A wonderful FREE thing

Who doesn't like FREE? and who doesn't need a little help in developing perfect intonation? This free PC app is first of all a chromatic tuner that you can (further) set up to the specific way you tune (note that I tune the 5th course to E not F, and you can see that in the screenshot, on the "selected notes" display on the right). But the tuner is fully chromatic, it's not limited to tuning 6 notes.

Best of all, this real-time app is so responsive, so sensitive and so fast, that you can use it to advantage to
1) practice your intonation - it shows exactly how far off you are on the note you are playing at the moment using the needle indicator, and digitally in cents, and to
2) decipher other players' Taqasim when you're not sure what notes are being played. It's a great aid in transcription. Where the player on the recording has tuned differently than A=440, you can offset that very simply in the settings.

The ability to check how well I'm hitting the subtle variations of say E half-flat between the different Maqamat, and being able to compare that to how the masters play them, has been tremendous. There are more features you can discover. One golden touch is that you can resize the view to cover as little or as much of your screen as you want, a huge display so you can follow your intonation from across the room, or tiny to keep it always running in a corner as you listen to recordings.

You can also set up different Temperaments. This is very common for Baroque instruments like the harpsichord, where different strings are offset by a few cents from equal temperament in different temperaments, like e.g. "Pythagorean". But you could also set up Maqam-specific scales, say Bayati, and store them as "temperaments". Then playing the E Half-Flat correctly would center the needle. Personally I prefer leaving the app at Equal Temperament, and following the half-flats etc as offsets in cents.

It is free shareware; you can run it unregistered forever with no limitations. Download it here:

http://www.aptuner.com/cgi-bin/aptuner/apmain.html



It's strange that if you want to pay something and compensate the brilliant guy who wrote it, they only offer a $35 purchase, which is out of touch with today's prices. No wonder 4 million people have downloaded it free, and Mr Broms is still living in Glen Carbon. You can send any amount, say $5, or even $1, using PayPal to aptuner@gmail.com. I just sent him $5.

New players often ask what they can do to improve their hearing and intonation. APTuner has been mentioned before, but I think it's it's time to showcase it. This is a very useful tool that every oud player can use.