Tuning

I have never had a great ear for tuning. I'm not tone deaf, but I've never REALLY understood and internalized tuning by ear. It is only quite recently that it has begun to make any sense to me at all...but I still have trouble knowing if something is sharp or flat.

This is a case where the public school system really failed me. I played cello in public school for 7 years. For most of that time I was first chair in my section. I was, I'll say with no ego, the best player or one of the best players. But I had no idea how to tune.  It was generally accepted that I did in fact know how to tune though. I don't ever remember being taught. Not really. I just recall an A 440 playing out at the start of every rehearsal and us being asked to tune. Those who had big issues were assisted by the teacher. The rest were not.  I never had big issues. Why? Because my cello was good at staying in tune. Simple as that. I was careful with it and it was a decent instrument and it just didn't go out of tune very far. So I never learned how to tune.

Looking back this really does seem a collosal failure of the public school music educational program. If it was the case with me, it was surely the case with most people. It is such a fundamental skill...why wasn't it called out as such? It seems, in retrospect, that it is a skill that can be taught...but someone has to take the time to teach it. To train a young person's ears.

In any case, tuning doesn't bother me so much anymore because now I have electronic tuners that tell me if I'm in tune (for open strings) and frets to telling me if I'm playing in the right place. But that doesn't mean that it isn't still an important skill.

It often troubles me because I feel like my instrument, particularly my low E string, isn't quite in tune...even though the tuner says it is and I'm playing in the right place. It just nags a little at me.

In Guitar Zero I learned something that I'd never known before...tuning a guitar is not absolute. I don't totally understand, but essentially if you get your guitar in tune with itself it will be ever so slightly out of tune in other ways. This is different than your guitar not being in tune with itself...which can be corrected by adjusting screws down by the bridge and is refered to as setting your intonation. No what I'm talking about is that tuning a guitar involves compromise...it will never be totally in tune for all purposes. From the site I just linked...

Richard Lloyd, formerly of the hugely influential band Television and now a great guitar educator, discussed an interesting way to mitigate the problem:

First tune the bottom E string to a tuning fork or tuning machine. Next, fret the E. string at the tenth fret. This will give you a D. Tune the D string to this note by ear. Next, fret the D string at the fifth fret. Tune the G string to the D string at the fifth fret. Now fret the G string at the second fret. This gives you an A. Tune the A string from this note. Now fret the A string at the second fret. Tune the B string from this note. It will be an octave up. Next, fret the D string at the second fret. This gives you E. Tune your high E from this. Again this will be an octave.


Voila! Strum the guitar. It should sound considerably more pleasing. If you are playing an acoustic or electric guitar by yourself this should work delightfully. If you are playing with other instruments it can take some real effort to find a harmoniousness between all the separate instruments, but I think that if you try this approach you will begin to get a taste of the difference between tuning to a machine and tuning to natural acoustic principles.

Shocking! I had no idea. I think the upshot is...if you tune each string to a reference pitch the strings will be slightly out of tune with each other. If you tune your guitar relative to itself instead...you'll be out of tune with the other instruments you are playing with. This is crazy to me.

But it might explain why things never sound quite right to me on bass...or playing bass against guitars. Or like why no matter how much I try to tune I don't feel like I'm in tune with the recording of Here Comes Your Man (though I also wonder if they didn't tweak that recording and increase or lower the overall pitch, essentially changing the tuning from how I'm tuned...seems like they did to me). Lately in particular I'll feel like the bass note I'm playing clashes slightly against the chord the guitar player is playing...but when we check to see if we are in tune with each other we are. And they don't seem to notice. Our strings are in tune with each other...but their chord is probably out of tune with itself and therefore out of tune with what I'm playing. Maddening.