getting the whole guitar in tune

  • Thread starter Thread starter FALKEN
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Did anyone ever entertain the ideal of tuning your guitar to lets say the 440 A reference note. Then tune using using the methods purposed in the posted links.
Then you could attach or connect to your tuners and jot down just how far off plus or minus each string needs to be set to. Then you politically correct musician's that don't want to let folks hear you tune can do so.

Hey Jimi never cared what people thought about him tuning on stage, I remember seeing him opening for the monkees back in the mid 60's he was getting booed by a much of young monkee addicts. He told them all the get f*.*ed and left the stage.
 
RandyW said:
Did anyone ever entertain the ideal of tuning your guitar to lets say the 440 A reference note. Then tune using using the methods purposed in the posted links.
Then you could attach or connect to your tuners and jot down just how far off plus or minus each string needs to be set to. Then you politically correct musician's that don't want to let folks hear you tune can do so.
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It's not just the silent tuning, it's all the rest of the stuff that's going on around me, too. I want a visual cue to my tuning, and I'm not going to spend time looking up some numbers, even if it makes me as correct as it's humanly possible to be. I think that there's a point of diminishing returns in tuning, especially when you're working with another guitar player or two and a bassist and a keyboardist and you're playing in a bar.

A quartz tuner is quite adequate for me in those surroundings.
 
ggunn said:
I think that there's a point of diminishing returns in tuning, especially when you're working with another guitar player or two and a bassist and a keyboardist and you're playing in a bar.

A quartz tuner is quite adequate for me in those surroundings.
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Any tuning at all becomes less and less important as the night wears on.
 
crazydoc said:
Any tuning at all becomes less and less important as the night wears on.
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There is that, but there are things that necessitate a quick check and adjustment from time to time - temperature changes, extensive whammying, knocking the headstock on something, etc.
 
Thanx Muttley

I've been playing for 30 years and this is the first I've heard of the Equal Temperament tuning method. I can't believe the difference! I tuned my AJ with this method yesterday and I will never tune traditionally again. It makes major sense to do tune to one string but I had never thought and pretty much just lived with certain chords a little off. Excellent article!:D
 
Wow! I've been using Equal Temperament tuning for years, I just didn't know there was a technical name for it. The only difference is that I use the D string as a reference. For what it's worth, I've got 3 electronic tuners and none of the 3 are in tune with my strobe tuner. One is close but nowhere near close enough to use for setting intonation.
 
I have been blessed with perfect pitch. Any instrument even slightly out-of-tune annoys me no end. I had a Fender Strat where the frets where placed in the wrong place and it caused the first fret to be 9 cents out on a strobetuner. All my guitars go into perfect tune because they are set-up by me. You have to start from the beginning and go through a thorough setup to achieve a perfectly tuned guitar. I learned a long time ago to use tuners. When recording, trying to tune a guitar to the rest of the tracks is quite aggravating. One time I just plugged into the tuner, tuned the bass to the guitar tracks and BOOM, the bass was perfect. I now use this technique all the time instead of driving myself crazy. True the scale is tempered, but a guitar should still go into perfect tune if it is made right and setup right.
 
muttley600 said:
And perfect pitch what do you take that to mean?
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If an instrument is out of tune like a chord on a guitar, It bugs me. Even though I like Black Sabbath, Iommi's guitar is so hoffifically out of tune because of the way he plays.

A chord has to be spot on for me to be happy and that is in tune. The rest of the theory aside, guitars can be in tune to sound like what we want to hear.
 
MCI2424 said:
I have been blessed with perfect pitch.
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Perfect pitch means you can identify or produce a note of a given frequency without any reference. That is, if I say "sing an A," you can produce a note of that frequency, or if I play a random note, or a car horn beeps, you can identify the name or frequency of that note. It is a rare ability.

What you have is what (hopefully) all musicians have - the ability to identify relative pitch, and whether it is harmonious or discordant.
 
I have always tuned guitars by ear, string to string and it was always a pita. I'd say it ruined my ear as far as perfect pitch goes.

In the last 4-5 years I've used an electronic tuner and my ears are used to perfect tuning all the time now. I now recognize something out of tune immediately. I wasn't able to do that before I got the electronic tuner.

Did I mention I get to play more often because I have everyone tune off the same tuner and we don't waste time tuning any longer?

It looks like gibson's been reading threads like this :)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21791941/

Next year they're coming out with one that plays and records itself too!
 
crazydoc said:
Perfect pitch means you can identify or produce a note of a given frequency without any reference. That is, if I say "sing an A," you can produce a note of that frequency, or if I play a random note, or a car horn beeps, you can identify the name or frequency of that note. It is a rare ability.

What you have is what (hopefully) all musicians have - the ability to identify relative pitch, and whether it is harmonious or discordant.
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If all musicians have it, I would not have such a hard time setting up my guitars. My mom, years ago, worked for the Boston Symphany Orchestra as a staff conductor. When I was 6-7 years old, she used to bring me along to the practices and the famous conductor (at the time in 1968) told her I had perfect pitch. I don't really remember this but I was told that he was amused that I could listen to the orch play and walk up to the out of tune player and tell on him/her. Part of perfect pitch is that you can tell if the A is an A or not, and yes, I can tune a guitar with nothing and get it in E no problem. My main problem is tuning to a recording with many instruments. THAT is far harder. The tuner method I use now fixes that perfectly.
 
MCI2424 said:
...I could listen to the orch play and walk up to the out of tune player and tell on him/her.
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I'll bet the orchestra members just loved getting that treatment from a 6 year old brat. I'd have swatted you across the stage. ;^)
 
MCI2424 said:
If all musicians have it, I would not have such a hard time setting up my guitars. My mom, years ago, worked for the Boston Symphany Orchestra as a staff conductor. When I was 6-7 years old, she used to bring me along to the practices and the famous conductor (at the time in 1968) told her I had perfect pitch. I don't really remember this but I was told that he was amused that I could listen to the orch play and walk up to the out of tune player and tell on him/her. Part of perfect pitch is that you can tell if the A is an A or not, and yes, I can tune a guitar with nothing and get it in E no problem. My main problem is tuning to a recording with many instruments. THAT is far harder. The tuner method I use now fixes that perfectly.
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If you can take all the strings off your guitar, put on new ones and tune it up to E=82.4 Hz with no outside reference, then yes, you have perfect pitch.
 
MCI2424 said:
If an instrument is out of tune like a chord on a guitar, It bugs me. Even though I like Black Sabbath, Iommi's guitar is so hoffifically out of tune because of the way he plays.

A chord has to be spot on for me to be happy and that is in tune. The rest of the theory aside, guitars can be in tune to sound like what we want to hear.
Click to expand...
Sorry if sounding a bit obtuse I'm not trying I promise. I was just asking because there are a few understandings of what perfect pitch is and many people describe it in different ways.

What you are describing is possibly more accurately called absolute pitch, the ability to identify a given frequency from memory with no reference. Perfect pitch used to mean the ability to produce intervals without regard to a specific frequency in other words pick any frequency and sing a fifth or third at will. Relative pitch describes the ability to produce a given interval in response to a given frequency. These definitions have been kind of condensed into what is now generally termed perfect pitch and could describe any of above.

If you have what I described above as absolute pitch, are you saying that you cannot hear inaccuracies in intervals or certain intervals on an equal temperament guitar? Because that seems to be a contradiction. To a greater or lesser degree those tempered intervals are always going to be there no matter how well the guitar is set up. It is the nature of the beast. What tuning method do you use?

I asked about the "perfectly in tune" thing because Equal temperament by definition is not a perfect tuning system mathematically or physically. It is a compromise even if a very close and symmetrical one it is not perfect by any means.
 
Thanks Folks

Greetings - I was finding lots of hits on my Equal Temperament Guitar Tuning article, coming from this site, so I've joined up to join in. Thanks to Muttley in particular for all the signature links. Much appreciated!
 
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