Re: [scots-l] Tuning and Electronic Tuners
I second David's comment on tuning a clarsach. It certainly helps to have a tuner if you have 30 some strings to get in tune. It truly does save time, and I'd rather be playing than tuning endlessly. However, I do still tweak a few strings after I use the tuner. Some tones just won't sound right. Always the B needs tweaking. Regarding tuning forks, they represent the perfect fundamental. There are no upper-partials when you strike a tuning fork. A professor of music told me once that a tuning fork is the *only* instrument that produces a perfect fundamental, but I don't know if that's true. --Cynthia Cathcart Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] Tuning and Electronic Tuners
John Chambers wrote: Electronic tuners do have the advantage that they can be calibrated to an untunable instrument... When I play live or in a noisy set up, an electric tuner helps me tune up when I can hardly hear my instrument. You might think that it doesn't matter whether a mandolin's in tune in these circumstances, but it gives me peace of mind. In more peaceful instances, I tend to trust my ear more. -- Nigel Gatherer, Crieff, Scotland [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/gatherer/ Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] Tuning and Electronic Tuners
Wendy Galovich wrote: Might this variation in the harmonics also explain another phenomenon: two instruments are tuned using the same electronic tuner, and when checked against that, appear that they're in tune with each other, and each one sounds in tune by itself, but.. when played together, they sound *out of tune* with each other. Could the differences in the harmonics of individual instruments create that effect, if the tuner is measuring the fundamental? I'm not a big fan of electronic tuners either - my favorite tuning device is a tuning fork.. no batteries to run down, and no annoying little needle jumping around alternately indicating both sharp and flat on the same string. I like electronic tuners - all the players at our session use them at home, and you can turn up and find everyone is in tune. Compare that with 20 years ago when you could turn up at a club and find no-one really in tune with each other unless they went outside and sorted it. I find that my electronic tuner is sensitive to open strings ringing, so I have to damp all the other strings. It does pick up harmonics and can suddenly jump to a fifth in error, especially if the strings aren't damped. I do adjust my guitar tunings after using the electronic tuner. Each instrument needs slightly different tweaking to sound right. The same applies to various friends' instruments - you can not just centre the needle on all strings and hope for perfect intervals all the way up the neck. That needs 'tempering' to iron out minor flaws in the instrument's build. My best guitar for accuracy without this fine tuning is probably the Lowden O-10. Also, I tune my wife's clarsach, and BOY does an electronic tuner help get THAT one sorted quickly and correctly! Same goes for an autoharp I have. Without this very inexpensive device it would take hours of adjustment by ear to get right. I can tune the autoharp in about five minutes with the electronic tuner. Guess the same would go for hammered dulcimer or any other multi-string, unfretted instrument. David Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] Tuning and Electronic Tuners
On Thursday 02 August 2001 00:09, you wrote: The worst culprits seem to be fiddlers, who often have the attitude Damded if I'll tune to an accordion. (Since I'm also a fiddler, I can get away with such an observation. ;-) Ha ha.. I guess I should have added, if I'm playing in a group I do tune my A to everyone else's and work from there. :-) Wendy Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
[scots-l] Tuning and Electronic Tuners
In an e-mail whose subject was What makes a style Scottish? Nigel Gatherer wrote: I was also fascinated by Alexander's statement: The ear's perception of a note can vary so greatly that the literature uses two terms; frequency...and pitch...and the two can vary by as much as a whole tone... I often disagree with what an electric tuner says is in tune and make minor adjustments to suit my ear. I wonder if this is an illustration of that difference? My comment: I have no doubt whatsoever that that is what is happening. I don't claim to be an expert in the workings of electronic tuners but I think they are such a menace that they should be barred from use. This is what I think is happening. An electronic tuner is measuring the fundamental but what your ear is measuring, hearing, on a note on an acoustic instrument is much more. What your ear hears is a composite of the fundamental and as many as twenty harmonics which the ear perceives as a single tone. The number of, and the relative intensity [loudness] of the harmonics influences the ear's perception of the fundamental, and in making music perception is reality. There is another factor at work here if the electronic tuner is used to tune all the strings on your instrument. For reasons quite apart from the electronic tuner itself, it is more difficult to tune a unison than it is to tune concords, 5th's 4th's,etc. Under certain circumstances, when two notes sounded simultaneously are only a few cycles apart, the ear finds the result pleasing, giving a vibrato effect [sort of]. However when this occurs, the ear's perception of the note is the average of the two notes which of course means that you're not yet tuned. This cannot happen if you tune by ear using the concord intervals; Pythagorean or perfect fifth's on the fiddle; fourth's and a single third on conventional guitar if memory serves. I hope this is helpful. Alexander Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] Tuning and Electronic Tuners
An electronic tuner is measuring the fundamental but what your ear is measuring, hearing, on a note on an acoustic instrument is much more. 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. - Kate -- Kate Dunlay David Greenberg Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada http://www.total.net/~dungreen Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] Tuning and Electronic Tuners
On Wednesday 01 August 2001 13:46, you wrote: In an e-mail whose subject was What makes a style Scottish? Nigel Gatherer wrote: I was also fascinated by Alexander's statement: The ear's perception of a note can vary so greatly that the literature uses two terms; frequency...and pitch...and the two can vary by as much as a whole tone... I often disagree with what an electric tuner says is in tune and make minor adjustments to suit my ear. I wonder if this is an illustration of that difference? My comment: I have no doubt whatsoever that that is what is happening. I don't claim to be an expert in the workings of electronic tuners but I think they are such a menace that they should be barred from use. This is what I think is happening. An electronic tuner is measuring the fundamental but what your ear is measuring, hearing, on a note on an acoustic instrument is much more. What your ear hears is a composite of the fundamental and as many as twenty harmonics which the ear perceives as a single tone. The number of, and the relative intensity [loudness] of the harmonics influences the ear's perception of the fundamental, and in making music perception is reality. Might this variation in the harmonics also explain another phenomenon: two instruments are tuned using the same electronic tuner, and when checked against that, appear that they're in tune with each other, and each one sounds in tune by itself, but.. when played together, they sound *out of tune* with each other. Could the differences in the harmonics of individual instruments create that effect, if the tuner is measuring the fundamental? I'm not a big fan of electronic tuners either - my favorite tuning device is a tuning fork.. no batteries to run down, and no annoying little needle jumping around alternately indicating both sharp and flat on the same string. Wendy Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] Tuning and Electronic Tuners
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 Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] Tuning and Electronic Tuners
On Wednesday 01 August 2001 20:38, you wrote: An electronic tuner is measuring the fundamental but what your ear is measuring, hearing, on a note on an acoustic instrument is much more. 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. - Kate Hmm.. I was wondering about the harmonics in that situation too. I think the ringing fork actually *does* cause sympathetic vibrations from the A string when the frequencies (or pitches, whichever it is depending on what the fork is generating) match. When I tune using the tuning fork, the ringing gets noticeably louder when the string's in tune. Wendy Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] Tuning and Electronic Tuners
Wendy writes: | I'm not a big fan of electronic tuners either - my favorite tuning device | is a tuning fork.. no batteries to run down, and no annoying little needle | jumping around alternately indicating both sharp and flat on the same string. I'm not a fan of either, though I own two of each. They both lead to groups that are less well in tune than they'd be without the gadgets. What I've seen all too often is someone with an untunable instrument, typically piano or accordion, plays an A, but there are a few dummies with tuning forks or electronic tuners that take the attitude I'm in tune and the piano or accordion is out of tune. The result is that the group is out of tune. Electronic tuners do have the advantage that they can be calibrated to an untunable instrument. As a keyboard player, I've found that it can be useful to become familiar with how one calibrates the common models. I can sometimes sneakily calibrate them when the owner isn't looking. Then they think they're tuning to A=440 when they're actually tuning to my instrument. But sometimes I can't get away with this, and there's no good way to get the group in tune. The worst culprits seem to be fiddlers, who often have the attitude Damded if I'll tune to an accordion. (Since I'm also a fiddler, I can get away with such an observation. ;-) -- He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue. -- Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
Re: [scots-l] Tuning and Electronic Tuners
- Original Message - From: SUZANNE MACDONALD [EMAIL PROTECTED] tone... I often disagree with what an electric tuner says is in tune i bought a really fancy electronic tuner to help tune whistes. i used it for my guitar one day, and my (now) wife (the violinist) says, that second string is flat. i turn it up a hair and she says that's good. i check the tuner and it still says it's in tune. moral of the story: at the $100 level, a good ear tunes better than a tuner. now that i've started working with the fiddle, a mediocre ear is as good as the tuner, too, for intervals, at least. bob south carolina Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
