Show HN: Veena Chromatic Tuner
play.google.comWe're happy to present Veena Chromatic Tuner, an app we've developed for musicians, instrument makers, and ethnomusicologists who need more than just a standard chromatic tuner. Our goal was to create a tool that not only supports pitch detection but also provides deep support for diverse musical intonation systems and offers intuitive visual feedback.
The Problem We're Solving: Many tuners are good for Equal Temperament, but has limited support when it comes to the Just Intonation, microtonal music, or the specific requirements of instruments like the Veena where fret positions are determined by precise ratios.
Oscilloscope-like Visual Feedback: Instead of just a needle, you get a dynamic, oscilloscope-like waveform display.
In Tune: The waveform appears stabilized, giving you an immediate, confirmation of perfect pitch. Sharp: The waveform rotates right. Flat: The waveform rotates left.
This dynamic visual feedback, akin to a digital oscilloscope's trigger synchronization, offers immediate, precise adjustment cues that go far beyond what a static needle can provide, allowing for incredibly fine-tuned adjustments.
Unmatched Intonation Flexibility: We understand that music isn't just 12-TET.
Just Intonation Support: Perfect for Indian classical music, early music, and any tradition that relies on pure harmonic relationships between notes. This is crucial for achieving the rich, resonant chords and melodic purity that Equal Temperament can't always deliver.
Custom Temperaments: Go beyond presets! Create, save, and manage your own unique temperaments with personalized ratio settings. This empowers composers, researchers, and performers to explore microtonal scales and historical tunings with ease.
Dedicated Veena Instrument Mode: It allows users to play and tune notes across 24 fret positions, specifically highlighting how note positions on the fretboard vary relative to each other when pure intonation is applied. This feature is invaluable for instrument makers and those studying the physics of string instruments.
Other Key Features:
Multicultural Note Naming: Display notes in Western, Indian classical (Carnatic/Hindustani), and Solfege, with support for multiple Indian language scripts (Tamil, Devanagari, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam).
Adjustable Reference Pitch: Customize A4 frequency from 440Hz to 432Hz or anything in between.
Transposition Support: Easily transpose notes for different instruments.
This app is would be useful for string players (veena, violin, guitar, sitar, etc.), wind instrument musicians, vocalists, music teachers, students, ethnomusicologists, and especially instrument makers and tuners who need to work with precise intonation and fret setting. Anyone exploring microtonal music will also find it incredibly useful.
We're actively developing the app, continuously adding features and improvements. While pitch detection is resource-intensive, we strive for broad device compatibility.
Check it out on Google Play: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.magima.digi...]
We welcome your feedback, questions, and thoughts!
- Instruments list should have more instruments
- Would appreciate other temperaments: Pythagorean-C temperament, perfect 5th, etc. See the gstrings app for example.
- Base note selection only provides tone and sharp options (C, C#, D, D#...) but as you know, outside of equal temperament, C# and Db (and so on) are different pitches.
Thanks for your valuable feedback. Instrument list and temperament profiles would be expanded before adding other new features. The project started as a tuner app for South Indian Veena & as a fretting aid (based on ratios).
On base notes, have you tried using Just Intonation and other tuning profiles. They use perfect 5th. I will take a look at C# and Db difference in other temperaments. Maybe, our nomenclature needs a re-look.
Sorry, I don't only mean C# and Db, but just in general - the flat and sharp won't be the same outside of equal temperament. (I'm guessing details like that might matter to trombone players but I'm not sure; I play a C instrument myself).
I've only taken a cursory look and haven't tried playing violin with your app yet, but I'll post more feedback when I do!
Sounds interesting... Is there a youtube demo? Or a web-version of this for those who want to check it out? Maybe an iOS version?
Thanks
There is a short video here https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gZbP7svgBUM (not comprehensive. uses simulated sine wave and app generated tones). There is no web or iOS version.
This is an interesting project. It isn’t immediately obvious to me how the visualisations aid the tuning process. Please can you say a little more about how you expect a user to interpret those as they perform tuning work?
Pitch is an estimate based on sampled audio. Sometimes, it is not always accurately detected. Here, we have an additional visual cue that produces a stable/stationary waveform when the detected pitch is in tune with the selected reference note. A plucked tone has a slight variation in pitch from start to end; it rises and falls slightly. You can see this in the visual display. This would be very useful for fretting work, where each fret's tone is expected to have similar pitch variation.
I see. Was there an example of that in the video? Perhaps I missed it.
In what way does the visualisation vary when the note is not in tune? How does the visualisation indicate flat or sharp?
No. When sharp even by 0.5Hz the waveform rotates right and left when flat.
Perhaps it lets you get that last 1-1/4 of a hz that might otherwise get lost?
Its also probably really good for beginners trying on their own to train them selves so they can spot when they are over/under tune
It's just easier to quickly notice a pattern moving or standing still than the needle moving by a few degrees. The needle can also appear twitchy or jump around and lag, making it harder to tune accurately.
Pitch detection is computed and can sometimes be influenced by external noise or sampling limitations.It can jump. However, the visual display is based on the period of the reference note (or set frequency), allowing it to function independently of the detected pitch.
I guess this is a similar idea to the Peterson Strobe tuner? I think they have a rotating object which presents dark and light regions at the chosen frequency, which is a similar idea to building a visualisation on a set of samples whose length is the period of the chosen frequency.
Same basic idea, like an untriggered oscilloscope tuned to a fixed frequency/period.
This is a great answer. If I understood correctly: The feedback you give the user is different than a usual tuner in two ways: it is framed by the reference note, and is two-dimensional.
Yes. The pitch displayed and needle interface is based on measured frequency. It also shows the nearest note name based on this measured value. The visual waveform interface's stability is based on reference frequency set. There is still scope for improvements to detect the pitch variation of plucked strings and provide an analysis. The tuner supports Just intonation which are based on ratios. Here fundamental, fifth and octave have perfect ratios (1, 3/2, and 2) and they can be visualized. Kindly try if you have an Android mobile. There is also a play button to sound the reference note.
You can't tune an instrument to 1/4 of a hz. Temperature, humidity, mechanic impacts all constantly keep working on the instrument, changing it's tune. Instruments are not high precision tools.
Whatever features this app has, they're just visual fancy with no value.
If the weather is stable, my violin drifts less than 1/4 of a Hz over the course of a week, let alone a single playing session.
Wow, impressive stability. In case of violin (bowed instrument), the waveform stability is visualised very well. Closer to sine wave. I tend to see less harmonics than plucked lutes like South Indian Veena. Please select 2 or 4 waveform periods in settings, set the desired reference note and try.
Thanks. I've been looking for a new app to give me immediate feedback on my pitch accuracy while I play, because the violin has no frets and my ear isn't good enough yet to identify whether I'm a little sharp or flat on each note. I think realtime feedback could really help me train my fingers.
I'll post more detailed feedback in a day or two when I've had time to experiment. Hopefully you'll still be checking the thread.
There are also tuning apps that draw the cent deviation as a line, I think the T1 tuner is one such app, you can see a line graph moving and vibrating as you play your note. A similar app to veena is the airyware tuner that shows the soundwave graph moving left or right.
> me immediate feedback on my pitch accuracy while I play
The visual feedback needs manual reference note settings. That is the only limitation.
> You can't tune an instrument to 1/4 of a hz
I mean you can, but for stringed instruments keeping it to an absolute is hard. its the relative that you care about, at least for an instrument with a static fret. pretty much everything other non-keyboard instrument is down to you to adjust on the fly.
when you are within 1hz you get a beat at roughly 1hz, which is normally fairly easy to pickup.
Its part of the reason why brass instruments are never "wide" in stereo on recordings, because they tend to phase like a mother fucker. (there are ways around it)
The visual feedback sounds very much like the strobe feature on my guitar tuner. I think the first like this was the Stroboconn in the 1930s.
Peterson is the most known for their strobe tuners I believe. There are nowadays many other desktop and smartphone apps and pedals that have a strobe mode, but some are real strobes and some are only simulated. As far as I can tell, a real strobe will recreate the effect based on comparing the input signal frequency to a generated reference. A fake one will just use the estimated frequency (done by a pitch detection algorithm usually based on FFT) but instead of a needle offset or LED meter it will show a steady moving pattern, but it's not as responsive or as reliable as the real thing.
The visual feedback uses time period (of ref note) and number of cycles to set the scale of waveform display. It doesn't depend on detected pitch.
I think strobe tuner's used neat analog electronics based reference and filters to visualise.
A few years ago I made a small tuner that mimicked the strobe effect by resampling the signal with interpolation to match the wave period (similar to an untriggered oscilloscope) and applying an IIR bandpass filter to get a clean sinewave, then showing the sinewave as a color gradient instead of an oscilloscope view. I tried a few different variations but couldn't figure out how to control the speed (sensitivity) of the movement and make it independent of the input frequency/period (apart from showing more or fewer periods in the pattern) and also it required a strong biquad filter to remove harmonics that would bleed into the strobe pattern (a similar effect can be seen in the turbo tuner (*) guitar pedal that uses LEDs to show a spinning pattern and sometimes the pattern smears or flickers), but this introduced unwanted lag. Here is a screen recording of my old app: https://youtu.be/IjYv1fDEopY
(*) I'm not affiliated in any way, I was just researching this a lot.
This visual feedback is very similar. It also shows octave changes i.e if the pitch detected is 0.5x, 1x or 2x the reference freq / note set.
Any plan for an iOS version?
Most musicians use Apple platforms, so focusing only on Android could be limiting.
Maybe you're correct about windows vs macos, but I find it hard to believe that the current distribution of android vs iphone users in the world is much different for musicians.
An iOS version is definitely in our plans. We intend to launch it once this app has gained sufficient traction.
This was true for decades but isn't really a thing now. Many studios and home daw set-ups are windows now.
Apple used to have the best audio subsystem but they've really dropped the ball.
Agreed that iOS is probably a good idea, but no longer crucial.
https://www.facebook.com/calurtsdrums
Permanent block
Lupa password
A tuner with ads. There's plenty of ad-free tuners, thank you.
Thanks for the feedback! Ads help us keep the app free and support ongoing development.
Then charge for it. Ads are definitely not okay when you're trying to tune your instrument. The real reason of course is that ads will make more money than a one time payment.
Also, the OP smells like vapid AI slop.
We will be introducing an ad-free premium version once we finalize the implementation details. We also wish to clarify that English is not our native language.
So “Show HN” is now for straight-up advertisements of commercial products?
This ad copy is in the smarmy style of the worst corporate slop.
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