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Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

ethanhein.com

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Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

#131

Post by kazinator »

dahart wrote: post #128
kazinator wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frets are already on equal temperament on the vast majority of mainstream guitars; you're not getting away from equal temperament unless all you play is open strings, like a koto/harp. If octaves are perfect with one string in between, the in between string can be slightly detuned from equal temperament to provide a clean fifth, free of beats. Then it also provides a clean fourth up to the octave. That's a useful thi…

That’s not very helpful. You can only do that one string, and it breaks the perfect octave starting on the detuned string. As soon as you also try to detune the next string up, you break the octave you started from. This is a house of cards idea that falls apart immediately.

The detuned string in between likewise has a perfect octave relationship to strings that are two removed.

The E, D and B strings are turned such that they yield clean octaves (and other equal-temperament intervals).

Then so are the A, G and E.

But these two groups are slightly detuned, so that the fifths are clean from the E to A string, D to G, and B to E.

Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

#132

Post by relaxing »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #75
YZF wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is generally true for the guitar. There are even songs that have notes intentionally out of tune (e.g. Scar Tissue by the Red Hot Chili Peppers). Agree with the OP that the characteristics of the guitar, including its "out of perfect tune", is what gives its music its unique characteristic. It's not a bug it's a feature. There might be some people with perfect pitch who get annoyed but for most peo…

Outside of people like van halen also pretty much no one is exploring the entire neck on a single song. So the issue of the guitar not being perfectly intonated is irrelevant since they are using just a piece of its range.

“Whole neck” is irrelevant. Things can go out of tune at any fret.

EVH famously tuned his B string slightly flat to make his D (on the 3rd fret) sound better. Look it up.

Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

#133

Post by relaxing »

YZF wrote: post #62
relaxing wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any musician with enough training will tell you which notes are out of tune on their well-tuned instrument, and how they correct for it as they play. Just because we live with the trade-off doesn’t make it correct in any other sense.

I don't think this is generally true for the guitar. There are even songs that have notes intentionally out of tune (e.g. Scar Tissue by the Red Hot Chili Peppers). Agree with the OP that the characteristics of the guitar, including its "out of perfect tune", is what gives its music its unique characteristic. It's not a bug it's a feature. There might be some people with perfect pitch who get annoyed but for most peo…

Frusciante is an amazing guitar player — check out his solo albums. He knew what he was doing putting those out of tune notes in.

Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

#134

Post by allears »

tadfisher wrote: post #92
_alternator_ wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing that’s not been mentioned here: there is a relationship between volume and pitch. In short, you strike a string hard and it goes a bit sharp. The issue is that the tonal math makes a linearization of the string physics, but the highly activated string is effectively a little tighter than the idealized version.

Humans are also not perfect at fretting with the exact same pressure every time, or without inducing some bend in the strings. This is really noticeable with the G string which always sounds out of tune while playing, because our tuning system gives it a half-step-down intonation as a trade-off to make it easier to form chords. James Taylor compensates by tuning everything down a few cents, between -12 at the low E a…

Peterson guitar tuners can do custom tunings, and have the James Taylor tuning built in as a preset. (On Peterson tuners, it's called the 'acoustic' preset, but is actually the JT tuning.)

Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

#135

Post by dahart »

kazinator wrote: post #131
dahart wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not very helpful. You can only do that one string, and it breaks the perfect octave starting on the detuned string. As soon as you also try to detune the next string up, you break the octave you started from. This is a house of cards idea that falls apart immediately.

The detuned string in between likewise has a perfect octave relationship to strings that are two removed. The E, D and B strings are turned such that they yield clean octaves (and other equal-temperament intervals). Then so are the A, G and E. But these two groups are slightly detuned, so that the fifths are clean from the E to A string, D to G, and B to E.

Have you actually tried this? What songs work? To me this sounds totally impractical and useless, like it’s a logical technicality for the purposes of this discussion and not something a real musician would ever do. You’re making tuning a pain, breaking the E-E octaves (all barre chords), breaking octaves with 2 strings between, breaking the next-string octaves, breaking a lot of scales and jazz chords, and to top it off it would still only work for certain keys and not others. I’ll pass.

Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

#136

Post by haberman »

> Not everyone in history thought that 12-TET was an acceptable compromise. Johann Sebastian Bach thought we should use other tuning systems

This is presented as fact, but as I understand it there is no conclusive evidence for what Bach intended wrt temperament. There is a theory that the title page of the Well-Tempered Clavier encodes Bach’s preference in the calligraphic squiggles, but this is a recent theory and speculative. I don’t believe there are any direct statements by Bach as to his intention.

Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

#137

Post by dhosek »

Instruments which have a non-discrete set of pitches (as well as voices) will tend towards the more harmonious (so to speak) tuning when playing in harmony. You’ll notice this in choirs, for example, where singing a capella, the chords will follow nice integral ratios of frequencies. Fretless string instruments and the trombone are obvious cases of instruments which can do micro-tuning, but it’s worth noting that brass instruments have finger loops on some of the valve loops to allow adjustment of pitch. Micro-tuning of the pitch can also be managed in wind instruments through adjustment of the embouchure so while woodwinds seem like they would be only capable of discrete pitches, there is some ability to adjust the pitch during performance.

On a church gig in the 90s, I encountered an organ which was not tuned in equal temperament so that playing guitar with the organ always sounded out of tune (something I only discovered once Mass began since we had rehearsed with a piano) and I had to switch to bass to be able to play an accompaniment that sounded decent.

Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

#139

Post by kazinator »

coliveira wrote: post #90
kazinator wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't matter how good the intonation at the bridge or nut. Yes, it does. > There's the mathematical fact that we cannot get pure thirds and even fifths in modern equal temperament system. Those are the pennies that don't matter, if your instrument has dollar problems. If you don't have good intonation, then you can't even properly get the approximations provided by equal temperament. With good intonation, comp…

Intonation is just the beginning. It won't solve the deeper issues with equal temperament.

Actually, it will solve most of it for guitarists, because the tuning problems that most guitarists blame on equal temperament are actually coming from their bad intonation. The fourths and fifths in equal temperament are not nearly as bad as they imagine. The equal temperament fifth is only 1.955 cents sharper than the pure fifth (3/2 ratio). Just under 2 cents.

Guitar intonation that is accurate to 2 cents is very good, I would say above average.

Another way to look at the pitch error in the ET perfect fifth is as a percentage of the pitch, which is about -0.169 %.

Suppose a 1200 Hz tone (quite a high note, somewhere between D6 and D#6) is played together with one that is 0.169 % flat. That flat one will have a frequency of 1198 Hz. The difference is 2 Hz, and so a 2 Hz beat will be heard: two volume swells per second.

Much lower down, at 120 Hz, that will be 0.2 Hz: two volume swells every ten seconds. Basically nothing. It makes no difference to guitar chords played in the first four fret box down by the nut.

The equal temperament error is worse for some other intervals; the ET major third is a percent sharp, or around 13.6 cents, which is a lot. It is pretty jarring, even in lower registers.

That's not what the submitted article is about; tuning in such a way as to fixing the tiny error in the fourths/fifths will not repair the major third.

Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)

#140

Post by kazinator »

dahart wrote: post #135
kazinator wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The detuned string in between likewise has a perfect octave relationship to strings that are two removed. The E, D and B strings are turned such that they yield clean octaves (and other equal-temperament intervals). Then so are the A, G and E. But these two groups are slightly detuned, so that the fifths are clean from the E to A string, D to G, and B to E.

Have you actually tried this? What songs work? To me this sounds totally impractical and useless, like it’s a logical technicality for the purposes of this discussion and not something a real musician would ever do. You’re making tuning a pain, breaking the E-E octaves (all barre chords), breaking octaves with 2 strings between, breaking the next-string octaves, breaking a lot of scales and jazz chords, and to top it…

1. Yes; I've been tuning along those lines for nearly four decades. What songs work: anything with power chords that benefit from sounding sharp, free of flutter.

2. The error between the equal temperament perfect fifth and the pure one (3/2) is just less than 2 cents. So the difference I'm talking about is at the same level of accuracy as that of pretty excellent guitar intonation. The corrections are not simply for equal temperament; they are not separable from the condition of the instrument and its intonation. The given instrument is what it is, and to get those 1-5-8 power chords to sound clean you do whatever you have to.

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