Verituner info...

[Ron Koval]

Just a reminder - there is a Verituner user forum for those of you with 
specific questions...
www.veritune.com/forum

I noticed the recent pitch-raise questions with the Verituner.  I work in a 
region where pitch-adjustment is a constant.  +20 cents to - 20 cents is 
pretty common, but of course I run into the "new" clients where the larger 
adjustments are found.

My goal is a single-pass fine tuning.

I haven't attained that goal..... yet! (But I've had a lot of practice and 
keep compiling notes.)

With that goal, I've delved into just how this machine reacts to my actions. 
  Some clarification of the tuning modes may help someone out there.

Coarse tuning:  The "dice are rolled" as each new note is tuned. (Measured) 
- as indicated by the filling of the "I" and the little calculator icon.  I 
noticed early on that as I came back for a second pass, the calculation had 
changed enough to make my first pass not very worthwhile.  That's why folks 
talk about pre-measuring... giving the machine more information to work with 
before we start tuning.

Fine tuning:  This was the scary one for me.  Every note that has been tuned 
is set in stone.  As new notes are tuned, the machine tries to match them to 
the notes that "must not be moved".  I could see the situation where the 
machine is presented with the impossible puzzle, causing a tuning not to end 
up matching the instrument very well.

In addition there are two commands that are available.

Retune:  This tosses out the measured inharmonicity information for a single 
note and allows the machine to "try again".  If in coarse mode, the entire 
tuning is reformulated.  If in fine mode, only that single note AND all 
untuned notes will be reset.

Recalc:  Roll the dice again.  This forces the machine to start anew based 
on all the information gathered.

Alter:  I'm right, you're wrong, here's where I want the stinkin' note.  (If 
you've done your homework and use the custom styles to tell the machine what 
you want, you should never need to use this command.)

A possible problem:
I can see a situation where fine tune mode is used along with retuning and 
shifting styles where a tuning cannot be replicated.  There have been 
reports of problems with using recalc when returning to the piano after 
time.... I wonder if this could be the answer to that?

Pretuning notes:  The hope is that by filling the "I" on certain notes, the 
machine has enough information to make a decent guess at where the fine 
tuning will end up.  That way, the targets for pitch raising will be 
accurate enough to end up in the right spot.

Here's how to check if your pre-tuning scheme will work: (not in a client's 
house!)
Tune the piano, ending up with a fine tuning after a fully recalculated 
coarse tuining - all "I"s as full as possible.

Start a new tuning with the same style.  In coarse mode, pretune your choice 
notes and then play through your pitch-raising progression, noting if the 
machine is guessing right for the location of the notes.  If every note is 
spot-on, you've got a good pre-tuning scheme.  If not, open a new tuning, 
choose different notes and test again.  (rinse and repeat as needed)

As you can guess, this may take a bit of time.  I try to never enter 
fine-tune mode until ALL the "I"'s are as full as possible to avoid any 
future recalulating problems.

Ron Koval
Chicagoland

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