> >An electronic tuner is measuring the fundamental but
>>what your ear is "measuring", hearing, on a "note" on an acoustic
>>instrument is much more.
The electronic tuner doesn't measure the fundamental based on an A440
scale - it frequency-divides based on the fundamental which it is set
up to measure. Thus, with a variable pitch (tunable) tuner, you can
change the fundamental A440 to A444 or A436, or some other frequency.
I don't know enough about the algorithms to know whether they use
pure pythagorean ones, or something else, but based on the relative
base (again, A440) they can derive all the other 12 tones in the
scale, plus allow you to adjust individual strings by a few cents.
And this is just _my_ two cents...
>
>I prefer a tuning fork (I almost wrote pitch fork by mistake!). Does the
>ringing of the fork include the other harmonics etc. and might that be why
>I like it better? I think I also like it because I amplify it right on my
>fiddle bridge so it seems like my own instrument making the sound. At a
>session, when I can't hear a pitch fork, I just tune to what seems to be
>the average A.
>
The tuning fork provides the fundamental - your instrument amplifies
the sound and provides the harmonics, including vibrating the
strings. You aren't getting conflicting overtones/lingering notes
from the other adjacent notes which you are playing. Note the decay
(slow disappearance) of the sound as you hold the tuning fork to the
instrument. While this is dependent primarily on the mass of metal
which vibrates at 440hz, and which we call a tuning fork, it will
also vary from instrument to instrument, depending on the density of
the wood and other factors.
Bob
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