iPegs

iPegs is a tuner. One of many dozens out there, and who needs another, right? Lutenists, that's who. And, as it turns out, a bunch of other Early Music players. I can geek out about tuning for hours, but I'll spare you the details (for now). Suffice to say that equal temperament, which is what you use when tuning most instruments, is only one way to do it.

When you get down to it, tuning any instrument just establishes relationships between notes. An octave is this wide, a major third is this wide, etc. This accomplishes two things: (1) if you play multiple notes on your instrument, they'll sound good together, and (2) if you agree on a reference pitch (say, a4 = 440Hz), you can play together with others and that will sound good too.

Over the centuries, people have used many ways to do this (called temperaments). Equal temperament has been around for a long time (four centuries at least), and lets you play in any key, but it didn't sound great on organs to 16th century ears. Meantone temperaments do sound great, but only in certain keys. Also, the pitch of a4 has varied wildly from time to time and from place to place.

To make a long story short: I wrote iPegs to address these two problems. It lets you tune in dozens of temperaments, with a flexible reference pitch.

If you have questions or comments about iPegs, you can send me a message using the form below.