# "The guitar is surely the most miserable and imperfect of all instruments, worthy only..." **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 21, 2009, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757 "2009-07-21T18:19:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/le_ministre_de_l_au-dela/32/12181_2.png) [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/1 "2009-07-21T18:19:54Z")
My friends, I hope you will indulge me in a longish excerpt from E.T.A. _Hoffmann’s Lebens-Ansichten des Katers Murr_ from the Penguin Edition translated as ‘The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr’. It is one of the best descriptions of a musician’s frustration I have read in a long time… > [@](#): > > In short, Princess Hedwiga smiled, but as she opened her rosy lips to say something in reply to the gentle unartistic Julia, they heard the sound of chords very close to them: chords played so powerfully, so wildly, that the instrument hardly seemed to be an ordinary guitar. > > The Princess fell silent, and both she and Julia hurried out of the fisherman’s cottage. > > Now they heard tune after tune, linked by the stranges of transitions, the most outlandish sequences of chords. From time to time a resonant male voice could be heard, now exploring all the sweetness of an Italian song, now suddenly breaking off and falling into grave and gloomy melodies, now singing in recitative style, now speaking firm and forcefully accentuated words to the music. > > The guitar was tuned - there were more chords - they broke off again; more tuning - vehement words spoken as if in anger - then melodies - and then more tuning again. > > Full of curiosity about the strange vituoso, Hedwiga and Julia stole closer and closer, until they caught sight of a man dressed in black with his back turned to them, sitting on a rock close by the lake and playing the guitar in this odd manner, sometimes singing, sometimes speaking. > > He had just entirely retuned the guitar in an unusual way and was now trying a few chords, exclaming from time to time: ‘Wrong again - no purity - now a trifle of a semitone to low, now a trifle of a semitone too high!’ > > Then, having slipped the instrument free of the blue ribbon from which it hung around his shoulders, he took it in both hands, held it in front of him, and began: 'Tell me, you wilful little creature, where’s your melody, in what corner of your being has the pure scale hiden? Or do you mean to rebel against your master and say his ear has been hammered to death in the smithy of equal temperament, and his enharmonics are just a childish picture puzzle? I believe you are mocking me, even though I wear my beard much better trimmed than Master Stefano Pacini, _detto il Venetiano_, who laid within you that gift of melody which remains an impenetrable mystery to me. Now let me tell you, dear creature, if you are determined not to allow the concordant dualism of Gs and As or Cs and Ds - or rather, of all the notes - then I will set nine good German masters loose on you, to take you to task and get the better of you with enharmonic remarks. And there’ll be no flinging yourself into the arms of your Stefano Pacini, there’ll be no insisting on having the last word like a shrewish woman. Or are you pround and arrogant enough to think that all the pretty spirits dwelling in you will obey only the mighty magic of enchanters who left this earth long ago, while in the hands of a fool - ’ > > At this last remank the man suddenly stopped, jumped up, and gazed out at the lake like one lost in deep thought. The girls, intrigued by his strange actions, stood behind the bushes as if rooted to the ground; they scarcely dared to breathe. > > ‘The guitar,’ burst out the man at last, ‘is surely the most miserable and imperfect of all instruments, worthy only to be taken up by lovesick, mooning shepherds who’ve lost the mouthpieces of their shawms, for otherwise they’d blow a hearty tune, arousing echoes with cowherd’s melodies of the sweetest desire, and sending mournful music in the direction of their Emmelines in the far mountains, rounding up their pretty cattle with the merry crack of supple whips! Oh God! Shepherds who sigh "like a furnace to their mistress’ eyebrow" - teach them that the triad is just three notes, and may be knocked down when stabbed by a seventh, and put the guitar into their hands! And as for grave fellows with a toleable amount of education, men of great erudition who occupy their minds with the wisdom of Greece and know what happens at the court of Peking or Nanking, but understand not the least thing about sheep and sheep-breeding, what’s such whining and strumming to them? What are you about, you fool? Remember the late Hippel, who tells us that the sight of a man teaching the piano makes him feel as if that teacher were boiling eggs - and now strumming the guitar - shame on you, you fool!’ > > With which the man flung the instrument away into the bushes, and strode quickly off without noticing the girls. Were the piano only light enough to lift, many are the times I would have cried thus and flung the thing out the window… ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/2 "2009-07-21T18:45:00Z")
I think it’s a beautiful description of one of the idiosyncrasies of the guitar: the fact that it is impossible to get a guitar perfectly in tune _with itself_, which is an artifact of the way the instrument is constructed and how it is played. Put simply, the very act of changing the pitch of one string puts it ever-so-slightly out of tune with its neighbors. This is due to the wooden neck, which naturally flexes one way or the other as the strings are tightened or loosened. So let’s say you’re tuning the guitar, starting with the first string. You get that first string tuned perfectly to pitch, and then start on the next string. But as soon as you start adjusting that second string, it changes the overall tension on the neck, which then affects the pitch of all the other strings. So your first string is perfectly tuned, but if you tighten the second string, the overall tension increases and the neck flexes very slightly, with the end result being that an increase in the tension of one string _decreases_ the tension in the other strings. So when you get the second string tuned perfectly to pitch, depending on whether you had to loosen or tighten it to do so, the first, previously-perfect string is now the tiniest bit more sharp or flat (if you tightened the second string, the first string will go flat; if you loosened it the first string will go sharp). Repeat that six times across the fingerboard, and you’ll see why guitarists tune their instrument, and then they immediately do it again. By the time they get to the sixth string, the first string’s pitch has changed enough to be noticeable. And that’s just the tuning process. _Playing_ the guitar has its own effect on intonation. Simply pressing the string down to the fingerboard pulls the note a bit sharp, with the degree of sharpness directly related to how far the string needs to be pressed down, which can be different depending on the position on the fingerboard. Since very few chords are played by pressing down all the strings at the same fret, a chord will be out of tune with itself because of different changes in tension caused by each string being pressed down at a different fret. I can see this being completely maddening to a person who has perfect pitch. For most of us, though, the guitar’s intonation is a compromise we learn to accept. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2009, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/3 "2009-07-21T23:00:54Z")
Nice story, good Minister. > [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > I can see this being completely maddening to a person who has perfect pitch. For most of us, though, the guitar’s intonation is a compromise we learn to accept. I think you mean “tolerate, grudgingly”. That’s certainly how I feel; damned thing is never in tune. ---
**Author:** ![Beware\_of\_Doug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/278dde/32.png) [@Beware\_of\_Doug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beware_of_Doug)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/4 "2009-07-22T00:32:50Z")
I believe in “Ellingtonian tuning”, applying the Duke’s maxim that if it sounds good, it _is_ good. The era of the electronic tuner, with its mathematical precision, has too many musicians - especially us woodwind players - forgetting that the higher you go on a mathematically precise scale, the flatter it tends to sound compared to the lower notes. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2009, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/5 "2009-07-22T02:36:38Z")
> [@Beware\_of\_Doug](#): > > The era of the electronic tuner, with its mathematical precision, has too many musicians - especially us woodwind players - forgetting that the higher you go on a mathematically precise scale, the flatter it tends to sound compared to the lower notes. I’d think you could dial in different temperaments – equal tempered, meantone, well, just, bad tempered, whatever – into an electronic tuner. I have no idea if my guitar tuner can do this; the documentation was the size of a business card in very small print in not-quite-English. Do other guitarists use temperaments other than standard? Do some tuners support this? Or is it all done by experience and note comparison? I remember the Ministre posting an example of how to do this. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/le_ministre_de_l_au-dela/32/12181_2.png) [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/6 "2009-07-23T03:09:53Z")
**squeegee** : Well, sorta. What I do is find the most acceptable compromise on all the open fifths in first position. Methodology: I tune each string with the tuner, then I go back and play the ‘D’ open fifth (string#-fret#, so 4-0, 3-2, 2-3) and then the ‘E’ open fifth (4-2, 2-0, 1-0). The 2nd string has to be acceptable as an open string playing the fifth and a fingered string playing the octave. I find that’s the trickiest one to get right. After that, I do the full ‘D’ open fifth (5-0, 4-0, 3-2, 2-3, 1-5) and the full ‘E’ (6-0,5-2, 4-2, 3-4, 2-0, 1-0). The unison 'B’s have got to match acceptably, as well as the two fifths have to sound acceptable. They can’t be true perfect fifths, because the frets are in equal temperament - that’s the compromise we have to accept on fretted instruments. Same procedure for the ‘G’ open fifth (6-3, 5-x, 4-0, 3-0, 2-3, 1-3), ‘C’ open fifth (6-3, 5-3, 4-x, 3-0, 2-1, 1-3) and the ‘A’ open fifth (6-0, 5-0, 4-2, 3-2, 2-5, 1-5). They’re all going to be slightly out, and slightly different from each other, but the trick is to get them so no one of them sounds more out than the others. I’ve probably told this story before, but that’s life over 40 - I remember working at International Music in high school, and one of my jobs was to tune all the guitars in the store each day, so that even the brain-damaged asshole who sold boom-chicka organs could pick up any guitar and play in tune. We had one twelve string made by F----s that was a piece of firewood that had been ruined when they put varnish on it. Anyway, I remember having to fight that thing every inch of the way - the neck was crappy, the saddle wasn’t quite in the right spot, the nut was tight, and the Pythagorean comma is made that much worse by having the octave strings. I always saved that one for the last because it could take anywhere up to 20 minutes (this was before tuners, mind - there I was with the A440 tuning fork between my teeth to get a reference pitch …and he’s off!) to get that unique position of the tuners that would allow that POS to play acceptably. One day, after a particularly gruesome battle, I had just got it right when the Cro-Magnon organ dude said “No, boy, you got it all wrong - you need to line these things up and then it’ll sound right!” And with that little witticism, he turned all the tuners so they were parallel with the headstock. It is a testament to my moral strength that he is still alive… ---
**Author:** ![fachverwirrt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/94ad74/32.png) [@fachverwirrt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fachverwirrt)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/7 "2009-07-23T03:18:11Z")
Well, anybody who rates the shawm as the acme of musical expression is probably not the best authority on the subtleties of temperament… ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/8 "2009-07-23T12:35:37Z")
Great post \*\*Le Ministre \*\*- well, great OP and also an unfortunately funny story about wrestling with the 12-string. Is this the same store where you conducted your rigorous experiments in amplifier feedback? 😉 Not much to add, other than to say that a lot of sounding in tune is in your hands and your relationship to the guitar. - By in your hands, I just mean that we all “grab” chords with our fingers, and either by applying vibrato or just listening and making (what come to be, after long practice) unconscious micro adjustments, you can “pull” the chord into a more resonant temperament. - Picking chords that suit the tone - power chords with a lot of distortion render harmonic overtones, and if try to play more harmonically rich chords in that way you muddy up the tone. By the same token, in Dropped D or just if you play A-shaped barre chords in standard tuning but add the lower 5th note by barring the Low E string, too, instead of muting it - if you have the right kind of distortion it sounds powerful and angry with a bit of harmonic clash; if you play it through a clean rig it just sounds…well, silly and awful. - Using dynamics - you can over-pick the string or over-strum the chord and pull it out of tune. By the same token, if you play a guitar strung with heavy-gauged strings that is designed to be a brighter-sounding guitar, like a Strat or a Tele, you can play with a heavy hand - and by doing so, really get the major harmonics to jump out and resolve together, and dominate over the more complex harmonics that might threaten to muddy your tone. Or, if you are playing a small-bodied, mahogany acoustic guitar, you can finger-pick the strings and each note occupies its own “harmonic pocket” and they stack up into jazz chords easily, but the minute you increase your attack, they jumble together like a rainbow dissolving into muddy brown. Just thinking out loud here…one of those mornings… ---
**Author:** ![kelly5078](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/6f9a4e/32.png) [@kelly5078](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kelly5078)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/9 "2009-07-23T15:02:04Z")
> [@squeegee](#): > > Do other guitarists use temperaments other than standard? You can’t really do this, because the frets are where they are, and where they are is in equal temperament ratios. Some people have made true temperament guitars (and probably other temperaments, as well) with frets bending all over the place. You can see examples on youtube. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/10 "2009-07-23T15:04:55Z")
> [@kelly5078](#): > > You can’t really do this, because the frets are where they are, and where they are is in equal temperament ratios. Some people have made true temperament guitars (and probably other temperaments, as well) with frets bending all over the place. You can see examples on youtube. [Feiten Tuning](http://www.buzzfeiten.com/) and [Earvana Compensated Nuts](http://www.earvana.com/)are both altered-temperament scales (okay, I may not have that technically correct - they alter compensation and basic relationships across strings but I don’t know if they establish a different temperament on the guitar - out of my depth). Also, I remember reading in Guitar Player about a guitar with snap-on fretboards (bet the tone is \*wonderful \*:dubious:) that enables different temperaments and inclusion of semi-tones - even Indian raga-based fretting layouts…patent description [here](http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5760322.html) ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/11 "2009-07-23T15:49:03Z")
> [@kelly5078](#): > > You can’t really do this, because the frets are where they are, and where they are is in equal temperament ratios. Some people have made true temperament guitars (and probably other temperaments, as well) with frets bending all over the place. You can see examples on youtube. Wow, [that](http://www.otheroom.com/namm/images/true_temp.jpg) is a very weird looking axe. ---
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/12 "2009-07-23T15:50:27Z")
> [@squeegee](#): > > I’d think you could dial in different temperaments – equal tempered, meantone, well, just, bad tempered, whatever – into an electronic tuner. I have no idea if my guitar tuner can do this; the documentation was the size of a business card in very small print in not-quite-English. Do other guitarists use temperaments other than standard? Do some tuners support this? Or is it all done by experience and note comparison? I remember the Ministre posting an example of how to do this. Yes, some tuners support this. I have a Peterson tuner (probably an obsolete model, but it looks a lot like the current V-SAM model) that has a number of historical temperaments built in, along with proprietary “sweetened” temperaments for guitar and fretted electric bass. It will also allow the user to create and save his or her own temperaments. I have found the proprietary “sweetened” temperament to be helpful. It’s not perfect, but it does seem to allow me to play a piece in a given key, and then play another in a different key without having to retune. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/13 "2009-07-23T21:11:11Z")
> [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](#): > > **squeegee** : Well, sorta. What I do is find the most acceptable compromise on all the open fifths in first position. > > Methodology: > > I tune each string with the tuner, then I go back and play the ‘D’ open fifth (string#-fret#, so 4-0, 3-2, 2-3) and then the ‘E’ open fifth (4-2, 2-0, 1-0). The 2nd string has to be acceptable as an open string playing the fifth and a fingered string playing the octave. I find that’s the trickiest one to get right. After that, I do the full ‘D’ open fifth (5-0, 4-0, 3-2, 2-3, 1-5) and the full ‘E’ (6-0,5-2, 4-2, 3-4, 2-0, 1-0). The unison 'B’s have got to match acceptably, as well as the two fifths have to sound acceptable. They can’t be true perfect fifths, because the frets are in equal temperament - that’s the compromise we have to accept on fretted instruments. Same procedure for the ‘G’ open fifth (6-3, 5-x, 4-0, 3-0, 2-3, 1-3), ‘C’ open fifth (6-3, 5-3, 4-x, 3-0, 2-1, 1-3) and the ‘A’ open fifth (6-0, 5-0, 4-2, 3-2, 2-5, 1-5). They’re all going to be slightly out, and slightly different from each other, but the trick is to get them so no one of them sounds more out than the others. I’ve got to bookmark this and try it out. Thanks, Le Ministre! ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2009, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-guitar-is-surely-the-most-miserable-and-imperfect-of-all-instruments-worthy-only/503757/14 "2009-07-23T21:36:15Z")
It would have been great if one of the girls had said “The neck’s warped. Next time don’t screw with the truss rod.”