21 Dec
2004
21 Dec
'04
3:23 a.m.
On Monday 20 December 2004 01:26 am, Lee Revell wrote:
On Mon, 2004-12-20 at 00:52 -0500, Dave Robillard
wrote:
Ah. Now I know why I love open chords.
On Mon, 2004-20-12 at 01:16 +0100, Christoph
Eckert wrote:
Well.. there really is no "pure tuning" - it's something of a trade-off.
You can tune your guitar so certain things sounds right, and others not.
If you tune the B string to be exactly in tune with the B on the second
fret of the A string, then tune the high E to the B string, the high E
will be quite a bit sharp of the low E string and things will sound like
garbage. There just isn't a "perfect" tuning (which is kinda
frustrating until you learn to deal with it)
Good guitarists compensate for this subconsciously by digging in a
little harder to make certain notes sharper. You can play single note
lines in perfect tune anywhere on the neck this way, even with an out of
tune guitar. Same way you can keep playing if one of your strings goes
flat during a solo, you just bend each note a little.
This does not work well for chords. This is why you don't hear a lot of
guitar players hitting major chords and letting them sustain for a long
time. It might works for open chords but then further up the neck it I think
this is called "well tempered tuning".
I know what well tempered tuning is, where it comes from, why
we need it and that most popular instruments are tuned in
this way.
But what I do not know: Do guitarists tune the six strings in
pure tuning, or do they add some aberration to make them
tempered? will sound weird. The few rock players that use major
chords with lots
of distortion (think AC/DC) either don't let them ring out too long
and/or intonate the guitar so they all sound OK in one position. But I
guarantee you those same chords on the 5th fret will sound weird.
Lee