Rock The Perfect Pitch With Korg’s Pitchclip

By marshalr January 2, 2012 3:30 pm Posted in culture, Features, Gadgets, Music, Stuff marshalr g+ page

You ever play a guitar that went out of tune in the middle of a performance? It sucks. But the whole “tuning” thing sucks worse because strings, by definition and physics, go out of tune as they’re being played. So how can electronics pick up the slack? By giving you a nano-second fast LED readout of just what the string’s got going for it.

You clip pitchclip on the headboard, pull its panel up from the battery compartment and press the “On” switch. Leave the panel raised if it makes for easier viewing of the LCD display, depending you how you hold the guitar, otherwise press the panel back down. Hit a note and see what you got. Then tune the string using fast pitch detection as you watch the left side of the panel light up when it’s flat, or on the right when it’s sharp: you want the middle-ground here (accuracy ±1% with a detection range from A0 to C8). Press the switch to turn it off and start jamming; no big deal in leaving it on though since an Auto-Off will kick in when it’s quiet.

Pitchclip doesn’t discriminate either: acoustic or electric, 6 or 12 strings, bass, ukulele, banjo — doesn’t matter. And you can flip the display upside down if you want. This is about as slick as it gets, short of having it play for you.