Historical context: This article was originally published in China on November 9, 2017. The app features and standalone tuner described below reflect that announcement, rather than current Global availability.
After we released Violy, our intelligent violin practice app, many parents were delighted, saying it had solved a major problem for them.
But quite a few parents struggled to use it. The main difficulty was that they could not get “Start Practice” to start. This brings us to a distinctive design choice in Violy: rather than using the familiar start button, the app listened for the sound of the violin to signal the start of practice. Specifically, the command to begin was the sound of bowing the four open strings, 1, 2, 3, and 4, in sequence.
Why did we design it this way?
First, Violy was an app that helped check intonation. If the violin itself was out of tune, evaluating the accuracy of the notes played during practice would lose its meaning.
Second, both hands are busy when playing. Having to reach over and tap the screen to begin practice is inconvenient. With that in mind, we designed the app so that neither starting nor ending a practice session required touching the screen. The sound of the violin started the session, and the session ended automatically.
Some parents had trouble starting practice because their children were beginners or too young to tune their own violins, while the parents had not learned enough about tuning to help them.
As we understood it, teachers generally did not teach parents how to tune a violin. If a child was too young or not yet advanced enough to tune independently, the family had to rely on the teacher to tune the instrument at the weekly lesson. This was the situation for most families we encountered.
But we also knew that:
- Instruments such as violins can easily go out of tune.
- Practicing for a long time on an out-of-tune violin does not help a child gradually develop a sense of intonation.
We therefore believed that parents should be able to offer some basic help while their children were not yet able to tune their own instruments. Turning the tuning pegs at the head of a violin can be difficult for children, even in the upper grades of elementary school.
One obstacle to learning how to tune was that most parents did not know basic music theory. In our experience, the vast majority of tuner apps required at least some understanding of music theory: once the app identified the current pitch, parents needed to know which way to turn the peg next.
To address this practical problem, we developed Simply Tuner (极简调音器, literally “Minimalist Tuner”). We built the feature into Violy and also released it as a standalone app.
The app was extremely simple: it had just one screen, with no confusing options popping up.
[App screenshot]
To use the app, parents simply needed to follow its written prompts and carry out the indicated steps.
With this tool, parents could enjoy helping tune their children’s violins!