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What are great ways to tune to right key (AUV3) without relying on ear.
Someone I know needs iOS help with tuning to the right key with his apps (Synths, Instruments) with Auv3 preferably. They have no play by ear experience. Whats the best way to find the right key for tuning with no ear training. There are a couple tuner apps, but aren’t reliable, unfortunately they aren’t always accurate and leads you far off track. NA Tuner is the only app that’s Auv3 other than the 4pockets, which I haven’t tried. NA Tuner is also more meant for guitar bass. Are there any other good apps that are for sure to track the right key or more like the exact frequencies of a key note at 100% accuracy. What’s the best option for this situation? Even if Auv3 isn’t available, If it at least means getting to tune right note. I myself usually play it by ear or compare with another tuned instrument just to confirm, but the same can’t be said for some. I tried doing research online and im not getting or finding what I’m looking for.
Comments
TB Equalizer with its spectrum + piano keyboard display is quite good for that because it lets you choose which harmonics of the sound you actually intend to tune.
Set one band to high Q factor and drag it across the spectrum to find the right pitch.
It will show you the piano key while dragging.
It wont show you the pitch with cents precision but since you're looking for the right key, that should work.
You are a bit unclear on what you want to tune and in what context. Maybe buy a hardware tuner, they are really cheap.
Thanks for the info. Looks like a helpful way thanks
I’m talking about tuning presets from your instrument apps. I guess how to tune piano iOS apps is more of what I meant. If a certain preset is off key. Like if you load up an AU app like SynthMaster or Pure Synth into your Daw and isn’t on right key what to tune a preset and can be and play on scale. Even for making presets. @rs2000 just recommended TB Equalizer and sounds like a good way to do. Are the Hardware tuner better than tuner plugins/apps? My friend uses his iOS apps and not any hardware.
I dont know if the hardware is better than the software. But you suggested the software was not reliable in your initial post. I never heard somebody say their quality hardware tuner was not reliable
In what way are the software tuners unreliable?
What do you mean by the right key for tuning?
One tunes to a note—unless you are talking about l non-equal-tempered tuning.
OP is asking about tuning synth patches, which a conventional tuner will struggle with. With a spectrum analyzer you can filter which frequencies it should prioritize, and if it has an easy freq-to-note like rs2000 suggested then the better
But really there’s no substitute for tuning by ear in this scenario. I know it’s specifically what’s not being asked for, but there are no miracles
If the goal is to be able to do what’s stated, then I would recommend an ear training app.
It’s not that hard to learn how to tune a pitch to another. It’s like tuning a guitar’s strings with one another
And a valuable skill to develop, for anyone that’s serious about music
I don’t think a spectrum analyzer is necessary going to be a good indicator of accurate pitch either as we perceive blended frequencies and overtones as something other than the fundamental frequency. You’re absolutely right that the best way is to train your ears, and there are a ton of training apps out there.
There is no objective standard for what sounds in tune, or in the right key. This is an artistic choice, contingent on the context of what came before and what comes after. Outsourcing it to an app means abdicating that choice to the app's programmer.
What is the point of making music that does not reflect how you hear? The only way in to your own personal music is to develop your own ear, and the only way to do that is to try again and again.
Without the human ear involved, you might as well let AI compose for you.
I'm really not sure if the OP question is clear.
I could also read it as "What are great ways for someone who doesn't know how to play by ear to play in a certain key without playing bad notes?"
If so then the potential answers are a lot different.
Most samples and loops should have that marked in the file name, but if you are talking samples and loops that don’t have the key specified in the name then an Au tuner or Tonality can help.
If you are talking playing in key you can often set your specific scale inside most apps, keyboards, sequencers, etc. so the notes can only be played in one key. ie Xequence Keys, Tonality Chord Pads
You can filter midi using various apps to make sure all notes will be in the key you set. Ie Mozaic, Rozeta
Most piano rolls allow you to highlight a specific key, or even force notes into that key. Ie Atom 2, LK.
If you want to know or learn the scales, there’s tons of apps and web resources available to learn the notes/chords of each key, simply start with the major and minor. There’s great apps out there like Tonality, that show you so many Keys with all included notes and chords. Also plenty of charts online.
Are we simply talking about how to make sure your A is 440 (or whatever you intend)? Do we mean "ensuring the whole instrument is actually in tune"? The ambiguities in this thread are baffling, and I think originate with the phrase "finding the right key" and the mentions of scales. Unless you're talking about microtonal stuff outside the equal temperament universe, or intonation in MPE, or how to play wacky non-chromatic pads like Mononoke, scales should have nothing to do with it, right?
But I have another confusion: if someone already knows that synth patches mightn't be in tune and wants to ensure that they are in tune, this suggests to me that they're actually doing sound design (because I can't remember the last time any of the vanilla soft synth presets I've used were unintentionally or gratingly out of tune from A440). But if they're doing sound design and can't yet tell pitch by ear, I think there's a disconnect happening.
I'm the last person to gatekeep, because I'm probably more of an embarrassing outsider musician than most here. I recently gave my daughter a tuner to put on her guitar headstock and installed locking tuner machine heads after she complained how hard her stock Squier Strat was to keep in tune. But if she couldn't tell something was comparatively the correct pitch and relied solely on the tuner, I think she'd be missing out on some basic musical education. Is this what you mean by "no play by ear experience"?
If you'd said that they just wanted the convenience, or wanted to be 100% accurate, sure. And meanwhile, I have what must be a very common tuning-by-ear deficiency, in that I always tend to think that brighter sounds are just so slightly flatter by a few cents than they really are. Is that what we're talking about? I get that. But if we're not talking about that, going straight to "objective tuning" and bypassing doing it by ear removes a vital bit of musical training, I would think.
(Sorry if I came off like an asshole — that was not my intent. I'm also very much a musical neophyte, and just very confused about the scenario being described.)
No worries. You're just trying, like others, to be sure the right question is answered.
It's tough to know how to ask the right questions sometimes, and then it gets really confusing when there's a wide variety of answers and discussion about things one wasn't really asking about but didn't know the right terms for.
Hopefully the OP will be able to sift through all this and clarify the question a little.
It's not quite clear yet what exactly we're looking for, but I'll mention these two apps:
Pitch Moni
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pitch-moni/id1670800089
Chord Moni
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/chord-moni/id6445883570
If there's a Mac you can also plug your ipad into USB over IDAM to pipe the audio into the Mac, and analyze the Mac system audio with Mixed In Key Live (a Mac menu bar app that's using a Rogue Amoeba system extension and is different from their DJ software which sells under a similar name).
Clicking the menu bar it then show you this or a more compact form. below it's showing the result from this track played in Youtube. It also shows the notes played in a song in addition to the key.
It also uses the camelot notation with numbers for the circle of fifths which is quite useful and is easier than remembering which note is next to which.
Having something like this on the ipad would be very useful indeed.
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To be fair, while I’d assume most synths have oscillator frequency knobs that are clearly and visibly set relative to A440 or whatever you’d specify globally in some setting, it’s not inconceivable that someone puttering about as a beginner might open iVCS3 for the first time and lose their mind like I did!
But yeah, to be in the thickets of that territory and have no experience with pitch sounds so unlikely to me.
The discursive and confusing nature of your original question and this reply, the apparent confusion between "key" and reference pitch, make me wonder if you're a real person, or a ... It seems like you're just trolling for random discussion around this topic.
What is there not to understand. Of course I’m a real person what kind of crap is that. Wtf did that come from. Trolling for a discussion, bro you don’t even make sense
Bad notes is a totally subjective concept though. Any note can sound good in any key, even within a totally vanilla aesthetic. It all depends on what note comes before and after.
@majorwizard047 - there is a lot to not understand from the way the question was asked, as you've probably seen from the wide range of ways people have tried to answer it.
Can you try to state the question in a different way?
People are trying hard to help, but haven't been able to get a clear idea of what you're trying to accomplish. That's not your fault. However, you'll get better answers if you can help clarify the question.
Of course. But the goal is to coax out the real meaning of the OP's question, not to be technically correct in every phrase. I'm not sure how wandering off into musical interpretive theory helps with that.
Here’s the crux: If you outsource creative decisions to an app designed to give you the most conventional answer, then your music will sound like the most conventional, least adventurous music. This is not an inherently bad thing, but it is an artistic choice in itself.
I think OP is asking for that as a shortcut to avoid ear training, and I am observing that there is no shortcut to ear training. Music is all about listening more and more deeply.
The confusion is whether OP is asking for a magical way to find the right combination of notes to play (which I gather is your interpretation), or figuring out if an instrument is actually out of tune in terms of its frequency calibration, which as has been pointed out is only likely if you’re in far nerdier territory than the question seems to suggest.
Of course, your point about being adventurous with learning could still apply to the latter scenario (“you need to figure out what’s artistically at stake when pitch lies outside the widely accepted 12 notes, with A tuned to 440Hz”), but the basic substance of the question probably needs clarification first.
Say I need to tune my synths to match my physical kalimba, which can’t be tuned. (Right?) Is this what we’re talking about?
If a patch is not tuned to A 440, then I would use my ear, but a tuner app like Sonosaurus TonalEnergy might also be of help here. But first the novice would have to determine that the patch is not at 440, which is not the sort of ability a novice would have.
Exactly. This is what hurts my brain about the question as I understand it. You’ve said in a sentence what I’ve been wrestling with over multiple posts. 😭
What hurts my brain is talking about key and tuning. Key is irrelevant unless one talking about non-equal temperament.
@majorwizard047 : as others have asked , can you describe in a different way what your friend is trying to do.
My kalimba came with a little hammer to tune it by shifting the tines forward to back.