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The earliest version of that line about the difficulty of tuning stringed instruments was most likely uttered by a lutenist. Around his 50th year, the Baroque composer Sylvius Leopold Weiss answered a question regarding how long he'd been playing the lute. After stating that it had been twenty years, a friend interrupted and reminded Mr Weiss that it had surely been twice as long. "True," he answered "but for twenty years I was tuning."
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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10-02-2023 07:45 AM
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If true this makes me love Weiss even more
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Johann Mattheson wrote that if a lutenist has played for eighty years, he has spent sixty years tuning (source cited on the lute page in wikipedia: Mattheson, Johann (1713). Das neu Eroffnet Orchestre. Hamburg. pp. 247ff.)
But I imagine this was an old lute joke that did the rounds everywhere. This chap doesn’t look too happy.
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Were they doing it all by ear in those days? Did they do concert pitch? They must have had some kind of universal starting note. Maybe.
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Well the other old saying I've read about is that the advice was to tune the highest string until just before it broke. I'm not sure how you knew when that point was coming though! I should imagine lute strings were pretty expensive in those days (probably still are) so I should think they were quite wary of going too high.
I don't think there was a universal pitch standard anyway in those days. They probably just tuned to whatever the singer thought was right. Or for solo playing it didn't matter much.
Rob MacKillop is probably the best person to answer this.
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Tuning pegs
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If they were playing with woodwinds, they probably tuned to that (lots of lute and recorder music). According to wikipedia "[t]he tuning fork was invented in 1711 by British musician John Shore, sergeant trumpeter and lutenist to the royal court." So people have probably been using tuning forks to one degree or another since the early 1700s. There were also pitch pipes (for choirs) as far back as the 1700s (again, according to wiki). There were also harpsichords by the 1500s, and organs earlier than that. So there were fixed pitch instruments around to give reference pitches. Probably not ubiquitous, but probably common enough for aristocrats' courts and fancier churches. Originally Posted by ragman1
But even without perfect (absolute) pitch singers who know their own voices well can often find a reference note. I used to be able to find A (almost exactly), back in the days when I sang more and I had more range, based on finding the high note in a specific song that was part of my band's set. Believe it or not, kids, in the early 1980s electronic tuners were uncommon (at least among broke young musicians) and if there was no keyboard or other fixed pitch instrument in the room, we faked it. I imagine troubadour/minstrel/lutenist folks could do that and would tune based on their singing range.
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Well, of course, here it is on Wiki. Sorry, thoughtless. I won't quote from it, it's too complex.
Lute - Wikipedia
Graham, looks like you were pretty accurate. Thanks.
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I can sing an "A" on command from having to teach so many teenage boys how to play "Highway to Hell." Originally Posted by John A.
Worst part of that is, I think the original recording is a bit flat.
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The question that began at least hundreds of years ago.
For me I tune so my 5th fret is in tune with the tuner, my open are a little flat but I don't play open strings. This is the compromise that keeps me in good enough tune for most of the songs. I never notice or feel like I'm out of tune this way...1-5 a little flat, 12+ a little sharp, 6-11 pretty much ok most of the time.
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Having spent many years in choirs and as a (not great) singer. I know my vocal range so I can hum a note and be darn close. A works well, so do E and G. E is where I start to fee like we are singing "high" and G is about the max for my natural voice before I move into the head. I'm always amazed at how close those three reference tones can get me. Plus from years of playing a I know what EADGBE sound like in order. Originally Posted by John A.
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I used to be able to whistle a tone about halfway between G and Ab. The Army field telephone system used 1600Hz as the ringer, and when using a handset in a commo van without a manual ringer, the usual way to ring the other end was to whistle the tone, and it became easy to do. I never had any idea why that specific frequency was chosen, I suspect it was just arbitrary. For some reason I could sense that it was either sharp or flat, but I could hit it reliably.
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I like the old guitar joke from the days before electronic tuning: Originally Posted by grahambop
How long does it take to tune a 12 string guitar? Nobody knows...
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Be careful using harmonics to tune. The 5th fret harmonics are fine because they sound octaves, but the 7th fret harmonics are all Pythagorean temperament fifths with respect to each open string, not equal temperament. Using 7th fret harmonics as your reference will put the whole guitar off tune.
If you play in a way that utilizes most of the practically reachable range of the finger board, the best way to tune is to set the open first string to E, then match the B string E at the fifth fret to it, then the 3rd string E at the 9th fret, etc... for the 6th string, match its 5th fret harmonic to the open first string.
Doing so will take into account the anomalies of playing lines up the neck on shorter string lengths, smooth out the anomalies across the strings for chords, and help minimize effects of variable string action and neck relief for the fingerable length of the strings.
Music is the queen of the arts because it is the most abstract - an invisible beautiful illusion (all musicians understand this, right?). This includes playing in tune - actually being in tune is not even technically well defined enough in principle to actually happen; there is only the listener's illusion of the sound being in tune.
Historically there have been over two dozen temperaments just in western music (about four of which were highly popular before equal temperament) and concert pitch has varied more than half an octave until standardized less than 100 years ago.
With instruments like brass horns, woodwinds, and fretless strings, part of the musicians' playing technique included how to adjust pitch slightly to sound in tune (all guitarists understand this too, right?).
Just because your instrument has frets and you use a tuner means little if you don't learn how to play in tune with your ears and playing technique. If you don't understand what I mean, recall when you and someone else have played the same guitar, which may or may not have been in tune, yet one of you sounded in tune and the other didn't...
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I have also been taught to tune in that way -- using Es on different strings.
My question is this: does an electronic tuner produce the same result? If not, can anyone explain why not and maybe how the frequencies used in electronic tuning were selected?
Thanks in advance.
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My mother was a professional pianist and had perfect pitch. I got her a harpsichord at one point (she had always pined for one) and kept it in tune for her – or at least well enough in tune that she could play it without pain, which to me meant it was pretty darned good.
I also tuned my own upright piano. It was not in the same league as if it had been tuned by a professional tuner, but it was really more about keeping my fingers in shape with a real piano keyboard (and it was a stiff one) than it was about the sound, since the piano itself left a lot to be desired. In those days, as John A mentioned, I used an "A 440" tuning fork. I got my first electronic tuner sometime in the 21st century.
I was always amazed that my flattop Martin dreads kept their pitch, even after being in a case for a few weeks. Sure, the b or e strings might have been slightly flat, but the wound strings kept their pitches, and the whole thing could be brought back to tune easily.
On the other hand, when I play by myself, I only worry about the guitar being in tune with itself, and do that by ear. My arch top guitars tend to go noticeably sharp overnight, and do not settle back into pitch after playing for a while, so I will tune them with a tuner every other day or so (and I tune by letting the strings ring). I worry that if I don't do that, after a week they'll be several pitches sharp.
I know it's time for new strings when it gets hard to get the strings in tune. And my ear is always the final arbiter of "tune-ness" – although I do rely on the strobe tuner to get things in the right ballpark. And after years of playing that upright piano, I became pretty forgiving about the tuning of a guitar. I still find it painful to listen to harpsichords, though, even when theoretically in tune.
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I've been playing as long as I can remember and I still have no idea why some guitars go sharp. Going flat makes sense, sharp doesn't seem to. I will concede, I do my own set ups so most could probably benefit from a pro setup.
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Temperature affects the strings, causing them to contract or expand. If you tune while the strings, and the guitar in general, are cold, the guitar will go flat as it is played and warms up. Tune when it's very warm, and it will be sharp after it gets colder. It doesn't take a lot of temperature change to affect string pitch slightly. Humidity affects the neck, mostly through the fingerboard, and higher humidity can cause the fretboard to expand slightly thus acting similar to tightening the truss rod, thus raising the pitch slightly.
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I liked this quote about 12tet tuning:
"all intervals except the octave are to some degree out of tune. Thirds and sixths, on the other hand, are quite off. "
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There have been, and still are, many tuning temperaments, many for specific instruments, some for specific keys. Equal temperament is the most widely used because it's accepted as the best compromise for tuning most instruments for playing in all keys. A piano is out of tune, because it's tuned to equal temperament, but now most people don't notice it because they've become accustomed to it. There is no perfect temperament that tunes any instrument to perfection in every key, it's just not possible. Equal temperament is the accepted compromise, even if thirds and sixths are off. Rock guitarists avoid the dissonance of the third in chords by not playing it. I'm not a fan of the sound of power chords.
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Nothing is perfect. Just tune it up and get on with it! Originally Posted by jazzpazz
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Would you be happy if your refreted lute came back from the luthier like that? Originally Posted by grahambop
This chap doesn’t look too happy.
Someone please tell us here that the lute does not have fret spacing like that!
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The fifths are pretty close. This is why powerchords work well with drive - drive tends to accentuate the beats in the chords (that come from tuning inaccuracies) and ET is pretty close for those. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
Otoh EVH used to tune away from ET so that certain chords would ring truer.
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Haha that’s a good one Originally Posted by pauln
This reminds me of a story I heard which is often lute builders use paintings for reference when building instruments. However one lute was used as a prop in paintings precisely because it was poorly made and not useful as an actual instrument…
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Temperature changes, as already mentioned, affect pitch. That's true of all instruments. Horn players also find the tuning of their instrument changing as the it warms up or cools down- their breath and hands warming the metal is enough to affect tuning. Originally Posted by AaronMColeman
With guitars, I think the bigger cause of going out of tune is mechanical. Bad tuning practices (such as tuning down to pitch rather than tuning up to it.) increase the problem. Trying to tune the strings by harmonics will put the G string, in particular, out of tune. Poor nut and bridge setup will also create problems. Johnny Smith wrote an article of proper tuning of the guitar some 40 years ago. It still stands, the modern addition of locking tuners notwithstanding.
The Johnny Smith Stringing & Tuning Method | Mark Wein Guitar Lessons
Intonation issues are chronic on guitars for a lot of reasons, including that the natural overtone pitch series does not match the equal temperament that we use, but the physics of vibration don't follow the equal temperament that we try to impose on it. Design compromises, such as the classical or flat top straight-line bridge result in situations that really cannot be fixed. The same thing can be true on archtop bridges, as well. Having a fully adjustable bridge with intonation for each string, such as the Tune-O-Matic bridge, provides better possibility for intonation but has other drawbacks.
I noticed this on a gig in February where I was playing with a piano. The piano had been freshly tuned (but was slightly off in absolute terms, to get it to sound together); being in tune with it was a huge challenge for me as I don't normally play with a piano player. There were times I simply had to stop playing because some of the notes in my chord clashed terribly with the notes on the piano in certain keys. A guitarist more experienced with playing with piano would have known how to find pitch ranges that wouldn't have clashed.
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