Tuner

Getting a steady reading

Play one note. Two at once and the maths has nothing sensible to report, which is why a strummed chord makes any tuner flail.

Let the attack pass before you read it. The first fraction of a second of a plucked or struck note is mostly noise, and the pitch settles after it.

Work somewhere quiet. A phone microphone will happily lock onto a fan or a fridge, and a reading that will not sit still is usually the room rather than the instrument.

What the numbers mean

Cents are hundredths of a semitone, so 100 cents is the gap between two adjacent keys on a piano. Within about five cents is fine for almost everything. Chasing zero is not a good use of your afternoon, and a wooden instrument will drift by more than that when the room warms up.

The A4 reference is what the note A above middle C is defined as. 440 Hz is standard nearly everywhere. Some orchestras use 442 or 443 for a brighter sound, and 432 is a thing people online feel strongly about with no evidence behind it. If you are playing with other people, use whatever they are using.

Tuning specific instruments

A kalimba is tuned by tapping the tines with a small hammer, in or out, and there is a step-by-step on tuning a kalimba.

A guzheng is tuned by moving the bridges and turning the pins, and the note each string should be is on guzheng tuning.

A handpan cannot be tuned by its owner at all. If one has drifted it goes back to a maker with the right hammers, which is part of why the scale you choose is permanent.