I read the title and felt personally attacked :(
Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)
81–90 of 184 posts
Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)
#82There is no way to tune your guitar so that all the successive open fourths (and the one major third) are pure, without the high E being quite off pitch relative to the low one. But, unless you mainly play stacked fourths, why would you make it a requirement? You can, for instance, tune instead to get pure fretted fifths between adjacent strings, and fretted octaves between strings one removed. The real reason you ca…
It doesn't matter how good the intonation at the bridge or nut. There's the mathematical fact that we cannot get pure thirds and even fifths in modern equal temperament system. If you have a good ear you'll feel the subtle difference between notes, and they can never get exactly where you want. It's something you have to live with in modern music.
Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)
#83There is no way to tune your guitar so that all the successive open fourths (and the one major third) are pure, without the high E being quite off pitch relative to the low one. But, unless you mainly play stacked fourths, why would you make it a requirement? You can, for instance, tune instead to get pure fretted fifths between adjacent strings, and fretted octaves between strings one removed. The real reason you ca…
It doesn't matter how good the intonation at the bridge or nut. There's the mathematical fact that we cannot get pure thirds and even fifths in modern equal temperament system. If you have a good ear you'll feel the subtle difference between notes, and they can never get exactly where you want. It's something you have to live with in modern music.
> 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, compensated on both ends, you have a much better experience making tuning adjustments to get better compromises for the music you are playing.
Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)
#84I was born with something not quite like perfect pitch, but when something is even slightly off tune it caused physical discomfort for me. My cs department had a cool project class where you built what was basically a raspberry pi with a microcontroller by hand, and you had to use the dumb speaker and controller to make your own music firmware to produce notes. the challenge involved, was basically, the processor’s c…
> I was born with something not quite like perfect pitch, but when something is even slightly off tune it caused physical discomfort for me.
Define off tune? 12 TET? Just intonation? Bohlen-Pierce (56 TET) ?
The "in tune" notes are as much a function of culture as physics.
Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)
#85I was born with something not quite like perfect pitch, but when something is even slightly off tune it caused physical discomfort for me. My cs department had a cool project class where you built what was basically a raspberry pi with a microcontroller by hand, and you had to use the dumb speaker and controller to make your own music firmware to produce notes. the challenge involved, was basically, the processor’s c…
I've been doing audio software for 25-30 years. I have no idea what sort of synthesis you'd be doing where the processor clock played any roll at all. Waveform synthesis is normally done in buffers (8 to 8192 samples), and the "clocking" to convert the sample stream into an analog waveform is done by the audio interface/DAC, not the CPU. If you were basically implementing a DAC, then yes, the clock would matter a lot ... is/was that the issue?
Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)
#86The other problem I always notice on top of all this is that when you pluck a string, it adds tension to it temporarily, so the pitch when you first play it is a little higher than the pitch as it settles down. The louder you play it, the more the effect.
Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)
#87I’m surprised they don’t show true temperament frets. https://strandbergguitars.com/en-WW/magazine/true-temperamen... They solve exactly for this issue, and sound amazing in use. The downside is that you are somewhat locked into a given tuning. Alternatively you can take the approach of guitars with movable frets so you can adjust them per tuning. https://youtu.be/EZC69A8TsJ8?si=7hUIb7FEKb45eV_L These are generally u…
Here's the YouTube link without that tracking code for those of us on mobile:
(I wish Firefox on iOS had a "open clean link" option, but I'd wish Mozilla would fix other more important stuff first, like letting me search/open bookmarks from a private tab.)
Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)
#88There is no way to tune your guitar so that all the successive open fourths (and the one major third) are pure, without the high E being quite off pitch relative to the low one. But, unless you mainly play stacked fourths, why would you make it a requirement? You can, for instance, tune instead to get pure fretted fifths between adjacent strings, and fretted octaves between strings one removed. The real reason you ca…
It doesn't matter how good the intonation at the bridge or nut. There's the mathematical fact that we cannot get pure thirds and even fifths in modern equal temperament system. If you have a good ear you'll feel the subtle difference between notes, and they can never get exactly where you want. It's something you have to live with in modern music.
The thing is, unless you're playing with other instruments, no one is forcing you to tune to equal temperament. E.g., it's very common to tune a violin's A string to an A440 reference, then tune the other strings to 3:2 perfect fifths by ear. It just gets more complicated for fretted instruments like the guitar.
Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't matter how good the intonation at the bridge or nut. There's the mathematical fact that we cannot get pure thirds and even fifths in modern equal temperament system. If you have a good ear you'll feel the subtle difference between notes, and they can never get exactly where you want. It's something you have to live with in modern music.
The thing is, unless you're playing with other instruments, no one is forcing you to tune to equal temperament . E.g., it's very common to tune a violin's A string to an A440 reference, then tune the other strings to 3:2 perfect fifths by ear. It just gets more complicated for fretted instruments like the guitar.
If you tune the strings in a guitar to a perfect 4th, which is the case except the 3rd between strings b-e, the lower e will significantly differ from the high e open string. There's no way to get around it.
Re: Why can't you tune your guitar? (2019)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
It doesn't matter how good the intonation at the bridge or nut. There's the mathematical fact that we cannot get pure thirds and even fifths in modern equal temperament system. If you have a good ear you'll feel the subtle difference between notes, and they can never get exactly where you want. It's something you have to live with in modern music.
> 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.