Guitar Tuning--experience vs. my ignorance

Factual Questions
1

i am a relatively newbie guitar player (6-string acoustic), yet i have background knowledge of music.
normally, i tune my guitar by getting an E somewhere, for the first string, then:
–the E string on the 5th fret tunes the A string
–the A string on the fifth fret tunes the D string
–the D string on the fifth fret tunes the G string (no jokes, please :slight_smile: )
–the G string on the +fourth+ fret tunes the B string
–the B string on the fifth fret tunes the high-E string.

so i did this tonight and it sounded great. then a friend who has kids left a Fisher-Price xylophone at my house. upon further examination, it turns out that it has a full octave, in C major, going do-re-mi, etc. so i re-tuned the open guitar strings to the F-P xylophone, and it also sounded great. but totally different.

i know there’s a million ways of tuning a guitar, but can someone:
a) explain the diffs i saw between the two tunings, and
b) perhaps explain any better ways of guitar tuning that are more foolproof?
thanks in advance,
I_G_P

2

As long as the strings are tuned to each other and it sounds good, you’re cool if your’e playing by yourself. I wouldn’t tune to a fisher price toy!

ALl you need is a low E to start from. You can get a cheap tuning harp for $3 at any guitar store. Is your guitar electric? I would get a Boss Chromatic Tuner pedal. They’re expensive but accurate ($100 - $150). THere are cheaper ones available.

But all you need is a low E. You can even tune to a song (first note of ACDC “Back in Black” is low E).

3

There are also some nice online guides like this one: http://www.8notes.com/guitar_tuner/

4

A Fisher Price toy could be more reliable than lots of recorded music. It is common for bands to tune to an A that isn’t 440 cycles so that your perfectly chromatically tuned guitar just doesn’t sound like, say Nirvana.

5

Aside from Eddie Van Halen and many others who tune 1/2 step down (to Eb), the tuning standards are different in the US, in England and on the continent. Don’t count on a record for concert pitch unless you’ve checked it against a local standard. In the US, dial tone is an A 440 (but I have trouble hearing the fundamental myself).

It’s hard to tell, from your description, how the tunings sounded different. It might have been just pitch (your E was different from the Xylophone E) or it might have been because you were playing in a particular key–non-equal temperment sounds better in some keys than in others (depending on the non-equalness, if I may use the word).

The best way to tune a guitar is with a tuner. They can be had for as little as $9.99 (check http://www.musiciansfriend.com/, or http://www.sweetwater.com/ or your favorite local music store). Some have a bit of stickum and a slanted face so you can mount them inside the sound hole and no one will know you’re using an artificial tuning aid. :slight_smile:

6

I have never heard this and can’t find any reference. As far as I know standard tuning is A=440 everywhere in the world. You can buy a pitch pipe ot tuning fork anywhere that is 440. I imagine any other non standard tuning would present enormous problems for anything but stringed instruments. Have I been misinformed?

7

I tune to harmonics: the harmonic above the 5th fret on the bottom E string should be exactly the same not as the one above the 7th fret on the A, and so on up the strings*. The advantage of doing this is that you can hear the change in pitch of the string you’re tuning while its harmonic is still ringing.

I’ve been told on this board that this still isn’t 100% accurate, but it sure as hell works for me!

*The exception of course is the B (because of the G below it), but you can get the open B by using the harmonic above the 7th fret on the bottom E.

8

I should have added that if you are happy to learn to tune by ear there are plenty of online sites that provide free reference tones like this one or this one.

9

A=440 is standard around the western world as far as I’m aware.

Guitars are very fickle intsruments to tune well. You see, when you depress a string onto a fret you are stretching it slightly. The thicker strings get stretched slightly more than the thinner strings making them sound slightly sharp. This means that an open string tuned correctly may not be completely in tune at every fret up the neck.

To compensate for this, the bridge generally has adjustable sliders (particularly if it’s an electric) or, in the case of most accoustics, it has little notches built into the bone/plastic. This makes the thicker strings a little longer from bridge to nut than the thinner ones.

The compensation will be slightly different for different string sets though. If you find that a set of light strings intonate well on your accoustic, you may find that a set of extra light strings don’t. To compound this, some string sets have unusually heavy bottom strings but light top strings. Ultimately it is very rare to get a guitar that plays satisfactorily in tune everywhere on the neck with the set of strings that you prefer.

The better your ear is, the more you will notice it. There are a few gadgets and tuning systems you can get/use which are supposed to help, but it’s never perfect.

As to why, specifically, your guitar sounded different when tuned to the little keyboard. When you tuned the guitar to itself in the method described you probably made edge higher string slightly sharp. Why? Because you tuned the low E and then tuned the A to the 5th fret of the E, the 5th fret would’ve been slightly sharp. Then the 5th fret of the A would’ve made the D slightly sharp and so on.

When you tuned it to the keyboard, each string would’ve been fairly well in tune open, but may not have been tuned quite as well to the other strings on the guitar.

Some people change the tuning of their guitar slightly for playing in different keys. Some people can’t hear it and don’t notice the problem. I like to get the D string in tune and then tune the guitar from there so that it is more in tune on average than if I’d started at the bottom and ended up with compounding errors on each string. There are some good tuning checks where you check a strings tuning compared to various different frets on different strings.

The basic aim is to make everything sound in tune enough with no glaring bum notes, it involves a lot of compromise and also depends a lot on the quality of the guitar. A well made guitar doesn’t suffer nearly as much as a cheapy.

On preview:

I also tune to harmonics, which works for me, but I have also read (on these boards) that it is not the best way of tuning. For the B string I tune it’s 3rd fret (D) to the open D string, this makes for a nice sounding D chord. I also like to tune the low E down to a D and then play different chords on the top 3 strings over a pedal D (the other low strings A and D can ring open as well). If I was playing something in C though, I’d probably make sure that the 1st fret on the B string © was very close to the 3rd fret C on the A string.

10

By the way, do a Google search on “guitar tuining standard” (without quotes) and you’ll find a host of sites with all sorts of information on how to tune, non-standard tunings and other interesting stuff.

11

I read somewhere that an A used to be about 437. Or maybe it used to be 440 50 years ago, but music has migrated to a little sharper sound. Anyone else hear about this?

12

Electronic tuners can be purchased for next to nothing. Here’s one online for $10:

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/srs7/sid=040313094349024033150187906308/g=guitar/s=accessories/search/detail/base_pid/210070/

I bought one from a local music store a while back for about $20. It’s just a hell of a lot easier than tuning the strings relative to each other.

13

A440 is also known as ‘Concert Pitch.’ It is the standard for any Western music orchestra to use when tuning up. You know in movies when the orchestra all tunes up, and eventually ends up playing one note? That’s A, or A440, or Concert Pitch.

Some other tips on tuning your guitar:
Get a tuning fork if you want to do it the right way.
Learn to tune by harmonics, eventually.
Old, or dirty guitar strings are harder to tune, and harder to keep in tune. You’ll need to change them from time to time.
Professional musicians change their guitar strings after every performance. Or rather, professional musicians have their **guitar techs ** change their strings for them after every performance. It is a pain in the neck to do.

14

Why is the 440 pitch so special? Is it easily percievable by the human ear, or is it just a traditional thing? The 440 A is also the international standard telephone signal, IIRC. I had a music teacher who tuned her guitar to the telephone ring just for fun!

15

Here is a website that has lots of information on the history of A440…

http://www.uk-piano.org/history/pitch.html

16

Or see A Brief History of Tuning, and/or The Guitar pre 1650 which includes info about Lutes, Ouds, Tiples and such.

17

In New Zealand the dial tone is a G, I used to tune my guitar to that if I had nothing else available. In Australia the dial tone isn’t a tone as such but more of a trill, so it’s harder to pick out a note from it.

18

Assuming the absence obvious problems such as the distortion of strings on your guitar when pressed to the fret (which can be obviated by using harmonics in place of actually pushing the string to the fret), one reason you experience problems is that the chromatic scale is not the same as the diatonic scale.

When you tune your guitar from ratios, you are tuning it to a particular diatonic (7-note) scale.

The chromatic, or equally tempered, or 12-note scale was invented so that instruments could play in any key. However, played in any key, it is not the same as a diatonic scale.

It’s pretty damn close, but not exact.

That’s one of the reasons woodwinds come in different tuning. A C-note sax playing Eb is going to sound totally different from a Eb sax.

19

okay, i’m not that good at math, but i almost got what you said. can you explain the diff between chromatic and diatonic in like 16 words to a moron who is tuning a guitar, and just hoping it sounds ‘good’?
**thanks for your help ** in advance, by the way…

you said:
When you tune your guitar from ratios, you are tuning it to a particular diatonic (7-note) scale.
The chromatic, or equally tempered, or 12-note scale was invented so that instruments could play in any key. However, played in any key, it is not the same as a diatonic scale.

20

[QUOTE=its_golden_ponyboy]
okay, i’m not that good at math, but i almost got what you said. can you explain the diff between chromatic and diatonic in like 16 words to a moron who is tuning a guitar, and just hoping it sounds ‘good’?
**thanks for your help ** in advance, by the way…

I don’t think I can do it in 16 words, but I’ll try to make it short.

Take a string. Say it plays a C. Then make it half the length. It will still be a C, only an octave higher. Then make it a third of the length. It will play a major 5th interval (G instead of C). Then make it a fourth of the length. Another C, higher still. Then make it a fifth of the length. You get a major third (E instead of C). Do this long enough, and you get all the notes in a diatonic scale. You will have to halve some of them to make them the same octave. This is all based on ratios (1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, etc.). You’ll eventually get to sharps and flats, too. In fact, you will get a flatted seventh (the basis of a 7th chord) before you get to a real B.

If you tune to this scale, it will sound perfect playing a song in this scale. However, it will sound a little bit off if you are, say, playing in D or Bb or anything but C, because those ratios don’t guarantee that the notes are equally spaced.

The equally tempered, or chromatic scale, does guarantee that the notes are equally spaces. It is based on powers of 2. If C is, say, k vibrations per second, then D is k*2^(2/12) vibrations per second.

This is based on real numbers, not ratios. It’s not quite the same. The fact that you can tell the difference means that you have a really good ear. Most people don’t notice.

If you’re a beginning guitarist, you’re probably making chords with a lot of open strings at base positions. More advanced guitarists move their fingers up and down the fretboard to play in any key. If the guitar is tuned so that it will sound the best for a song played in C in base position, it might not sound so hot for a song played in F up the fingerboard. Or at least it will sound different.

When you tune your guitar using harmonics, you’re tuning to a particular diatonic scale. Xylophones, pianos, and the like are usually tuned to a chromatic scale. The frets on your guitar are chromatic as well. So it’s going to sound different depending on how you tune it.

The trick with a guitar is to find a reasonable compromise, according to which playing in any key sounds about the same. Becasue you can’t retune for every song you play.

Of course, you should also adjust your bridge so that a note played on the 12th fret is exactly one octave above a note played open. Most electric guitars have this ability, usually by shortening or lengthening individual strings. Most acoustic guitars don’t, but the sound of an acoustic guitar is more approximate (some would say richer) than the sound of an electric guitar, so most people won’t notice. The wood and the chamber sort of fuzz it up a bit.

Pianos have three (or two for the low notes) strings per key, and these are tuned to slightly different frequencies, which tend to blur out the differences between the chromatic and diatonic scales. Woodwinds and brass come in different tunings, plus you can bend the note a bit with your breath. Guitar players, like vibraphone players, just have to learn to live with it, although highly skilled guitar players can bend their notes, too.