A System for Matching the Tuning in a Recording

existing tuners is the use of one or more recordings as reference instead of theoretical presets. The target here is to help the musician to tune her instrument as in one or more given recordings. For that purpose, first, the fundamental frequency analysis is performed for the given recordings. Then, pitch distributions are obtained and matched to get an overall distribution plot. Finally, on the main display panel of the tuner, the real-time frequency estimate from the input signal is plotted together with the pitch distribution. The musician adjusts her instrument to match the frequency estimate of the input signal with a peak of the histogram to perform the tuning operation. 1) Introduction Musical instrument tuners are widely used devices or software that help the musicians adjust the tuning of musical instruments to match a given theoretical preset such as a 12Tet (tone equal temperament), Pythagorean tuning, etc. For some instruments (for example the wind instrument family), tuning refers to adjustment of a single tone frequency since the hole positions are fixed on the instrument. In string instruments however, multiple strings need to be tuned. One extreme example is the Turkish instrument kanun which has 24 to 26 triplets of strings hence a large number of strings need to be tuned. In addition, in various folk music traditions, many string instruments use movable frets (the Turkish folk instrument, baglama, is one example). For this case, one may need or would like to tune all the possible tones with respect to a reference, to adjust fret locations. Until recently, handheld tuning devices were among the popular electronic devices in the music technology market. The literature on musical tuners mainly contains patents on hand-held electronic devices. Today, consumers are more and more inclined towards preferring software tuners that run on smartphones or other multipurpose computing machines. Conventional tuners designed for 12 TET (tone equal temperament) find limited use within the context of various folk music traditions due to use of non-standard tonescale systems. In such context, there is also the danger that conventional tuners induce changes in the traditional tuning system (causing a shift towards the 12 TET system) since no other technology is available to help the musicians. We have to be aware that use of technology dedicated to a specific standardized music theory may be a threat to the local music cultures if culture specific technologies are not available. ATMM 2013 PROCEEDINGS 45 A SYSTEM FOR MATCHING THE TUNING IN A RECORDING