A frustrating toy

[Beyond16]

In 1972 we had a strobe tuner in high school band class. What a simple and useful machine. Ours was a single wheel model, so you had to select a single note and then play it.

After retiring from 30+ years of software work, I once again became interested in strobe tuners. My thought was that a modern computer might be able to emulate a strobe tuner. I downloaded the free ones, and found none behave anything like the mechanical strobe tuner of the past. The commercial ones don't either, based on the screen shots I found.

The fact that there is no realistic software emulation of an actual mechanical strobe tuner is not surprising. A mechanical strobe tuner is not the easiest thing to look at. They jump and flicker when no tone is present, making them hard on the eyes. The display is not colorful. Understanding that playing a steady tone makes your instrument create several harmonics may be confusing at first. In addition, a real-time software strobe tuner emulation would take a take a lot of compute power along with carefully written software.

I really didn't want to start a significant software project so early into my retirement. My software development background isn't the best fit. I wrote specialty software my whole career and never once wrote a Windows app. I don't use the latest popular computer languages, only plain C. But I decided to at least study the feasibility of a real-time strobe tuner emulation app for Windows.

Long story short, I came up with what I think is a surprisingly accurate 12 wheel strobe tuner emulation app for Windows. This app needs some significant compute and graphics power, so grab Junior's gaming rig and give it a try.

If you don't have a modern AMD Ryzen or ThreadRipper gaming rig, there is still hope. If the app is run in a configuration with less than 12 wheels, a more ordinary computer will do the trick. There is an 7 wheel configuration for tuning each note of a major scale. This configuration runs well on older notebook computer I have.

The app is free. Not a free trial or crippled version, but completely free and open source too. Give it a try, if you have a Windows computer with a mic handy:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/strobetuner/

Try batch file 'BbTrumpet-C_major.bat'. This is a good one to test with. It presets the transpose option to B flat then configures 7 wheels to match a C major scale. If you play more than the two octaves I can play, increase the octaves count as needed.

The frustrating part is the result. It is easy to confirm the tuner is accurate. But my playing is not. Tired lips make notes go flat for me. A cold horn needs warm up. My ears tell me I am not doing too bad, but the tuner shows otherwise. I think the longest I have run this app is 5 minutes. After that, I need to shut it off so I can enjoy the rest of my practice.

[cgaiii]

Beyond16,

Interesting project. I remember the strobe tuner in the band room in the late 60's. Big hunky thing in the front of the room. I look forward to trying out your software.

The frustrating part: I think tuners are useful for getting the horn in tune to start practice and for periodic checks during practice, but playing in front of one is not really a good idea. I have no idea of the reactivity of your software (which I am going to check out), but movement between notes and degrees of damping can really mess with how a tuner reads as you play. Playing exactly to the tuner does not necessarily sound good.
To take us out of the realm of trumpets for a minute. A guitar tuned strictly to a tuner never sounds as good as a guitar where one note is tuned to the tuner and the rest by ear.
There is a lot of interesting research out there on how people actually play, particularly with violin. Our ears want to move toward natural harmony from equal temperament. The tuner can be the enemy of sound at times. When you play with others, all of this is adjusted by your ears. If you are playing with a piano (again usually only one note tuned to the tuner, the rest by ear, I believe), you will play more equal tempered. So I would not worry about sticking with the tuner other than periodic checks for drift with tiredness, etc.
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Bb: Schilke X3L AS SP, Yamaha YTR-6335S
C: Schilke CXL, Kanstul 1510-2
Picc: Kanstul 920
Bb Bugle: Kanstul
Bb Pocket: Manchester Brass
Flugel: Taylor Standard
Bass Trumpet: BAC Custom
Natural Tr: Custom Haas replica by Nikolai Mänttäri Morales