Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Use Audacity to SEE, HEAR, and MEASURE beats.

It's so simple, I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner. Use it to measure 4:2 and 6:3 octaves, to measure contiguous major 3rds. The possibilities are endless.

Use it to:
1) Record a beating interval
2) Enhance the beats
3) Listen to the beats from the computer
4) even measure and compare beat speeds,

But most importantly,

4) Go back to the piano and try to hear, with your own ears, what Audacity was able to create. Audacity's filtered wave form is something like what the skilled tuner's ear hears. With practice, most people can develop this skill. Audacity, combined with other techniques, shortens the time needed to develop a tuner's ear.

Watch my video here:

http://howtotunepianos.com/awesome-new-tool-to-help-students-tune-pianos-and-its-free/

This is a tool for beginning aural tuners to help them learn. When a beginning aural tuner has difficulty hearing or measuring beats, it can be frustrating, even devastating because the learning process basically crashes. This tool can help the tuner move forward and continue to practice the logistical skills, while improving their hearing at the same time.

Excellent!!!

I have a word to say about this topic.

This is how Doelkees has been measuring the beat rates of the audio files posted here by several posters.

For example:

Criticize My Temperament by Hakki

I asked Kees, via PM, how he measured the beat rates and he told me he uses the Audition software.

And there are more people measuring beat rates of intervals this way. Hakki himself, after that post, has made his own measuring:

A220-A440 Temperament Recording by Hakki


As I say in spanish:


Honor a quien honor merece!



We must credit Kees for this idea.

Hi Mark,

Cool video, and just wanted to say keep up the good work. Also, wanted to tell you that anyone can get the old version of Adobe Audition for free.

All you need to do is register with Adobe services (link below) and you will have complete/legal access to their old CS2 collection, which includes Audition 3. Simply click "I agree" when the last registration page shows they don't give support anymore and choose the Audition link.

Adobe site link

After installing the software, record/open your wave file of piano sound to analyze and select "Spectral Frequency Display" under the View menu.

Then use the zoom commands at the bottom to better see the beats and use the "hand" to drag the right side (above the Hz scale) to see the lower frequencies, which are the ones you are interested in. I'm sure you can find the rest yourself. Enjoy!

Rafael, I will not pretend to invent this idea, but I know you have a beef with me so that's fine.

Kees uses a frequency spectrum. This is a frequency filter. There is a difference. The main being this method allows the student to hear the beats. (You didn't even watch the video, did you?)

I am an aural tuner teaching aural tuning techniques. Kees' method is helpful no doubt, but it doesn't train the ear as easily as being able to actually hear the beats.

Truth be told, I know what a frequent spectrum is, but I never could figure out how Kees could measure beats from it; I never saw a way to measure one second as precisely as Audacity does. (Btw it's Audacity, not Audition).

Who cares who is first?

Background and prejudices aside: that was an excellent demonstration using technology to help focus our senses. This needs to be applauded--it is a great "shortcut" that is now available to be used freely by all in the learning process.

Why are great concepts so hard for people to see/hear?

Audacity is a great open source software.

All of what Mr. Cerisano has shown in this video is how easily to go about it with this software.

What is really cool is how he finally could in a few words explain to people how this software can be used for beginner tuners.

So right on.

PS. Then again, I'm kind of happy that I learnt to tune before the advent of these tools. Still organic for me, even though I use tunelab most of the time.

If I had a student, the last thing I would show this person, would be visual clues. In order to find out if this person had a natural ability.

But I also do live sound, studio work etc... And all the wonderful tools available now are quite mind boggling and extremely interesting.

So I can see a beginner embracing those tools.

Doelkees uses Audition from Adobe. It's Audition, not Audacity.

And yes, I saw your video. IMHO, this is not a good way to teach how to estimate beat rates. This is a way to visually measure what you can not hear.

Your video teaches how to VISUALLY measure the beat rate of an interval. You are teaching to trust our eyes, not our ears.

To learn aural skills you have to train your ears.

Using it as a tool to learn to aurally estimate beat rates, is only putting the horse behind the cart.

BTW: You don't have to measure one second. You only have to count as many beats as possible in the graph and see how much time they take, then you divide the number of beats by the amount of time and you get a very accurate beat rate.

It's easy to do the same thing in Reaper , or any DAW recording software. Reaper is free for purposes like this. It's a great program, but I'd guess it's a bit harder to master than Audacity.

What you can learn from analyzing musical waveforms in a good DAW, can be quite useful to a tuner. I stay away from over-analyzing and theorizing, so don't ask me to share any of my brilliant discoveries.

Everybody has a price.




HW

I must disagree that this is nothing more than a visual means of measuring beat rates... unless of course you don't have a sound card in your computer !

Being a purely aural tuner I recall being initially trained long before computers became part of everyday life. I, like many apprentices, had no idea how to ascertain the speeds of rapidly beating intervals .... slow beating intervals were easy enough, but trying to mentally count was no where near acurrate enough.

This method gives a much better and acurrate focus , enabling the listener to learn what progressive rapidly beating intervals actually sound like. Repeatedly listening to examples should indelibly imprint these different trill rates on the brain. It's no longer necessary to attempt to try to mentally count the number of beats per second, and much easier to listen to the actual acurrate beat rates. The only thing that I personally disagree with is the idea being put forward indicating the use of one second samples .... no I consider much longer samples would work better, enabling the brain to hook onto and commit to memory the correct sounds of differing ratios .... completely dropping the idea of having to focus on counting beats.

When I was learning to lay a scale, my mentor would examine it and constantly get me to compare my scale to one of his perfect examples. I had to strive to match his examples if I were ever to achieve the high standards of becoming a professional concert tuner.

This modern audio technology is like having a tutor looking over your shoulder 24/7 ..... all for free. Why stop at an individual interval ... why not record an entire perfect scale to commit to memory and compare to one's real life efforts ?
It's no different to relying on a top of the range ETD,except that they are visual, where as training your brain to recognise intervals using analytical software takes away any need for an ETD. I find this quite exciting, and wish this means of ascertaining progressive 3rds and 6ths were around back in the mid 60s when I started my training.

Let me explain what I mean. The goal is to hear the beats and, when comparing two beat rates, to be able to say which is faster.

Audacity, Audition and mainly ETDs give a visualisation of what you are supposed to hear.


BTW, to tune ET you do not need to count exactly x.xx bps! What you tune is a smooth progression in the beat rates of P5s, P4s, M3s, M6s, etc.

For doing that, you have to train your ears.

I agree with everything in your last post Rafael.

But here is my problem, and here is how I got here:

What do you do when someone has paid a lot of money to learn how to tune, is bright and quick, is determined, but just can't hear beats, or can hear them but can't tell 7bps from 8bps?

I have seen first hand, students going from not being able to hear, or hear differences, to saying "oh ya, now I hear it", just from listening first to how the beats sound in Audacity, and then listening to the piano.

Previously, I would have to say good-bye to the students after the course, knowing they would probably never pick up a hammer again.

Nothing can deflate my excitement about this new pedagogical tool.

I do not teach tuning to your students, so I do not know how they can learn to hear beats.

But I know how I learned myself and I have an idea on how I would teach piano tuning.

Beats in RBIs in short are like a snake hidden in a bunch of leaves, it is so well camouflaged that you can't see it... until it moves!

So start with a two string unison, in tune, no beats. Then very slowly detune it to make the beats appear.

Repeat with an octave, then a fifth, then a fourth and last with a third. When you listen at a third, or any other interval, that is being detuned from pure to wide, to pure, to narrow and then to pure again, you clearly hear the beats appear and then become faster and faster, then slower and slower, until they disappear and re-appear again, become faster and faster and then slower and slower and then diasappear again. If you do this, there is no way for anybody with normal hearing to not hear the beats and the moving beat rate. The snake is moving, it is now visible.

The next drill is to tune equal beating intervals. You hear at a reference interval, usually a P4, at about 1 bps, and you have to tune the adjacent fourth, above or below, to beat exactly the same.

Then you repeat that drill with other intervals. You can tune thirds or fifths or any other interval with 2 bps, then 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, up to 14 bps. The student is now able to replicate whatever beat rate he hears, in whatever interval he tunes.

Another excellent exercise is to tune contiguous major thirds that add up to form an octave and then check the octave, if it's wide or narrow retune each contiguous third until they add up to a nice octave. The student will find on his own that major thirds need to be wide to form a good octave.

It took me only two days of practice to be able to tune estimated ET tempered M3s F3A3, A3C#4 and C#4F4 to produce a good sounding F3F4 octave. Of course this worked only for F3F4 and only in that particular piano. But this was a wonderful drill on how to correctly temper CM3s without counting beats at all. By only estimating the same amount of tempering of CM3s.

You can next divide an arbitrarily tempered wide M6 into 3 minor thirds equally tempered. For example tune C3A3 to 8 bps wide and then divide it into 3 m3s C3D#3, D#3F#3, F#3A3 equally tempered. Only 2 notes to tune! It's easy!

Next you can practice to divide an octave into four equally tempered m3s. Take for example A2 and tune up four equally tempered contiguous minor thirds, A2C3, C3D#3, D#3F#3, F#3A3 to have a good A2A3 octave. The student will discover here that m3s have to be narrow and Major sixths wide in order to have a pure octave.

The next step could be to divide a M3 of an arbitrary wide size into four equally tempered P5s/P4s, as done in meantone setting (tetrasecting a major third). For example tune a 4 bps wide M3 CE and then tune CG, GD, DA, AE to have equal beating P5s, and proportional beating P4s/P5s, and equal beating P4s. There are only three notes to tune: G, D and A. Here is a good moment to explain why fourths are wide and fifths are narrow. Ask the student to tune them pure and see what happens with AE. Then contract the fifths an expand the fourths to get a good AE. Also an excelent drill in preparation for tuning ET.

In fact, if you are able to tune a good F3F4 octave, and then divide this octave into 3 CM3s and then to divide each M3 into four equally tempered P4s/P5, you have already tuned ET!

You can next learn interval tests: M3M10, M3M6, M6M10, m3M3, P4P5, etc. To refine your temperament.

These drills are first heared then tuned by the student. Developing little by little hearing and manual skills. Practicing until mastering before going to the next level.

This is in part how I learned and definitely the way I would teach.

As a teacher, you can imagine and design a complete battery of tuning exercises going from easy to difficult.

Don't forget ghost tones which are the equivalent of your equalization in Audacity, you hear only the coincident partials beating.

That trains not only hearing but tuning hammer techniques as well.

And this avoids all interferences from visualization.

But I know your approach is to teach tuning following the path of an actual tuning. This approach does not allow this kind of drills, which are never used by a tuner when he tunes a piano.

That's why I don't like your method. You confront the students to problems too much complicated that are out of the reach of their capabilities. And, obviously, you are faced to the reality that they are not able to hear and do what you ask them.

And you pretend to solve this lack of "know how", with the use of modern cybertechnollogy which doesn't develop aural and manual skills.

IMO, it is impossible to learn piano tuning in 20 hours as you pretend in your course. There are too many things to understand, too many things to learn and too many skills to develop.

I don't know if you realize that in all my descriptions there are no mathematical concepts which, instead of helping students understand, only create confusion. I am able to show them, or better: to make them discover by their own, why fifths and minor thirds must be narrow and fourths, major thirds and major sixths must be wide, with not a single arithmetic operation, with not a single mention of Pythagorean and Syntonic commas, not a single mention of partials and iH and all the mathematical stuff of ET and its 12th root of 2, etc. Of course, no computer and software needed, no ETD needed.

All this is based exclusively on hearing.

If there is a thing I would avoid if I were teaching piano tuning, it is for sure visual aids and mathematical concepts. That can be taught later when the student is able to tune the piano by ear and the visual tools and math concepts can help him understand the whys, whats and hows.

The better way of not being able to tune a temperament by ear is to tune it with an ETD.

PS: By doing the hearing and tuning exercises described above the student is practically forced to understand what pure, narrow and wide intervals are and to know what happens with the beat rate if he moves down or up the lower or the upper note of the interval. And because he learns by doing , it becomes second nature, no need to think, no need to solve a quiz.

Ha! You're right. I'm a bleedin' capitalist, so if the price is right, I'll spill it all out. -

Good response!

Mark Cerisano, RPT, your mistake was in titling: the "see" and "measure" part is confusing people. Yes that is possible, and yes that is awesome too, but the exciting part for pedagogy is the hearing part. That is what is really helpful in the learning process--especially when done with live feedback.

One could use a EQ, a microphone, and some earbuds to tune a piano while hearing the boost in audible beats. This is a great exercise: not only can the beating be turned up, but they can also be turned down to further judge perception--and/or to shift the attention to a different part of the tone for alternative ways of perceiving tuning/tone.

I wonder how BDB's hypothesis can explain how the EQ peak at 880Hz is able to boost the sound of the beats. In his world, there should be nothing special to hear there. Also interesting in Mark's video that the envelope modulation was what he used to count the beats.

A tunable band-pass filter would be all that's needed for a microphone->earbuds "tuning enhancement" app - I would think most smarphones have enough processing power to do this in real time. Or just an old analog synth module, a microphone, amp and headphones

Paul.

Rafael, we obviously misunderstand each other. I have been teaching for 10 years and I've taught over 200 students. I have already run through your hypothesis of teaching tuning that you write about and applied it in practice, and found its defects. Also, please accept that if one person has a beef with another, they will choose to see the bad side of the other. See below for my examples.



P4 do not beat at the same speed, they increase throughout the temperament in ET.


Not accurate enough

Three incorrect M3 can add up to an octave. Not good enough.


That is counting.


Arbitrary means practicing something you will never do when tuning a piano; an exercise. What do you say to your student when he says, "Ok, after I tune the three m3 to equal a M6, what do I do next?"


See above


I used to teach that for F3D4,G3D4,G3C4,F3C4, then confirm F3A3=7bps. (The White Anchor) Again, you can have incorrect P4 and P5 and still confirm F3A3 = 7bps. Not accurate enough.


What is a good F3F4? Just tune a wide 4:2 and narrow 6:3. But how you must be able to hear a beating m3 and M6. Audacity helps you HEAR the beats, doesn't just show you the beats.


With my Bisecting Window Temperament sequence, this type of refining is done while you are setting the temperament. Why do we have to wait until the temperament is finished to refine? Because the methods we use to initially set the temperament are not accurate enough. Also, my sequence requires you to constantly listen deeper into the sound so that by the time you are finished with the temperament, your ear is tuned to hear beat speed differences. Its like walking into a dark room; until you've been there for a while, you don't see very clearly.


I hate exercises. Why should I do exercises when I can learn how to tune a piano, and practice at the same time?


They don't work and are overrated. The top note needs to be accurately tuned in order to excite the partials of each interval note. And not equivalent; Audacity shows intervals visually. What a resource for visual learners. But the goal is to transfer the visual to the auditory.

Not as well as double string unison. Imagine feeling the effect of the hammer on pitch every time you want to change pitch of a note.


You say interferences. You are not a visual learning. Good on you. Everyone is not like you.


Hmm, I don't think they would like to hear you say that.


Hmmm, again. But they are now, with Audacity.


Hmmm, yet again. My students don't seem to share your intellectual mind candy. You should see the unisons my students are tuning after 10 hours of following my inferior "tuning procedure" method.


Ok mister, there you've gone too far. I can not stand it when others make their own inferences about what I do, in order to throw it back in my face to make me look stupid or incompetent, for their own selfish and hurtful reasons. You're not the only person who has done this to me. (I have not, never did, and will never say Bach created ET)

Read my webpage. No person can learn to tune a piano in 20 hours. (Although I did have one bright student who did an exceptional job.)

I tell all my students they will have to practice six months to a year.

From mrtuner.com FAQ page:
Q - How much practice will I need?

A - That does depend on your aptitude and basic musical skills, but on average, I would say, after a year of concentrated practice, you could be ready to pass the exams.



For you. I am not a teacher for all students. Students who do well with me have a high intellectual ability. I have a degree in mechanical engineering. I can't teach like I am a high school drop out. Not that that approach is not appropriate for some people.


Hmmm, what do they really know then? How can they talk to others. How do they think themselves out of difficult situations? They are just trained monkeys, IMO.



That is your opinion. That is not my experience. You seem to think you know so much about teaching tuning. So much so that you have the right to criticize my methods. Methods that I have developed over a decade. How many students have you taught? How many of your students are actually professional technicians? Despite what some people may think, I am not trying to "create" a market. People pay me a respectable fee to learn piano tuning and I have never been asked to refund the tuition, never, in ten years.

Also, with the closure of Chicago School of Piano Technology, it is a sign of the times; the demand for learning piano tuning will increase as there become less and less tuners in the market because of the drop in demand and the increased difficulty in making a living, notwithstanding the brilliant technicians out there. (We can't all be brilliant), and people in certain areas will have to pay high prices to tune their kid's piano, plus schools like CSPT close.

People will be forced to learn from individual technicians but it is not as easy as you seem to think Gadzar. Your style is not the only style. To be a good teacher, you need to be able to teach all types of learners, not just those who learn like you. I will often change styles and use some of the techniques you mention, if and only if the student will benefit, not by default like you are suggesting. My method by default promises exceptional accuracy if mastered. That's why it is the first method introduced. I give my students the best chance at exceptional success.

I think we've exhausted this subject. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify a subject so close to my heart.

I am in talks with a audio manufacturer to develop a unit like this. I have tested and confirmed it works, in real-time. I use a tuneable audio filter manufactured for the Ham Radio market.

I really like your EQ suggestion (basically the same thing as the tuneable audio filter.). I am looking for an app to do that but so far no luck.

Stop there! I never lie! I could never put words in your mouth!

If I say you have said something it's because you did it!

Here it is:

I just can't get my head around temperament...

For easy, I reproduce here what you have said in the above thread:




So yes, you did it. You have said you can teach piano tuning in 20 hours. It was not me who said that. It was you.

If that makes you look stupid or incompetent... I don't know. Answer to yourself, how do you think you look like?