CAPO,,in tune out tune..

willem
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2009 7:53 am
Status: Offline

Mon Dec 20, 2010 6:21 am

wrench wrote:
[

Willem - Your headstock tuner reminds me of a comment Keith Holland made. He warned of tone changes by increasing the mass on the headstock by using heavier tuning machines. But in an earlier video, he recommended the use of a headstock tuner. So, do you notice a change in tone when a tuner is clamped to your headstock? Thank you for asking technical questions, as I really enjoy the technology of guitar as much as I love the music they make. Sorry to hijack your thread, though.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Dan,,i don't call this a hijack,, this thread was mend for knowledge about capo and intonation,,i get the most of it,,now when i place a capo i tune it..

I never notice tone change(i never thought about it) when placeing the head stock tuner,,i began with this kind of tuner cause you can tune with noise around you, now i know something and go to see if i have a sharp ear..

ONe strange thing happend while useing this headstock tuner,,tuning goes well with 6-5-4-3-2 strings,but the high E gives on the tuner an A(but it is'nt), when i mute the other 5 strings then it goes well..don't know what it really is..maybe the tuner?

It is great to have such a great observer,,i see you did also many tests on AL(COUSTICS) sounds...just great cause we will all work to great sounding vids..


wrench
Posts: 0
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2009 3:12 pm
Status: Offline

Mon Dec 20, 2010 9:08 am

TGNeil wrote:
A little hint- you can adjust the pitch with pressure from the index finger- more=sharp, less lowers the pitch. I suggest that your ear can tune the note in a way that the capo can't.

Neil
I can agree that finger pressure vs. capo pressure affects the pitch, but only to a degree. As soon as a string leaves its straight line to travel through the action height toward the fret, the mass, tension, and length variables are already introducing pitch errors. By the time the string arrives at the fret, the minimum playable error has already taken place. I agree that further pressure will further stretch the string over the fret slightly, but this will account for only portion of the total error. And we see this mostly on the low E string because it has the highest mass and statistically is played on a barre chord only half the time.

Now, to suggest the ear can modulate finger pressure to get the best possible outcome is something I think is totally plausible, and is indeed one of the miracles of the human body. Antonio Torres developed his classical guitars with hearing and touch, and without much science.

Uh oh, did I just suggest human senses trump science?


wrench
Posts: 0
Joined: Sat Mar 21, 2009 3:12 pm
Status: Offline

Mon Dec 20, 2010 10:14 am

cosmicmechanic wrote:
Not sure I grasp everything that has been said, but is it possible that the degradations in tuning with a capo that have been mentioned so far are those detected by electronic tools and that they are mostly inaudible to ordinary mortal humans ? (excluding the immortal kind).
If this is a dense remark, thanks for your indulgence.

Pierre
You are very close to something I have been tempted to write about for months. I posed this question to pro musicians and instrument experts, and it has stumped 100% of them: is it better to tune to the string vibration or the body vibration? Do you notice that a magnetic pickup plugged directly into a tuner gives a signal that very stable as you tune, but when tuning an acoustic guitar with a microphone pickup, you get some wild swings in the pitch as the signals decay? This occurs when a frequency resonating in the body becomes more powerful than the vibration of the string, and it may not be the note you plucked. It is entirely possible that a guitar perfectly tuned with a contact pickup shows out of tune with a microphone pickup. This can occur on any random guitar, depending on how the soundboard was tuned at manufacture. Guitars are voiced for certain purposes, too. For example, we all have heard about the "bassy voice of a dreadnaught" and the "tonal balance of a jumbo". Well, oversimplified, a dreadnought is voiced to ring at G dominantly, and everything else rings E and A dominantly (so does a piano). I need about 1,000 pages to fill in the details on this, but my point is every soundboard is different, and they all do not result in the same sound from a given string vibration. It is entirely possible that a guitar will ring a note of a certain frequency when stimulated by a string vibration of a slightly different frequency. For example, suppose a guitar soundboard was tuned to resonate an A note at 110 Hz. We tune the A string slightly flat at 109 Hz, and pluck it. The guitar will ring the 109 Hz, but it will also ring 110 Hz, and probably louder because that is the frequency at which it naturally resonates. To your point, what you hear when capoed may be the string pitches, the nearest body resonances, or both.

And now to my possible explanation of why an acoustic guitar may not sound out of tune when ringing a barre chord - because the body resonance rings more strongly the notes to which it was tuned in response to string vibrations that are close to, but not exactly the body's resonant frequencies.


willem wrote:
wrench wrote:


Willem - Your headstock tuner reminds me of a comment Keith Holland made. He warned of tone changes by increasing the mass on the headstock by using heavier tuning machines. But in an earlier video, he recommended the use of a headstock tuner. So, do you notice a change in tone when a tuner is clamped to your headstock? Thank you for asking technical questions, as I really enjoy the technology of guitar as much as I love the music they make. Sorry to hijack your thread, though.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Dan,,i don't call this a hijack,, this thread was mend for knowledge about capo and intonation,,i get the most of it,,now when i place a capo i tune it..

I never notice tone change(i never thought about it) when placeing the head stock tuner,,i began with this kind of tuner cause you can tune with noise around you, now i know something and go to see if i have a sharp ear..

ONe strange thing happend while useing this headstock tuner,,tuning goes well with 6-5-4-3-2 strings,but the high E gives on the tuner an A(but it is'nt), when i mute the other 5 strings then it goes well..don't know what it really is..maybe the tuner?

It is great to have such a great observer,,i see you did also many tests on AL(COUSTICS) sounds...just great cause we will all work to great sounding vids..
I didn't notice a tonal change with a headstock mounted tuner, either. I haven't measured it yet, so I can't say for sure, but I didn't hear a difference. But I do know that loose tuner nuts will disturb the clarity of your guitar's notes.

I touched on the E and A tuner confusion with Pierre. E and A are mathematically linked at nearly a 3:4 ratio. When you pluck an E, the guitar can't sound a low E very strong. The low E note you hear gets much of its volume from E3, the next octave higher, which is at a 3:2 ratio with A. The E note is now made up of E2 and E3, which trigger some resonance in the body at A, which triggers the A string. As the E notes decay, they become less powerful than the A they triggered. The tuner displays the nearest and strongest note it detects, which becomes the A as the E's decay. I think if you muted just the A string, you will get mostly E in the display, except b right at the very end. I've heard complaints of some headstock tuners not picking up E. This is not the tuner's fault. This occurs mostly on dreadnoughts because they produce weak notes below G.


willem
Posts: 5
Joined: Fri Mar 20, 2009 7:53 am
Status: Offline

Mon Dec 20, 2010 11:38 am

wrench wrote:
cosmicmechanic wrote:
Not sure I grasp everything that has been said, but is it possible that the degradations in tuning with a capo that have been mentioned so far are those detected by electronic tools and that they are mostly inaudible to ordinary mortal humans ? (excluding the immortal kind).
If this is a dense remark, thanks for your indulgence.

Pierre
You are very close to something I have been tempted to write about for months. I posed this question to pro musicians and instrument experts, and it has stumped 100% of them: is it better to tune to the string vibration or the body vibration? Do you notice that a magnetic pickup plugged directly into a tuner gives a signal that very stable as you tune, but when tuning an acoustic guitar with a microphone pickup, you get some wild swings in the pitch as the signals decay? This occurs when a frequency resonating in the body becomes more powerful than the vibration of the string, and it may not be the note you plucked. It is entirely possible that a guitar perfectly tuned with a contact pickup shows out of tune with a microphone pickup. This can occur on any random guitar, depending on how the soundboard was tuned at manufacture. Guitars are voiced for certain purposes, too. For example, we all have heard about the "bassy voice of a dreadnaught" and the "tonal balance of a jumbo". Well, oversimplified, a dreadnought is voiced to ring at G dominantly, and everything else rings E and A dominantly (so does a piano). I need about 1,000 pages to fill in the details on this, but my point is every soundboard is different, and they all do not result in the same sound from a given string vibration. It is entirely possible that a guitar will ring a note of a certain frequency when stimulated by a string vibration of a slightly different frequency. For example, suppose a guitar soundboard was tuned to resonate an A note at 110 Hz. We tune the A string slightly flat at 109 Hz, and pluck it. The guitar will ring the 109 Hz, but it will also ring 110 Hz, and probably louder because that is the frequency at which it naturally resonates. To your point, what you hear when capoed may be the string pitches, the nearest body resonances, or both.

And now to my possible explanation of why an acoustic guitar may not sound out of tune when ringing a barre chord - because the body resonance rings more strongly the notes to which it was tuned in response to string vibrations that are close to, but not exactly the body's resonant frequencies.


willem wrote:
wrench wrote:


Willem - Your headstock tuner reminds me of a comment Keith Holland made. He warned of tone changes by increasing the mass on the headstock by using heavier tuning machines. But in an earlier video, he recommended the use of a headstock tuner. So, do you notice a change in tone when a tuner is clamped to your headstock? Thank you for asking technical questions, as I really enjoy the technology of guitar as much as I love the music they make. Sorry to hijack your thread, though.

___________________________________________________________________________________

Dan,,i don't call this a hijack,, this thread was mend for knowledge about capo and intonation,,i get the most of it,,now when i place a capo i tune it..

I never notice tone change(i never thought about it) when placeing the head stock tuner,,i began with this kind of tuner cause you can tune with noise around you, now i know something and go to see if i have a sharp ear..

ONe strange thing happend while useing this headstock tuner,,tuning goes well with 6-5-4-3-2 strings,but the high E gives on the tuner an A(but it is'nt), when i mute the other 5 strings then it goes well..don't know what it really is..maybe the tuner?

It is great to have such a great observer,,i see you did also many tests on AL(COUSTICS) sounds...just great cause we will all work to great sounding vids..
I didn't notice a tonal change with a headstock mounted tuner, either. I haven't measured it yet, so I can't say for sure, but I didn't hear a difference. But I do know that loose tuner nuts will disturb the clarity of your guitar's notes.

I touched on the E and A tuner confusion with Pierre. E and A are mathematically linked at nearly a 3:4 ratio. When you pluck an E, the guitar can't sound a low E very strong. The low E note you hear gets much of its volume from E3, the next octave higher, which is at a 3:2 ratio with A. The E note is now made up of E2 and E3, which trigger some resonance in the body at A, which triggers the A string. As the E notes decay, they become less powerful than the A they triggered. The tuner displays the nearest and strongest note it detects, which becomes the A as the E's decay. I think if you muted just the A string, you will get mostly E in the display, except b right at the very end. I've heard complaints of some headstock tuners not picking up E. This is not the tuner's fault. This occurs mostly on dreadnoughts because they produce weak notes below G.
THANK YOU DAN,,I HAVE A KIND OF DREADNOUGHT,,,IT'S ALL GREAT TO KNOW..


Post Reply Previous topicNext topic