Comparing Four Electronic Tuners Essay -- Compare Contrast Comparison

Comparing Four Electronic Tuners One in every 10,000 Unites States citizens are born with what doctors refer to as perfect pitch and those born with this ability are able to accurately identify any note they hear. In other words, a person with pitch perfect has built-in tonal memory that allows them to correctly label pitches. Unfortunately, most musicians lack this ability, and they work very hard to develop what is known as relative pitch. Relative pitch refers to a musician’s ability to identify pitches in relation to one or two memorized pitches. Therefore a person with relative pitch might memorize what an â€Å"A† sounds like and use that pitch as a marker to identify additional pitches heard. Unlike perfect pitch, relative pitch is not instantaneous, and it can become compromised if the musician does not continue to practice the skill. Fortunately, technology is making it far easier for musicians to strive for the perfection expected of live music today, and where once musicians had to rel y entirely on their own senses to identify and play pitches in tune, devices known as tuners are helping to correct and develop the occasionally unreliable senses of humans. A tuner is simply electronic device that can except an audio input and translate it into some type of visual aid for the musician. The most common displays consist of either a strobe or some sort of LED/LCD display that indicates the pitch played and whether or not the pitch is accurate. The accuracy of the pitch is measured in cents. For instance if a ‘C’ is played into the tuner, twenty cents sharp would mean that on a scale of 0 – 100, the pitch being played is 20/100 or 1/5 higher than what is considered to be an accurate ‘C’. This also implies that the... ...ge where as the Seiko and Korg have no such guarantees. When evaluated on sensitivity, the Peterson is the clear winner of the four. Finally, it is difficult to objectively rate the value of each tuner. Certain features are more important and useful to some individuals while not to others. Therefore what may seem like a reasonable price to one person may seem unreasonable to another. However, it seems that the Sabine is the best product for the price it is being sold at ($29.99). Despite the fact that it is the only tuner that has a sub 8-octave range, it features a built-in metronome which when bought separately would most likely cost $35.00 (price of a metronome with comparable features). Therefore the recommended personal tuner is the Sabine tuner/metronome. For supplemental photos, tables, and graphs, please see the accompanying PowerPoint slideshow.