I'd like to talk about your ears.

[suziko]

Well this turned out to be a fascinating thread! Thank you, Stuart, Wrench and Wiley for clearing up some of my "tune the A, not the E string" confusion. I have always wondered why, when I tune my high E it often registers as an A.

Suzi

[willem]

suziko wrote:

Well this turned out to be a fascinating thread! Thank you, Stuart, Wrench and Wiley for clearing up some of my "tune the A, not the E string" confusion. I have always wondered why, when I tune my high E it often registers as an A.

Suzi

And Suzi,did you know when you put on your capo you must check alway's your tuning,,Dan(wrench)can tell you ton's on that,,

[suziko]

Thanks, Willem, I do know that. Not that I always retune my guitar after capoing, but if I'm making a video I do try to remember to do that.

Here's a question for everyone: When I try tuning my guitar using neighboring strings as comparisons, I feel like the same note on two different strings NEVER sounds exactly the same. For example, if I play a B on the 3rd string, 4th fret, it doesn't sound exactly the same as an open B (2nd string). Should it? Are my ears bad? Even if I use a tuner to try to get them the same, they never sound the same. The open note always sounds.... brighter?

Suzi

[willem]

suziko wrote:

Thanks, Willem, I do know that. Not that I always retune my guitar after capoing, but if I'm making a video I do try to remember to do that.

Here's a question for everyone: When I try tuning my guitar using neighboring strings as comparisons, I feel like the same note on two different strings NEVER sounds exactly the same. For example, if I play a B on the 3rd string, 4th fret, it doesn't sound exactly the same as an open B (2nd string). Should it? Are my ears bad? Even if I use a tuner to try to get them the same, they never sound the same. The open note always sounds.... brighter?

Suzi

Suzi,, i noticed that years ago and you right by ear you hear a diffrent,,i like to know how we call that in musical way,,the open note can we call brighter and the fret note ..... a kinda dead????

[sws626]

wrench wrote:

It's complicated.
...
Guitars are equal temperament scales, which is why being in tune mathematically, doesn't necessarily sound the best. Google up Equal Temperament Scale and Pythagoras' Comma for some interesting reading. Like I said, it's complicated.

Ross Duffin has a nice book on the history of equal temperament and its consequences for stringed instruments.

[wrench]

suziko wrote:

Thanks, Willem, I do know that. Not that I always retune my guitar after capoing, but if I'm making a video I do try to remember to do that.

Here's a question for everyone: When I try tuning my guitar using neighboring strings as comparisons, I feel like the same note on two different strings NEVER sounds exactly the same. For example, if I play a B on the 3rd string, 4th fret, it doesn't sound exactly the same as an open B (2nd string). Should it? Are my ears bad? Even if I use a tuner to try to get them the same, they never sound the same. The open note always sounds.... brighter?

Suzi

There are two reasons an open B and fretted B sound different. The G string is a wound string, and therefore has higher mass than the plain steel B string. This means that its vibration signature is different and therefore sounds different, even though the pitches are the same (they are not, but I'll explain that in a minute). Specifically, the plain steel string vibrates in a sinusoidal wave, where the wound string has a slow attack and rapid decay. Secondly, no fretted note is exactly on pitch. As you fret notes further up the fretboard, the error increases. For your example, I grabbed a guitar and analyzed an open B at 494.0 Hz and a fretted B at 495.0 Hz. This is because fretting any note stretches the string and also because of the Equal Tempered Scale we have been mentioning. Basically, the ETS divides an octave into 12 equal notes so we can continue into other octaves. However, our ears don't hear that way. Our ears are pleased to hear notes of a set of frequency ratios. The problem is that scale doesn't divide equally, so music on that scale is limited to one octave. The difference in frequency of the two scales is called The Pythagorean Comma, and is 3.1 Hz.

Suzi, you would be shocked at just how good human ears are. But look at the replies to this thread and note how many folks can actually hear very small variances in frequency.

[heyjoe]

Its a very interesting topic Dennis, and one I've been thinking a lot about recently.

I've found that as I get older, I'm having trouble tuning my guitar by ear- the trouble is mainly with the low E string. After a while, much tuning of guitars and some frustration at not being able to get a guitar tuned to my ears satisfaction, I decided to do a test to see which was better, my ears at tuning a guitar, or a guitar tuner.

For this test I used a Yamaha YT-2200 tuner, and I also have an inbuilt tuner on my acoustic. My thinking was to not only see if my ears were out, but if 2 separate tuners would give the same reading when trying to tune a guitar.

The result was that both tuners tuned the guitar exactly the same-I tuned the acoustic with the onboard, and plugged in the standalone unit at the same time and they were identical.

Oh yes, as I suspected, and as my father had been saying for a long time, my ears are out!

So I'm now firmly in the "tune using a tuner" camp, and I'm trying to retrain my hearing.

Joe

[suziko]

Wrench, what a great answer. Thanks for taking the time to look into and explain this issue in greater depth. So if one of the factors is the different nature of the strings themselves (wound versus plain steel) I would assume that the difference in sound between the same note played on the same type of string would be slightly less noticeable- for example an E played on the 2nd string 5th fret and an open E (1st string) will sound more similar to each other than an open B and a B played on the 3rd string. Is that correct? But there will still be a difference in the sound due to the other factor you mentioned.

So how do you look past that difference that you hear between the two strings and tune the strings according to their neighbor? The difference in sound is enough to me that it's hard to get past and I keep thinking that one or the other string is not in tune (in relation to the other). Or maybe, after this discussion, I'll learn to factor out the "brightness" i"m hearing in an open note and listen for just the tone.

[wiley]

[wrench]

suziko wrote:

So how do you look past that difference that you hear between the two strings and tune the strings according to their neighbor? The difference in sound is enough to me that it's hard to get past and I keep thinking that one or the other string is not in tune (in relation to the other). Or maybe, after this discussion, I'll learn to factor out the "brightness" i"m hearing in an open note and listen for just the tone.

OK, I can't answer this question. I don't think I'm far enough along the musical evolutionary scale. I'm still preoccupied with just trying to play the right notes at the right time. You do ask an interesting question, however. It makes me wonder if the preference of open strings may be a subliminal factor in open tunings. Two artists who come to mind are Will Ackerman and Don Ross. I think I read once where Ackerman has written only 2 songs in standard tuning and about 2,000 in their own song-specific tuning.

The video wiley posted is a glimpse into how just how the brain demands its music. The rest of that series is on YouTube, BTW. There's 10 parts to it, and it's fascinating. Thanks for the link, wiley.