How to Set Up Pianoscope (Pro) for the Beginning Technician

Intro:

“What we think makes Pianoscope so well-suited for the professional piano technician and aural tuner is the ideology behind its development: to create a tool that would complement the skills set, education, training, and knowledge of the professional piano technician and aural tuner in a way that enables them to make the most efficient use of their abilities via seamless communication between the tool and its user.”

If you haven’t read our article, An Introduction to Pianoscope (Pro), you can read more about why we recommend the Pro version and the many features that make this app such a great tool for technicians at any level.

Pianoscope (Pro) has a lot of appeal for the beginning piano technician due to its comparatively lower cost and impressive, high-quality functionality. The user manual is more like a first lesson in piano tuning: it organically discusses all the necessary concepts and terms you need to know to use the app and understand how it works.

Click here to read the Pianoscope User Manual.

However, since one of Pianoscope’s strengths is its high level of customization, the first setup can be an intimidating process for beginners. In this article, we’ve attempted to demystify some of this process by presenting a basic, recommended set-up starting point and a quick overview of where all these features are and how they apply to your work as a beginning aural tuner.

Quick Tip: We recommend bookmarking the User Manual along with our Pianoscope articles here on ProPTN for quick reference access as you are getting familiar with this tool.

Downloading the app:

First, we recommend starting with the 14-day free trial and then segueing to the monthly subscription for the app, priced at $15.99/mo. This economical option will allow you to get a sense of how the app’s interface functions and what the tuning process entails so that you can then make an informed choice about whether or not you want to make a longer-term and bigger financial investment in the tool. To download the app now, click here.

Getting started:

Pianoscope calculates a tuning for any piano by measuring its inharmonicity and determining the target pitch of each note based on a formula calculated according to the Tuning Style and Temperament you select when creating your Tuning Document.

The Temperament selection determines how the ratios of the intervals surrounding your target pitch are calculated. The Tuning Style determines the amount of stretch those ratios accommodate as the temperament is applied to the full piano. (If this sounds confusing now, don’t panic. The more you learn through hands-on practice, the more these gaps will fill themselves in.)

How to Set Up Your First Tuning Document:

As a beginner, you may be practicing on your own home piano, in which case the first document you can create is one you title “My Piano”. 

You can then include information such as the brand name, model name, and serial number: where the app prompts you to do so.

There is also a place where you can include any additional Notes that you may want to keep track of for that particular piano, such as any known problems or quirks that you may want to check every time you service the instrument (i.e. pedal adjustments, individual key adjustments, individual tuning pin problems, customer information, or PLSS service notes, etc.).

In that same dialog pictured above, you are prompted to choose your Tuning Style, Temperament, Range, and Concert Pitch.

For the beginning student, we recommend the following settings for those options:

​​This is assuming your piano is already close to being “up to pitch.” If your piano is closer to A=435Hz, set the Concert Pitch to 438Hz for the first tuning. And then move up to 440Hz for the next & all following tunings. If you’re at 430 to start, set the Concert Pitch to 433 for the first pass and 435 for the second pass. If you’re as low as 420, you can probably bring it up to 430 on the first tuning (425 on the first pass, and 430 on the second pass), and then 435, then 438, then 440, respectively on each of the following three tunings.

→ This is a conservative method of pitch raising that will minimize the risk of broken strings. To read more about pitch raising techniques, visit our article, A Plethora of Pitch Correction Methods.

As your aural skills and understanding of tuning theory grow, you’ll have more knowledge and experience to adjust this setting to better suit the needs of an individual piano or pianist’s preference.

Equal temperament is the one you’ll generally use, but note that an extensive selection of temperaments (especially historical) is also available and included with the cost of the Pianoscope (Pro) version.

This is your standard piano keyboard configuration, which can be easily adjusted if you’re working on a Bösendorfer concert instrument or an historical instrument.

Quick Tip: You can also Make Default the concert pitch, tuning style, temperament, and range that you will use most often in your practice and eventually in your work. You can always go back to edit those selections later by accessing the Instrument dialog through the Three-dot Icon menu at the top right of the screen:

Don’t be overwhelmed by the custom setup options! Follow this quick rundown of the different customizations available and our recommendations for the best setup for the beginning aural tuner.

As you become more comfortable with the interface you can always come back and make adjustments until you find the setup that works just right for you. Going through each feature will also teach you where each customization is so that if there is one that is particularly distracting or unhelpful to you right from the start, you immediately know where to go to turn it off.

(Which you will find in the Three-dot Icon menu pictured above.)

For all of the following screenshots, make sure that the settings for the Pianoscope app on your device matches the settings in each image below:

Click on Pitch:

Click on Indicator:

You’ll notice that we suggest setting the Freeze function to “Off” in this dialog. We’ll come back to this at the end as there are more customization options for this feature in the relevant dialogs but they’re not something you need to be concerned with as a beginning user.

Click on Scale:

Go back to the Indicator dialog, and click on Textual Display:

First go through the Concert Pitch display settings:

Then go through the All Other Notes display settings:

These settings will give you the following information when playing each note on the piano on the Tuning View interface:

There is a lot more information that can be displayed (and which we'll cover in a later article) but for the beginner we recommend keeping the interface display as simple as possible.

Go back to the Pitch dialog, and click on Strobe:

Go back to the Pitch dialog, and click on Target:

Now go all the way back to the Settings dialog, and click on Partials:

We recommend turning on the Partials feature right from the beginning so that you can become familiarized with partial location on the keyboard. We’ll discuss partials in a later article, which we recommend reading once you’re comfortable with your tuning technique and feel ready to level up your understanding and application of piano music theory to your aural tuning skills.

Go back to the Settings dialog, and click on Header:

Go back to the Settings dialog, and click on Audio:

Click on Audio Input:

Screengrab video of the Audio Input dialog

The meter here reflects the current level of the audio signal recorded by the app through your selected microphone option. It’s important to make sure that the peak does not reach the red area when playing piano notes, otherwise distortion will occur during recording.

The shown selected settings are preferable because the microphone is only deactivated when the tone generator is creating tones through the built-in speaker. When using a headset (such as earbuds), however, this will allow Pianoscope to continue to analyze the tones played on an instrument even when the tone generator is active through the headset. With this configuration you will be able to aurally tune instruments without the visual feedback from the generated tone.

Quick Tip: If you are having problems with the app detecting the piano notes while you’re recording or tuning, check to make sure that:

Go back to the Audio dialog, and click on Tone Generation:

In conjunction with the above settings, allowing Bluetooth connectivity in the Tone Generation dialog here allows you to generate tones in a headset or earbuds without disabling the microphone on your device.

Go back to the Settings dialog, and click on Note Names:

Customize the Toolbar:

You will also have the option to customize the toolbar for the Tuning View interface.

Click on Customize Toolbar:

The more you use the app, the more you’ll get a sense for which shortcuts will be the most useful for your work.

Now you’re ready to start using Pianoscope!

Measuring Inharmonicity.

In order for Pianoscope to calculate the tuning curve for your piano, it needs to first measure the inharmonicity of the instrument.

Screengrab video of the Measure Inharmonicity prompt screen

The app is built in such a way that it is not necessary to strip-mute the piano before taking this measurement, but I prefer to do so in order to get the most accurate pitch measurements, since, while you are measuring inharmonicity, you are also measuring the instrument’s current pitch.

→ For step-by-step instructions, tips, and best practices for strip-muting a piano, check out our article, How to Strip Mute.

This is particularly important if you’re working on a piano where the unisons are significantly unmatched as you will need to know the approximate pitch to determine the appropriate Concert Pitch for excessively flat instruments. (See note underneath the “Concert Pitch” recommended setting above.)

While measuring inharmonicity and pitch, you can swipe up and down to switch between the two charts.

Screengrab video showing alternating between Inharmonicity & Pitch charts

Go ahead and do this in Fine Tuning mode as that will give you the optimal curve for you to work with on your piano and best facilitate the development of your aural skills.

Screengrab video of the Fine Tuning prompt screen

Make sure that Automatic Key Selection is turned on for the entire range and that Idealized Curve is selected with the Weighting set to about 85%.

Screengrab video of Automatic Key Selection setting menu

Screengrab video of Curve settings menu

Begin Measuring Inharmonicity:

Place your device so that the microphone is in a place where it can clearly pick up each note as they are played. It should take no more than three minutes to record each of the 75 notes needed (all keys minus octave 7) to create the optimal tuning curve for the instrument.

Video demonstrating the process of measuring inharmonicity & pitch values

To re-record any missed (grey-shaded) or outlier notes, just tap on the key for that note on the screen and replay it on the piano. The app will prompt you to re-record any missed notes by highlighting them in red at the end of the measurement sequence.

Video demonstrating the process of re-recording any missed notes

Video demonstrating the process of re-recording any outlier notes

Quick Tip: Screenshot the pitch chart to save wherever you archive your client information to easily and quickly track stability across multiple tuning appointments.

Once you take the inharmonicity measurements for a piano, you don’t have to do this again before each tuning appointment;, you can just open that instrument’s document and jump right into tuning. However, if you wanted to take pitch measurements before a tuning, you can still do this in the same mode with the pitch chart facing during the ~3-minute recording process.

Once you press Done, it will take you to the Tuning View interface where you can begin tuning.

For your first practice sessions, start your tuning sequence at the first trichord above the tenor break. Tune the center strings of each trichord up to the treble break.

Video of tuning the tenor section using Pianoscope

Then, turn your screen off, and go back to aurally tune the unisons across that same section.

This will start you on the path to:

When you’re finished with that, strip mute the tenor section (all of the trichords before the treble break) again and tune the center strings a second time. (If you had to set your Concert Pitch to a lower pitch initially, bump it up to the next pitch for this next pass.)

Once you’ve finished all the trichord center strings up to the treble break, continue tuning center strings up through the end of the treble section (to C8). When you’ve completed tuning all the trichord center strings, go back down to the first bichord on the right side of all of the wound strings and tune one string from each bichord and all of the monochords as you move right to left.

Quick Tip: Make sure the Freeze feature is turned on (see below) while you’re tuning the treble and the bass (i.e. the wound strings: bichords and monochords) sections and pay more attention to the location of the light grey line rather than the red line.

Once all the trichord center strings are tuned. Then go back and tune all the unisons aurally starting from lowest trichord again all the way up to the C8 trichord.

As mentioned above, we recommend having this feature set to “Off” in the Settings→Pitch→Indicator dialog, but then adding a shortcut to the Toolbar (see recommended Customize Toolbar configuration, above). That way you can quickly turn it off and on as you find it useful.

Screengrab video demonstrating the Freeze feature--the snowflake on the toolbar--being turned on and off

You may have noticed the Freeze feature being active in the tuning videos above. The Freeze feature employs a light grey line to indicate the precise pitch at the point of attack in addition to the red line indicator which represents the pitch as it variates throughout the tone’s decay.

For the beginning user, the Freeze feature is most helpful for tuning in the lowest and  highest octaves since the decay can be particularly erratic in those areas.

Video of tuning in the treble section using the Freeze feature

Don’t worry too much about getting the grey line perfectly in the center. As long as three or four out of five times the line hits where you want that note’s pitch to ultimately land you should be good.

For the beginner we recommend starting any necessary pitch raises by looking at your pitch graph (Three-dot Icon→Inharmonicity→swipe up for Pitch graph) and choosing a starting Concert Pitch three to five cents above the average for the lowest section of notes on the graph.

For example, if you look at the graph below:

You’ll notice that in the tenor section (from E3 through about the fifth octave), all of the notes are about 30 to 10 cents flat (we’ll talk more about exactly what that means in a later article). In this instance, we would recommend setting your concert pitch to about A=436Hz. Then you would tune the trichords from tenor break up to the treble break (center strings first using the ETD, then unisons aurally) as pass number one. If in the process of tuning the center strings to the ETD you come across any notes that are reading as sharp (for example F4, A4, E5, etc.), just skip those on that pass rather than de-tuning them.

Then, after you’ve finished tuning the unisons, strip mute  the tenor section again, change the Concert Pitch to 438, and tune the center strings of the tenor section and the treble section to 438 using the ETD. Then go back to the wound strings and tune the open string of each of the bichords and all of the monochords from right to left.

Then remove the strip mutes and tune all of the unisons starting from the tenor break and moving up the piano to your right, ending with going back down to the strings to the left of the tenor break and then tuning your way through the unisons down to the last bichord.

We’ll cover the specific feature Pianoscope has for doing pitch raises in a later article but feel free to read up on how it works in the User Manual if you’re curious. For now, just focus on using the setup we’ve presented above to begin developing proper tuning techniques and training your ears to recognize pure unisons.

Hopefully this article provides a helpful starting point for the beginning aural tuner trying out Pianoscope! If you have any questions, feel free to post them in the ProPTN Discord where any of our technician members would be more than happy to troubleshoot and help you with any issues you encounter.