We are so NOT in tune. Help needed. If it can be helped...

Hi all,

Just to want to get some idea of what u guys are thinking.

What does "In tune" actually mean to you?

Let's examine from the perspective of frequencies, using the note C as a reference.

If we are tuning with reference to the Just Scale (scale that singers will naturally sing without accompaniment), then the G note (fifth) will have a frequency of 3/2 above C.

If we are tuning with reference to the Equal Tempered Scale( for guitars and keyboards and all 12 tone instruments), then the G note will have a frequency of 2^(7/12)... about 1.4983 above C.

The problem arises when u hear tt interval between G and C on the guitar is tt it does not sound pure. But tt's just the way the guitar is constructed or else we cannot modulate the key. Same reason for keyboards as well.

Imho, the safest way should be to tune the A string to correct pitch, and then tune the rest of the strings using the octave method for the rest of the strings. At least this way u play in tune with the keyboard.
 
Interesting interesting... the more you look into it, the more interesting it get. Informative it is and tis an excellent read! Thanks for the posts & advice given!

Yeap, the piano is tuned via equal temperment... Isn't the 12 tone western scale out of tune by itself?


I better re-look and re-state my points, seeing how I have mentioned some things out of wack.

My gripe is being in tune, relative to the other notes. Like the A chord example given by GuitarTeacher - its an obvious thing to me. Its very... lets just say, hard to record stuff thats suffering from (relative) out of tune-ness... Its also an issue, having tuned up a guitar relative to itself, and finding myself out of tune from everyone else.
And its true, at the end of day, I find myself dumping the tuner and going by ear. Worse, the tuner is a Boss TU-12 - parallax errors abound! (it is called Parallax error right?).
Either that or my fretting pressure becomes extremely... uh... anal.

As far as I've been reading... it seems the harmonic node referencing used for tuning, is worse off than using fretted notes? Okay, I'll use my ears to figure this out.

Chang, tuning to A, you are certain of this method?
 
Dan,

the 12 tone western scale is not out of tune by itself. Hmm, how to put it, let's just say there are various ways to derive the 12 tone scale, either by 5ths or 4ths or 3rds. The problem with each method is that the scale obtained is only playable in one particular key and cannot be modulated to other keys without sounding "out of tune"

Thus, the equal temperament scale is adopted, to balance the intervals between each successive note so tt key-modulation is possible.

What u would want to do, is to get ur guitar in tune to equal temperament. But i believe what your ears are telling you is that your guitar is out of tune relative to the pure harmonic intervals.

the harmonic node tuning method is by far the worst way to tune the guitar. Tt's for sure! As i've mentioned the guitar is built with equal temperament in mind, tuning relative to the harmonics is completely going against the equal temperament idea.

Only the octave harmonic is usable from what i know, because in all tuning scales, the octave is definitely pure.

As for tuning to A, well at least the piano is tuned to A440Hz (standard). Tt's the reference point for the rest of the notes in the chromatic scale. That's how orchestras tune themselves up isnt it?
 
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