Tonal Energy - Must Have Music Tech

The green smiley face of "in-tune-ness" in the Tonal Energy app

                Do you remember Dr. Beat for $140? The McAdame metronome for $500-plus? The Korg analog tuner with an actual moving needle to indicate pitch? What about this one…the Strobotuner. I will admit, these are still standard and highly useful, reliable tools for the music classroom. I still use them in certain settings. However, at the end of the day, it’s all bundled up in an app that will set you back $3.99 – Tonal Energy.

                The marketing department nailed it just in the name, Tonal Energy. Optimized for iOS and Android, this app includes a tuner, pitch producer, metronome, recording analysis, and piano keyboard. The tuner registers any pitch in any instrument range and can also be set to intermediate, advanced, or professional settings and adjusted for just or equal temperament, or another ten tunings I’ve never heard of! In addition to displaying cents sharp or flat, there are also strobing arcs that center toward a middle green smiley face when the note perfectly centers. Kids love the green smiley face of “in-tune-ness.” In addition to registering pitch, the tuner can also hear and play back the pitches it hears. Finally, the tuning wheel will sustain pitches, again across all registers, and with a wide selection of MIDI instrument sounds. This proves most useful not only in producing a pitch to match for tuning open strings, but also in producing drones for students to intone while playing scales or other diatonic patterns. I often demonstrate for the students with my violin against the drone, allowing them to hear the true consonant intervals versus the resistant pulsing of dissonant intervals.

                The metronome function has all of the basics, including tempo selection or tap-tempo selection that allows you to determine a tempo by tapping on the screen. I do wish that the tempo were more quickly adjustable (like the spinning wheel on my Dr. Beat or Seiko metronomes). Within the pulse selections are an array of subdivisions that can be turned on and off while students play, and the time signature choices are all covered. Simple 4/4 all the way to 7/4 in all of its configurations (2+3+2, etc.) are available (but if you are really needing a metronome to help you through that mess, maybe you aren’t ready for a mixed-meter tune!). I have yet to find the ability to change the sound of the beat (I would sure like the Dr. Beat-style that has a lady bark out “one-two-three-four” in a German staccato), but I suppose we can’t have it all.

                Finally, with mirroring to a projector, the piano can be a useful teaching tool. Allowing students to concretely see the relationships of half steps versus whole steps on a piano keyboard sure helps strengthen their music theory and aural skills. The piano keyboard is one of the greatest visuals in explaining enharmonic notes, why E# equals F, but C# doesn’t equal D. Most commonly, I use Tonal Energy through a Bluetooth audio connector on our classroom stereo. In Bluetooth mode, the only drawback is that students can’t use the tuning function and get the green smiley face…but there are enough other benefits to offset this small joy.