Make:

Gschoppe writes -

I have always dabbled in instruments. Over the course of my life, I've attempted (with varying success) Piano, Guitar, Banjo, Penny Whistle, Ocarina, Panpipes, Great Highland Bagpipes, Smallpipes, and Didgeridoo (don't ask, It was late, and I was a bit tipsy). In the process, I have continually hit one major hurdle. I am absolute rubbish at tuning by ear. I cannot tell if a guitar is out of tune in the least, unless it is so far off that you can play "The Bells of Saint Mary" without fretting at all. I was up late one night, experimenting with some PWM code for the Arduino when I suddenly had an epiphany. "Beat" tuning is very similar to measuring speed with a strobe. I thought that perhaps combining the obvious visual input of a strobe with the auditory input of a tone, could help me to better grasp tuning by ear. Thus an idea was born...

"The Tune Trainer" is a combination of two devices. One is a strobe that flashes at the frequency of a tuned string. The other is a tone generator. together they give the user two methods of tuning.

You can pick up an Arduino kit in the MAKE store to do this project too - Link.