PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Fascinating Facts #1

A guitar is never in tune.

The pitch of each string is determined by the tension, but plucking the string stretches it and increases the tension, so raising the pitch of the note. As the sound dies, the pitch falls, so that it's only in tune when the sound has stopped. You can watch this happen on a good electronic tuner. The same applies to pianos, so that an “ff” section will be sharper than a “pp” section.

This is why certain pitch-accurate synthesized instruments sound subtly different to the live version.

But you probably knew this anyway.

ROG.

ROG

The same is true with string instruments. When a string instrument is bowed (or plucked, for that matter), the string is stretched to the side and the tone is sharpened a bit. Higher quality (read - more expensive) instrument samples try to capture this artifact to add to the realism, but how successful they are at it is debatable.

Regards,

Ted

Dang Bob, lighten up. Some folks might not have been exposed to that idea and might actually find that an interesting concept.

Intonation is always the biggest thing (to me) that separates the good players from the novices. Interesting to note that you are fighting physics as well as technique.

Kevin,

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Dang Bob, lighten up. Some folks might not have been exposed to that idea and might actually find that an interesting concept.

Intonation is always the biggest thing (to me) that separates the good players from the novices. Interesting to note that you are fighting physics as well as technique.

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LOL! I'm speaking from the standpoint of someone who has NEVER thought instruments were "in tune".

Just "close".

So the concept of ANYONE EVER thinking that instruments were "in tune" except folks who didn't have a clue about music is foreign to me.

I'm ignorant Bob LOL LOL LOL LOL

Well, I was fascinated by this factoid when I first learned it Lo! these many years ago. It is why action and intonation are so important on physical instruments. With it in mind, I even played around with "stretch" tuning back when I owned a Fender Rhodes. And not only does picking or hammering send the string out of tune, so does fretting it. Damn! Just when I got it tuned, and you had to mess up everything by going and playing the thing.

The timing of this post is interesting. Just a few hours earlier I saw Peter Yarrow doing a PSA (that's Public Service Announcement to you non-broadcast-oriented sorts) for colonoscopy(!). He had written a bit of doggerel and set it to his fingerpicked guitar, a small-bodied Martin which was so astonishingly in tune that I looked to make sure he was actually playing.

Lots of good "out of tune" songs out there, though.

Mac.

I take your point, but in certain circumstances it can work and be a useful technique. If the track is a fast rhythm, the pitch of the hard attack is what's heard as the note doesn't have time to drop before the re-strike. If the guitar had been tuned with light picking, the resulting rise in pitch can produce an unwanted effect. Dropping the track by 2 to 3 cents can improve it. It's most effective where the track has been copied up from short sections of hard playing.

We've used this technique with some success over the years and to the satisfaction of customers who were surprised at the difference it made.

ROG.

MIDI instruments aren't necessarily always in perfect tune, as Mac pointed out, many better synths include the inconsistencies of the instruments they are emulating.

My wind controller has a 'reed' that senses pitch, which is almost as difficult as a saxophone to keep in perfect tune (although it is easy to keep it in close tune). However, if the patches are programmed properly, changing pressure on the 'reed' not only changes the pitch, but changes the timbre of the instrument tone just like the instrument that is being emulated. This is done through physical modeling synthesis on my VL70m module.

I know from basic analysis that a guitar is not in tune and from working with a strobo-conn in school that it takes a lot of work to play a saxophone in tune. I exploit these when emulating those instruments with a synthesizer.

I recorded a guitar emulation I did with my WX5 controller and VL70m synth - recorded at a gig on an Archos "juke box" device (pseudo iPod). I posted it on the Gibson/Epiphone forum and asked the guitarists to evaluate my guitar playing. I got plenty of great comments, including one that said it sounded very Jeff Beck-ish (to me a huge compliment - as I admire his technical skills).

After a few dozen comments I came clean and told them I played it on a wind synth, and people were amazed. After the 'confession' one guitarist said that he thought there was something a little be funny about the vibrato.

Rolling Stone magazine classified Edgar Winter's solo in Frankenstein as one of the 100 greatest guitar solos in rock. And Edgar played it on an analog synth - the ones with oscillators, filters and all those twirly knobs.

You can make convincing emulations of acoustic instruments - but you have to know how to play the synth patches to do it, and each patch is different.

When doing brass sections, I often mess with the intonation of the instruments 'stretch tuning' them in a way. Or for another example, if I am playing two trumpets or saxes together, I'll attempt to get them to play together in just intonation as two might do if they are focused listening to each other. Of course, that means one of them is out of tune with the band - but that's OK.

The problem is that it is so easy to get sounds out of a synth, that way too many people play those synths without learning how to do it well. Especially with a sequencer. In the early days of MIDI on the Internet, I downloaded a few MIDI files from the usenet/newsgroup forums as it seemed like a great way to get these Steely Dan songs for my duo without the time spent sequencing them myself. What I found was robotic sounding, step-entered from the sheet music. Easy to do, but not very musical. I did some more downloading and found everything from more step entered music to music so badly played it was laughable.

It's been my experience that the easier the entry level is for an instrument, the greater the number of people who don't play it well but play for the public anyway. With those great numbers of mediocre players, it gets easy to dis the instrument.

So just because a synth patch may be perfectly in tune, that doesn't mean it has to be played that way. That's where skill, practice, musicianship and taste come into play.

And hence one of the biggest differences between a studio recording and a live performance. Yes, you can use those studio tricks and I have as well but it takes away from the live sound. I never thought of this way before but this is probably why most of my album collection is live stuff. The best acoustic bass players are off in their intonation all the time. Is it intentional or is it simply they're playing an imperfect instrument or they were distracted by the babe with the nice rack? Synths are great I love them, they make a live gig a lot of fun but they are too perfect sometimes. I hear 40-50 year old jazz and blues recordings on the radio all the time that were done in small venues using out of tune pianos, sloppy drums, poor guitars, one or two mics set up who knows where, the eq and mix is way off, yet the performance shines through.

Bob

jazzmammal - you're absolutely right. Sometimes it can be the imperfections which give the music it's character. In this age of quartz crystal controlled tempos and quantised instruments, it's good to remember how well those early tracks sounded.

ROG.

I'm just happy to hear that it isn't only MY guitar that's never in tune...

Five out of six strings are in tune on my guitar

It’s just that damn B string that’s never in tune

Mine too Mario! Dat dredded B string! It needs to ...... wait for it ...... "B" have