Recommend a tuner for a beginner
cr...@earthlink.net
there is one thing I know for sure, there's one way to clear a room,
and that is play an out of tune instrument.
Can anyone recommend a tuner to work with until I can do it by ear??
thx - Craig
Guncho
Any of the cheap digital tuners will do the job. For acoustic however
you have to get one with a mic to pick up the sound of an acoustic.
I use a Seiko.
Chris
David Raleigh Arnold
Get an automatic chromatic tuner, not a guitar tuner, so you can
tune your sax, banjo, and piano too. It is a thing of joy forever.
daveA
--
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Practice logs, diaries and records are good.
When they fail, and they will, do another.
How else can repeated failure be a recipe for success?
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Dan Stanley
<darn...@cox.net> wrote:
>On Fri, 08 Apr 2005 13:37:39 -0700, cr...@earthlink.net wrote:
>
>> After years of the alto sax, I bought an acoustic to give a try, and if
>> there is one thing I know for sure, there's one way to clear a room, and
>> that is play an out of tune instrument.
>>
>> Can anyone recommend a tuner to work with until I can do it by ear??
>
>Get an automatic chromatic tuner, not a guitar tuner, so you can
>tune your sax, banjo,
"Tuning a banjo isn't."
I think Robert Fripp said that.
> and piano too. It is a thing of joy forever.
>daveA
Aye. There are only a million cheap digital tuners out there. As a fer
instance, the Korg CA-30 is chromatic, has a built in mic, fits in yer
shirt pocket and is less than $30. Buy two, they're small...
Dan
Allen L. Barker
I would recommend a Boss TU-12H. I had one for years, and it
was great. Most of these comments refer to electric guitar,
but the tuner also worked well with acoustics. (A pickup of
some sort on an acoustic guitar would tend to increase the
tuning accuracy of any tuner and would end the annoyance of
when other musicians are diddling around on their instruments
while you are trying to tune ;-).
The TU-12H is accurate enough that I could adjust the
intonation by it. It has an analog needle in addition to two
LEDs. Unfortunately, mine finally bit the dust and died just
recently :-(. I have another, cheap tuner that I'm using for
now (Qwik Tune) that just has an LCD display. It is
unfortunately not accurate enough for my ear, and I tend to
have to further fine-tune the notes. It also sucks at
picking up acoustic signals with its built-in "mike."
One problem with the TU-12H is that it may not be the best
thing to use during a gig, since it doesn't have the option
to cut the pass-through signal during tuning. You also
have to lean down to turn it on and look at it if it is in
a pedal board. Boss has a pedal that presumably uses the
same circuitry but has a sequence of LEDs rather than the
analog needle. I haven't tried one to determine if the LEDs
alone are accurate enough to satisfy my ears, but it would
be convenient since it has the good gig features. As far as
setting the intonation, though, I doubt if the quantized
LEDs would quite cut it. (Any comments and/or suggestions
there are welcome!)
If you are new to acoustic guitar from another instrument
I would recommend that you learn to tune by harmonics (when
you don't have a good tuner, which I always prefer). A
harmonic on an open string is sounded by lightly touching a
string at a fret (exactly at the point of the fret), plucking
the string as usual, and then moving the fret finger away.
First tune the low E string to whatever reference. Then,
sound the harmonic at the fifth fret of the E string.
Next, sound the harmonic at the seventh fret of the A string
so that the two tones ring simultaneously. Tune the A string
until they sound the same. The advantage of using harmonics is
that you can really hear the "beats" when it is out of tune and
can adjust accordingly until the beat tone disappears. This
works for all the strings except for the "bump" between the G
and B strings. (The method is not as effective for the B
string to the high E string tuning, so maybe skip it there).
This harmonic tuning method is not *exact*, though such tunings
do sound good and are sometimes used as a sort of musical
tuning idiom. The actual note is just a touch higher than
indicated by the harmonic tuning method. So, after you tune,
say, the A string 7th fret harmonic to match the E string 5th
fret harmonic (and before you move on to the next string)
*then* fret the E string at the fifth fret and adjust the A
string very slightly higher to match the tone. Similarly for
the other strings.
Some general tuning advice: Always try to tune *up* rather
than down, even if you have to adjust down a little bit first.
Stretch the strings out a bit by bending them a little.
If you get "jumps" in the sound when you smoothly turn the
tuning peg, the sting may be sticking at the nut. (The nut
is the strip at the top of the neck where the strings all
fit into grooves, above the first fret like the 0th fret.)
This sort of "sticking" is especially common on the high B and
E strings. Try taking a graphite pencil and scraping it on the
sting so that the scrapings fall into the groove of the nut.
That can really help sometimes. This doesn't apply to most
acoustics, but if you have a floating bridge you always need
to make a few tuning passes through, since any tuning change
affects all the strings.
Oh, and change your strings every now and then ;-). As stings
age they lose a lot of their tone and start to sound dead.
They also become harder to tune and harder to keep in tune. A
fresh set of strings sounds great, and is something to look
forward to!
--
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Allen Barker | Home page ==> http://www.datafilter.com/alb
Allen L. Barker
Lift the string up a little out of the nut to do this, so the
scrapings fall down into the slot in the nut. Oh, and "sting"
a few places in the original article means "string," but my
spell-checker didn't catch that :-).
Allen L. Barker
Here is another point which occurred to me after I posted this
article, and which seems worth mentioning. In the article
I mentioned harmonics and how they are sounded on the open
strings. (To sound a basic harmonic you lightly touch the
string at the fret point, strike the string, and remove the
finger.) Not all harmonics fall right at the fret positions,
but for the basic ones that is a good starting point. The
most basic harmonic is the octave at the twelfth fret. (That
is the midpoint of the string and corresponds to the first
harmonic in the series.) This is the easiest harmonic to
play. The note is *identical* to the note played by fretting
at the twelfth fret, but the timbre is different. Harmonics
have a more bell-like, ringing tone.
As far as tuning goes, the fretted note at the twelfth fret is
the same as the note of the open string (if your guitar's
intonation is reasonably well-adjusted). It is just an octave
higher. The harmonic at the twelfth fret is also the same
note as the open string, an octave higher (regardless of how
well your guitar's intonation is set up).
The practical application here, besides just getting a
different sort of tone for a note, is that some tuners lock
in much better to harmonics than they do to open string
notes. You have to experiment around with it a bit, but
for some strings many tuners will lock in and tune *much*
better to the sound of the harmonic octave at the twelfth fret
than they will to the sound of the open string. (It is the
same note, so use whatever works best.)
If you don't quite get the whole intonation thing, don't
worry too much about it. As another tuning tip, at least
for electric guitar players, take your guitar in to a
guitar store from time to time and ask them to adjust the
intonation. Some will do it for free if you bought the
guitar from them, otherwise it will cost $20 or so, and
they'll adjust other things, too. More advanced players
can learn to adjust such things for themselves if they
should choose to.
Daniel Dreibelbis
"Allen L. Barker" <a...@datafilter.com> wrote:
> One problem with the TU-12H is that it may not be the best
> thing to use during a gig, since it doesn't have the option
> to cut the pass-through signal during tuning. You also
> have to lean down to turn it on and look at it if it is in
> a pedal board.
when I used to gig years ago I had my TU-12 mounted to the pedalboard
with Velcro, and powered by the same BOSS switcher/power supply that fed
my other pedals, which allowed me to keep it on at all times. Later, I
modded my volume pedal so that it would feed the tuner separately out of
the chain, and I could tune silently just by backing off the pedal,,,,,
--
Dan Dreibelbis, Guitar Nerd - Better Living Through Home Recording
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