You did a terrific job, Tim, of describing the uniqueness of tuning guitars and the particular characteristics of the instrument in your post (below). I can't imagine anyone doing better! All of your subsequent posts further support your explanations as well. Owner of over 25 guitars (electric, classical, & acoustic) during my guitar experience. Thank you, Keith A. McGavern kam544@ionet.net Registered Piano Technician Oklahoma Chapter 731 Piano Technicians Guild USA >John, Bill & List: > > >Billbrpt@aol.com wrote: > >> The guitar's frets are laid out in a manner that would imply ET. All >> electronic guitar tuner's frequencies are based on ET. However, many players >> will tell you that once they have tuned according to the elctronic tuner, >> they play some chords and "tweak" the tuning a bit to suit their own >> preferences. Many who do this are essentially converting the ET to a WT. >> > >Guitar frets on all modern guitars that i know of are laid out at a >factor of 2^-12, just like an equal tempered piano scale. Because the >guitar interface is a 2-dimensional matrix rather than linear and because >the intervals are fixed in the dimension along the neck, you can >only alter the intervals between the open strings. Any attempt at using >other temperaments results in different harmonic results depending upon >how you voice any given chord and which form (or "shape") of the chord >you use. Very few guitars I have played have perfect intonation, >although inharmonicity is low compared to that of pianos because the >tension is so much lower and the strings thinner and less stiff. The >intonation of any guitar is affected by the choice of strings (why most >electrics have compensating bridges), the age of the strings (older >strings are less elastic and go sharper when pushed to the fret than >do new ones, and have higher inharmonicity) the action height (the higher >the string is above the fretboard, the sharper it goes when it it pressed >down to the fret) the height of the frets and the technique of the >guitarist (how close the finger is to the fret, how far the string is >depressed below the crown of the fret, and the amplitude of the vibration >(if you watch with a visual aid, you can see that a loud note is sharper >than a quiet one, especially in the bass). > >Any time you tune a guitar, you try to make the best compromise for the >piece you are playing, so that as many as possible of the actual >intervals to be used will sound tolerable. I have never seen an >electronic tuner that will do a satisfactory job on a guitar. I don't >know any accomplished guitarists that use them, although I know of some >roadies that use them to put stage guitars "in the park" before a >performer picks them up, and I know luthiers who keep one on the bench >for analytical purposes. I am sure you could store a good average aural >tuning for a given performer on a given guitar with a given set of >strings of a given age on a SAT. > >When I tune, I set my open fourths to about 1 beat per second wide, the >third between G and B to roughly 8 beats (no, I don't count) make sure my >fifth-fret unisons (and 1 fourth fret) are tolerable, check the >coincident 3rd and 4th partials of adjacent strings(7th and 5th frets), >and the 4th partial of E against open e, and then play a bunch of chords >to find any intolerable intervals. And of course, all of this only >applies to standard tuning (EADGBe) There are many guitarists using >non-standard tunings, a lot of which are tuned to an open chord, or >something approaching one (such as DADGad) and in which it is possible to >push the tuning (of the open chord) towards "just intonation", since most >of the compositions played this way are strongly tied to the home key, >and the occasional crunchy excursion is soon satisfyingly resolved. > >Tim Keenan >Terrace, BC
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