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[Nick W]

For the app to be of real use to early musicians it needs to have a good selection of temperaments, and not just equal tempereament. It would also be good to be able to pick any A= frequency, not just a selection.

[rclair]

I know about temperaments. I play the lute and (as is the modern fashion) keep the Renaissance lutes in 1/6 comma meantone. It was left out of Orfeo for practical reasons:

The audience for it is rather small - of the people who have purchased Orfeo about 1/3 of 1% have asked about this.

It would create a bit of confusion for the majority of (non-early music) users: Why is C sharp not the same a D flat ? Given that, why is C# (generally) lower than D flat.

I was the TA for the Physics of Music class at UC Berkeley for a couple of years and have talked to a lot of people since then. The average amateur musician and even a fair number of well-trained professionals have little to no awareness of temperaments.

We may do a separate product later in the year when some other things get finished.

[Nick W]

I look forward to it.

[lemon-kun]

About the temperaments question: I think rclair has a point, most users won't ever use other temperaments than the 1/12pc. And I think people who are interested in that better learn to tune by ear anyway. I gave lots of classes for students to learn tuning different temperaments, and after all I feel it is a mistake to believe one can practice tuning or train to play in tune with a tuner. At first sight it seems to be an easy way just to try to intonate somehow Valotti or something with the machine, but it is a detour in the end. When I tune organs, harpsichords, pianos and my lutes (yes, me too...), I only take the starting note from the tuner and make the rest by ear. The results get much better this way, because every instrument is different (streching-effect because of inharmonicity with stringed instruments, etc.). Still: Since Orfeo is a bit of a "premium" app, it wouldn't disturb me if there would be some other temperaments included.

The second point, about different pitch selection: the possibility to choose any different frequency between 392 and 466 is a must add. I mean, if I need to tune a fortepiano at Vienna pitch 421hz, or to tune at ton de la chambre du roy 403hz, there are just too many steps (and opinions about pitch...) in between, so the most practical thing would be to make them all available.

[rclair]

Other temperaments: I'll stand by the previous posts - it would have to be a different app. It doesn't fit all that well with the present UI and it's just too much info for the general user.

Adding more pitch standards isn't a problem. What is the highest and lowest you would need. (Does it really need all the numbers between 447 and 466?)

As side note about tuning by ear: I think one of the tricks is learning to hear intervals that are not quite just. It's relatively easy to learn to hear just intervals by listening to the beats vanish. But if you try and tune by making nice thirds or tenths and you make them just you'll wind p spending the whole evening chasing yourself around the circle of fifths.

[lemon-kun]

Sorry for answering that late, just had some computer problems (after those I quit windows and just bought a mac...).

After thinking, yes you are right with the standards – it's kind of annoying to have to scroll down all numbers one never has to use. For my personal use, I need most often 392, 415, 440, 442 and 466 (all included in orfeo), and: 403 and 421.

Very often I am asked to tune 412, 416, 413, 411 etc. etc. etc., that's all the recorder and flute players who think it makes much of a difference. After all, I just tell them to play an a' for me and tune the harpsichord or organ after their intonation. So I don't need all these steps. But to have the 421/403 step in orfeo would be great (at least for me).

The temperaments, maybe you are right and it would be to complex to put it into the same app, especially because most users won't know what temperaments are anyway. I just thought it would be practical not to have to start another app and also would be quite unique in the app store (something like: Orfeo = THE music app for historical performance musicians). And I think, the finger-slide UI to set the note would fit great for some meantone-temperaments (c-c#-db-d etc.). But as I wrote, not so important for me (I need a tuning fork and a metronome, that's it, and ok, there are many free apps that can do that but no one is as nicely designed or precise like orfeo).

Regarding tuning by ear, I recommend normally the "parting a third in the middle by comparing 2 against 3"-strategy. Recently, I found a well made tutor on this by Bradley Lehman (the guy who -maybe- rediscovered Bach's tuning) on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21eocx96sGM