Tuning - A Comment on Today's That Pedal Show

Rocker

roberty said:

@GuyBoden I tried an earvana nut and it sounded wrong to me. Too 'in tune'. It's kind of hard to describe. It didn't sound like a guitar to me any more, although obviously it did sound like a guitar

GuyBoden said:

roberty said:

@GuyBoden I tried an earvana nut and it sounded wrong to me. Too 'in tune'. It's kind of hard to describe. It didn't sound like a guitar to me any more, although obviously it did sound like a guitar

But, them types of nut will only make the open strings be true temperament tuning, the rest of the frets will be gradually out. Sort of misses the point, or is a blatant marketing gimmick.

Your ears and brain have become tuned to out of tune sounds. I fitted an Earvana nut (available from Feline Guitars) on my Les Paul. Initially it sounded slightly wrong but the tuning on the notes a few frets up from the nut was close enough to perfect (as explained on the Feline Guitar website).  It took me about two days to reprogram my ear to the slight changes but it happened. 

Marketing gimmick?  I don’t think so. Would a respected Guitar builder such as Feline use Earvana nuts if they didn’t make their guitars play better?  I rest my case.....

Crazed_Fandango

The more posts appear on this thread, the more I'm convinced that a tuner is all I need and learning to tune by ear is of no value.

hollywoodrox

I could tune to other strings using 4ths it’s just the initial string for a reference , a tone on your phone could be used or another instrument . I like to use my tuners though 

stickyfiddle

Since we're talking about equal temperament etc, the thing I've always wondered is that all these sweetened tunings and wiggly fret options presumably put you out of tune with other instruments - if keys are equal temperament but you have wiggly frets then you're not going to have exactly the same note at every interval. 

Or do these folks only play chuggy rock with other guitarists with wiggly frets?

Tannin

stickyfiddle said:

the thing I've always wondered is that all these sweetened tunings and wiggly fret options presumably put you out of tune with other instruments - if keys are equal temperament but you have wiggly frets then you're not going to have exactly the same note at every interval. 

Generally speaking, the purpose of intonated nuts and sweetened tunings (and probably wiggle frets also) is not to modify a guitar to play in just rather than equal temperament, it is simply to make it play ordinary everyday equal temperament more accurately. 

It is one thing to adjust the intonation so that the guitar plays exactly in tune at the 12th fret, but it is another thing entirely to get it to play in tune in other places, especially on the first three or four frets.  

viz

Tannin said:

stickyfiddle said:

the thing I've always wondered is that all these sweetened tunings and wiggly fret options presumably put you out of tune with other instruments - if keys are equal temperament but you have wiggly frets then you're not going to have exactly the same note at every interval. 

Generally speaking, the purpose of intonated nuts and sweetened tunings (and probably wiggle frets also) is not to modify a guitar to play in just rather than equal temperament, it is simply to make it play ordinary everyday equal temperament more accurately. 

It is one thing to adjust the intonation so that the guitar plays exactly in tune at the 12th fret, but it is another thing entirely to get it to play in tune in other places, especially on the first three or four frets.  

Yep, TT wiggly frets were originally designed to play Just Intonation or certain common meantone tunings in specific keys. But they were pretty inflexible. Then TT swung towards using wiggly frets to account for the physical properties of string stretching and bending at the lower frets that would otherwise distort equal temperament tunings.

Anyway the only reliable way to get your guitar sounding remotely in tune, without wiggly frets, is to not try and force it to be tuned to Just Intonation and Equal Temperament at the same time. The frets are equally tempered, so the intervals between the strings must be as well. So  choose one string and tune all the others to it by fretting. Or tune each string to the fretted equivalent of its neighbour. Then each string will be 1.33484 x the frequency of the one below (2^(1/12))^5). Apart from the B string which will be 1.26x.

That's what a tuning pedal does.

stickyfiddle

Ah, ok that's clear. I don't think I've read anything about wiggly frets since they first hit Guitarist about 15 years ago so wasn't aware they've changed tack slightly.

digitalkettle

viz said:
...
So choose one string and tune all the others to it...
...

 @viz and I posted similar methods for this on page 5:
https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/3463350/#Comment_3463350

Try it! It really does sound more in tune than other basic methods.

marxski

I can tune by ear very well. If only fingers moved on the fretboard as competently.

guitarjack66

tone1 said:

I can’t tune by ear….but when I tune to standard 440 my ear just doesn’t like it much…if I tune a few cents sharper it’s much more pleasing? 

I was messing around on Ultimate Guitar looking at some songs and an Oasis song required tunning to 455hz,so I tried that and my cheapo guitar and my ear liked that a lot more than 440. This had never previously occurred to me.

Danny1969

A lot of nineties stuff was tracked to tape and mastered to tape. It’s the tape speed variation that leads to the tuning being sharp or flat on these records. This can be annoying when you have a nineties playlist to learn and you have to tweak your tuning constantly to play along. 

One thing I’ve practiced again and again is how to get a Strat into tune quickly. I use a Strat for this exercise because raising the pitch of one string makes the rest go flat. So you think of what’s happening mechanically and compensate by going over in pitch on the strings knowing they will come back down on their own as you go across the guitar. 

Another thing that’s good practice is flatten a string and then try and compensate when playing by applying more pressure or bending it slightly in the chord shapes. 

I watch how some players pick up another players guitar and they instinctively correct little tuning errors and just sound so much more melodic. 

So tuners are good but they only get you some of the way there. You will always need a good ear too. A tuner isn’t gonna help you bend accurately in tune or help you intonate chords properly.