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The next video of our soon-to-be tuning trilogy is up.



The final episode will be on intonation, from the basic to the more complicated details. Still figuring how to outline it to be within grasp of most, but not dumb it down, and still include some of the more advanced nuances.

Not sure if I'll be able to keep this one in my ~10min target range, but we'll see in a few weeks.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Oooof! My head hurts! That was quite the crash course. I like the little catch at the end

Interesting you mention that we are raised to deal with the problem. I herd a story on NPR last month about language and how it applies to pitch. Mandarin is apparently a very musical language and the author of the piece was trying to show that culture has a lot to do with our abilities to hear pitch. He went on to describe that for most people they can all agree on what the color blue is simply because we are culturally taught what it is but that Mandarin speakers can all hear pitches like a car horn the way we see colors because they grew up in a language that emphasizes it and that only a slight change in pitch on what to us seems to sound like the same word has a totally different meaning. The cool take on that whole thing is that the ability to have perfect pitch can actually be in all of us but since we abandoned it's necessity as a culture we grow up without it.

Great stuff!!! Thanks David, Hurry with the next installment

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Joe Beaver
Maker of Sawdust

Dave:
Wow...................!! Certainly one of the best presentations I have ever seen on guitar. Excellent teacher, I missed the first episode , not sure how but am going to look it up right now. Thanks and keep them coming.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Thanks, great video. So according to what you are saying, the True Temperament and Yamaha bent fret systems are just making common guitar chords sound better, at the expense of the uncommon chords. Correct ? I have many fanned fret instruments, I hear people claim the intonation is better, but I don't hear it (although I prefer the fanned frets) (Ralph Novax).

Another fantastic video!

Love the surprise ending

Thanks David for taking the time! Well done and very informative. Looking forward to the next one!

Thanks folks!

Lactose - yeah, that's pretty much it. The Yamaha system is obviously looking to improve things like 1st position Emaj and Amaj, which could be great for a lot of players. Try playing an Fm, F#maj, Gdim, Bsus2, or God forbid a B flat minor 7th, and you would hear the costs of those improved E's and A's. Then of course there are the major confounds of ability to use alternate tunings or capos. Who plays that kind of stuff on a Yamaha though?

And fanned fret boards really don't do anything to directly affect intonation. I've seen claims that they do, but they've usually been based on bad math. In reality, they are no better or worse than straight frets in regards to intonation.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Excellent video and a fascinating subject - studying the evolution of temperament is like a full year of college - history, physics, religion, music - its all there. I am trying to understand this and would appreciate if you could help - Are the following statements more or less true?

Our electronic tuners should tune the open strings and presumably the 12th fret harmonic "correctly" according to the equal tempered scale if the 12th fret is positioned at half the scale length and the harmonic frequency should be precisely twice the open string?

Intonation would apply to the accuracy of fretted notes and be affected by all the things discussed - fret placement, compensation, etc... the assumption being that if the 12th fret harmonic and fretted note are the same, and the intervening frets are correctly placed, that each note would theoretically sound at its expected frequency (understanding that the compensation may affect each note differently depending on its position on the neck)??

OK, now a practical question: Given the fact that equal temperament is fundamentally a compromise, are there particular keys or open chords on the guitar that the system favors over others? Like many people I am sure that I have tuned correctly but then immediately begin retuning at the first strum. If I knew that certain open chords will never be in tune under equal temperament then I'll stop fussing.

I went to a concert once and the performer said the that definition of a guitarist is someone who spends 90% of their time tuning, and 10% playing out of tune!!

Right (more or less ). Of course the location of the 12th fret doesn't really factor in, as even if it's not at the midpoint the node of the octave harmonic will be. Actually that's not entirely true, as string stiffness can accelerate upper harmonics above the lower ones, but that's among the topics I'll be getting in to on the next video.



Kind of - there are still some other confounds that can come in to play, including not only string stiffness and elasticity, but also things like dominant resonant frequencies of the chassis they are attached to. These are the things that can drive people nuts in chasing isolated deviations at the expense of throwing off the rest of the range. Again though, that's going to hopefully be touched on in a more clear and understandable way in the next video.



In theory, no. Equal temperament is by definition, the only chromatic temperament which does not give favor to any one key over another. In practice, there are other variables which can make certain chords or positions harder to manage, but these are products of string, chassis, and setup characteristics, not the temperament itself.

Thanks for the questions, as this kind of thing really helps guide how I should focus and present in upcoming videos. The next one is going to be some time out, maybe a few weeks even, but I want to try to give as clear answers as possible to a lot of these common curiosities.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Always wondered what this meant:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tempered_Clavier

Ed

David-- Thank you. This is an excellent overview. I look forward to the next installment. You've alluded to the influence of body resonances on string pitch. I hope you'll also address the whole concept of perceived pitch re non-harmonic partials (stretch tuning, Railsback curve, tuned bells, etc.) I tip my hat to all the effort you've put into this!

Thanks Eric! Yes, I will be, but right now I am dancing between bringing up concepts like this near the beginning to establish all the confounds early and describing strategies with a full open deck up front, vs laying down the simple basics up front and then going in to the more complicated nuances later.

I'm leaning toward the latter. For an audience of broad diversity in experience, I don't want to lose to many people early on. Often times it's better to start with an imaginary model of idealistic simplicity, then tear that down and explain why it doesn't really work that simple after the basic concepts are established.

At this point I'm still playing with different outlines to see what flows better, and trying to figure out the best graphics and demonstrations to throw in along the way. Those ideas (or at list a simplified hint toward their existence as notable factors) are certainly on the agenda though. Just figuring out how to keep it from getting too complicated for a 10 minute YouTube video.

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Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.