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  #16  
Old 10-08-2012, 01:15 PM
Long813 Long813 is offline
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Originally Posted by devellis View Post
Two issues here. First, the equally tempered scale we use is a compromise that allows us to play in multiple keys with minimal tone clashing. But in any particular key, the harmonic relationship between notes isn't as sweet as it could be. So, there can be some slight dissonance relative to a just tempered scale.
Agreed. This is the inherent problem with stringed instrument and that's why builders have created multiscale's and equal-tempered necks. On the other hand there can be a lot of work done to minimize (not eliminate) the problem on a standard guitar.

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Second, we all hear differently. 440 Hz doesn't sound the same to everyone. An interval that sounds perfect to one person well may not sound perfect to another. Both people may consistently choose the same interval from occasion to occasion as "perfect" yet the two people may have different perfect-sounding intervals.
Hmm, this I have a tough time agreeing on. Yes everyones ears are different, and it's a complex system of what determines the 'sound you like'. But, I don't agree that person A will hear 440 Hz while person B could here 450 Hz.
Unless of course, they are tone deaf.

When you say perfect, I assume you mean perfect as in "It's the nicest sounding interval" vs the musical perfect 5th interval?

One is subject to musical preference and one is theory/science.

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A tuner measures the frequency of tones, not the subjective appraisal of those frequencies.
I agree. But the tuner is measuring/sounding out a sine wave of 440 Hz I believe, where as the 'colour' of the tone is coming from the complex wave (it's not a simple sine wave) your guitar is projecting. The 440 Hz note on a Martin and Taylor for instance is still A, but it's the rest of the complex wave form that makes it sound unique.

My 2 cents. (is it audible?)
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  #17  
Old 10-08-2012, 01:24 PM
murrmac123 murrmac123 is offline
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Y'all really need to check out and research "nut compensation".

Unfortunately, the definitive online article which explained nut compensation better than anywhere else, which was posted on the MIMF by Stephen Delft back in 1998, appears to be no longer accessible, more's the pity.

Nonetheless, it's worth getting your head around the concept ...
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  #18  
Old 10-08-2012, 01:31 PM
Andymcdandy Andymcdandy is offline
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To add to the equally tempered scale... here's a "true tempered" guitar neck.

http://www.truetemperament.com/site/index.php



Quote:
Originally Posted by devellis View Post
First, the equally tempered scale we use is a compromise that allows us to play in multiple keys with minimal tone clashing. But in any particular key, the harmonic relationship between notes isn't as sweet as it could be. So, there can be some slight dissonance relative to a just tempered scale.

Second, we all hear differently. 440 Hz doesn't sound the same to everyone. An interval that sounds perfect to one person well may not sound perfect to another. Both people may consistently choose the same interval from occasion to occasion as "perfect" yet the two people may have different perfect-sounding intervals.

A tuner measures the frequency of tones, not the subjective appraisal of those frequencies. When playing with (or perhaps even for) others, a compromise has merit. If each individual optimized tuning for his or her own subjective hearing, they may well not sound very harmonic together. So we agree on reference pitches. But if you're playing alone and you like the sound of altered pitches, or if the others you play with also like those alterations, there's no reason to adhere strictly to the reference pitches.
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  #19  
Old 10-08-2012, 01:40 PM
murrmac123 murrmac123 is offline
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Originally Posted by Andymcdandy View Post
To add to the equally tempered scale... here's a "true tempered" guitar neck.

http://www.truetemperament.com/site/index.php
only problem is that when you try any open tuning (D, G, or C) it all goes to hell in a handbasket ...
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  #20  
Old 10-08-2012, 02:18 PM
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devellis devellis is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Long813 View Post
Agreed. This is the inherent problem with stringed instrument and that's why builders have created multiscale's and equal-tempered necks. On the other hand there can be a lot of work done to minimize (not eliminate) the problem on a standard guitar.


Hmm, this I have a tough time agreeing on. Yes everyones ears are different, and it's a complex system of what determines the 'sound you like'. But, I don't agree that person A will hear 440 Hz while person B could here 450 Hz.
Unless of course, they are tone deaf.

When you say perfect, I assume you mean perfect as in "It's the nicest sounding interval" vs the musical perfect 5th interval?

One is subject to musical preference and one is theory/science.


I agree. But the tuner is measuring/sounding out a sine wave of 440 Hz I believe, where as the 'colour' of the tone is coming from the complex wave (it's not a simple sine wave) your guitar is projecting. The 440 Hz note on a Martin and Taylor for instance is still A, but it's the rest of the complex wave form that makes it sound unique.

My 2 cents. (is it audible?)
Hearing is, of course, a physiological process. Our cochleas have hair cells that respond to specific frequencies and pass signals upward through a series of neural connections to the cortex where they're ultimately interpreted. The cochlear apparatus obviously doesn't know or care about any standard reference pitch. Exposure to loud noise can damage hair cells at various frequencies. Also, each person's physiology, and thus the precise frequencies at which their hair cells fire maximally, will vary. For all of those reasons (and others occurring at higher levels of neural organization) it's unlikely that people will experience an auditory stimulus exactly the same as someone else. Because of learning, they may provide the same description of the stimulus (for example, "that sounds like a middle C to me") but that doesn't mean that their perceptions are equivalent. It's pretty hard to demonstrate from how we describe it that the subjective experience of a 440 Hz signal "sounds" different to me than it does to you but you can show that cochlear evoked potentials differ between people. I realize that this is "hair-splitting" (pun intended) and the more important and more easily proven point is that an interval that I hear as optimally harmonic may not be the same interval that someone else judges to be optimally harmonic. Just think about cultures whose music is based on microtonic scales that sound really unmusical to us as a concrete example.
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  #21  
Old 10-08-2012, 02:34 PM
gibsonjk gibsonjk is offline
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there are a fw thing that could cause this your guitar lower end guitars seem to go in and out of tune the temp of the room when it cold string tightn when it warmer they losen new string strech the smaller ones more or less dead string seem to fall out of tune and can cause ur tuner to be tuning a dead e vs a smaller e that dont go dead as ez the brand of tuner u use could be a number of things tbh it has happend to me
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  #22  
Old 10-08-2012, 02:44 PM
mustache79 mustache79 is offline
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Like Larry J said "tune and tweak."

I use a tuner to get my guitar to the tweak stage, which is done by ear. I usually tune my high E a bit flat to compensate D shaped chords.
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  #23  
Old 10-08-2012, 03:01 PM
murrmac123 murrmac123 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by gibsonjk View Post
there are a fw thing that could cause this your guitar lower end guitars seem to go in and out of tune the temp of the room when it cold string tightn when it warmer they losen new string strech the smaller ones more or less dead string seem to fall out of tune and can cause ur tuner to be tuning a dead e vs a smaller e that dont go dead as ez the brand of tuner u use could be a number of things tbh it has happend to me
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  #24  
Old 10-08-2012, 03:16 PM
Russ C Russ C is offline
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the simple thing I've never been able to get with the various versions of altering
a 12 even semitone scale or fretboard is .. eg. what you do to make an open E chord sound better must make an open A or G sound that much worse - and the same for open D or C - which all have their upsetting intervals (most often maj and min 3rds or 6ths) on different pairs of strings.

Is there something I'm not seeing???
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  #25  
Old 10-08-2012, 03:25 PM
Bobby1note Bobby1note is offline
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Originally Posted by tfs4473 View Post
Anybody even find your guitar sometimes just sounds off, even though you tuned it accurately? Then you play it later (either that day or at another time altogether) and it sounds spot on... but you didn't change anything?

I've really increased the amount of time I'm practicing lately, and I've noticed that some days the guitar sounds ever so slightly off, even after using the on-board tuner. Not for individual strings, but for chords (especially open ones). And on other days, things sound right from the git-go.

I've checked the on-board tuning against two clip-ons, and yep, it's right (and I've done this for multiple guitars, not just one). Innotation's good, too, but at that moment the chord doesn't sound right to me. I'll play, and sure enough the chord sounds perfect.

My take is that my hearing is subjective enough that some days I "remember" hearing a chord sounding a certain way, but that's not an accurate memory.

The guitar's fine... I just think it's kind of neat how expectation and memory color what we hear.

Thom
Just a few thoughts that may help;

1. I NEVER tune-down a string,,,, always tune up, and after "you're there", give the string a solid tug, then re-tune it.

2. When you tune a string to perfection, and you move on to tension the next strings, they will have an impact on the tuning of the first string you did, etc. Once I get them "close", I go back and re-tune.

3. I like tuning strings in harmony to each other. For example; I'll pluck the 1st and 6th string simultaneously, then while keeping the 6th string open, I'll pluck it simultaneously to the 1st string, but on the 5th fret,,, then the 7th,,, then the 10th,12th, etc. Then I'll reverse it by plucking the 1st string "open", with all the same notes I mentioned for the 6th string. Then I'll alternate with different pairings of strings.
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  #26  
Old 10-08-2012, 03:28 PM
Big.Al Big.Al is offline
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I find that sometimes my guitars sound "off" no mater how I tune them, and at other times they sound fine. I think it's more of my frame of mind than the instruments . . . or maybe how hard I'm fretting the strings on a bad stress day.
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