lower registers, you may encounter problems. Middle C is in the region on a piano that is not tempered. Notes below are tempered in one direction and those above are tempered in the other. This is one reason why when you want to tune an acoustic piano, you need to call a piano tuner instead of simply breaking out an electronic tuner, the tuning hammer and felts and twisting away.

As far as everyone using the same tuner, it is a practice I follow just to be safe .. it can't hurt. But I have sometimes questioned if it is really necessary ??? ... All electronic tuners use quartz crystals for reference because all quartz crystals vibrate at the same frequency. Once it is calibrated properly, for an electronic tuner to be "off", is in theory, impossible. It's like saying, "That rock (what a quartz crystal is) is wrong."

I suspect that inproper calibration and poor metering has more to do with any percived disparity between different tuners. I pose this more as something to discuss, not as fact.

Randyman... Sun, 07/25/2004 - 20:56

In my "semi-pro" experience - use a good tuner, and RECORD A REFERNCE TUNING TRACK!!! I get the the first "Tracked" instrument to be well in tune, and then lay down an "E" and an "A" to have at the head of each song - just in case the tuner comes up missing or broken...

Some keyboards may have an "A = 440" or "A = 441" reference etc - but I'm not very "hip" on Keyboards and samplers' tuning ability.

Later :cool:

x