Tech: Do We Need This Device?

Subject: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: GUEST,saulgoldie
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 09:00 AM

Automatic Guitar Tuner

For me, this is one more "non-folk" device. Would I have walked out on Dylan? Should I have? I don't know. But I think there is something "right" about manually turning tuning pegs. Intimacy. Engagement in the process. Electronic note confirmers? Maybe and maybe not. Haven't decided on those yet. But this new thing? Definitely not. For me, anyway.

Saul

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 09:14 AM

I clicked the link, but didn't check out for more specs. But I'm with you. I do alternate tunings, while I suspect you could get the tuners to do that, I still think individual strings would need tweaking to sound just right. Even with the electric tuner thingy's we use, when the needle says the string is just right, sometimes my ear says it's a little off.

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 09:42 AM

There are automatics that will do pre-set chords. Also, I agree with Phil. Sometimes the notes are 'exactly on' in a scientific sense, but that will not make them exactly on in a hearing sense. Relative tuning is why. The 'phenomena' was discussed a few times on Mudcat and one poster explained it well enough for my mama's eldest to understand but not explain.

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 01:20 PM

.... of course 'we' don't need it...

probably only a few pro players and specific applications have a genuine need for this kind of device...


But quite a few players, to say the least, have desired it for a very long time
of prototyping and less successful earlier attempts to bring such products to market.

Sufficient it seems for the 2015 range of revamped Gibson Les Pauls
to be factory equipped with them as standard fitting ...???

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: Don Firth
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 02:17 PM

Not at that price! I get along perfectly well with my two ears and a $5.00 440-A tuning fork.

Once I get the A (5th) string in tune, I tune the rest of the strings using harmonics. Very precise.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: michaelr
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 03:10 PM

Hell yeah we need an automatic tuner! And then also an automatic plectrum to do all that exhausting strumming for us.

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 03:43 PM

Anything that would cut out Martin Carthy's twiddling has to be a good idea.

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 03:47 PM

Not my cup o'tea.
Sounds like an answer to a non-existent problem, AFAIC.

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 05:25 PM

tried a tuning fork but it kept slipping off the knobs

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: GUEST,Tootler who cba to reset his cookie
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 06:47 PM

Electronic clip on tuners have been a godsend to me. It means I can get in tune much more quickly, especially with friction tuners on my ukuleles. I always check by ear, though and if it doesn't sound right then I tweak. Years ago when I tried (unsuccessfully) to learn guitar, tuning was a frustrating exercise and always took ages. It was one of the factors why I gave up.

I can't see the point of an automated one, though. I suppose if you're a big name band are going to use several guitars during your set, the could save some time ensuring the basic tuning is right.

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: Joe_F
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 06:47 PM

"Why, for instance, use your hands at all -- why use them even for blowing your nose or sharpening a pencil? Surely you could fix some kind of steel and rubber contraption to your shoulders and let your arms wither into stumps of skin and bone? And so with every organ and every faculty...." -- George Orwell, _The Road to Wigan Pier_ (1937)

I should confess that I have used an electric pencil sharpener for many years, tho not yet an electric nose blower.

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 02 Aug 15 - 08:09 PM

Saul - nice to see you still around.

I vote a resounding YES... for the device.

This summer it has been my extream delight...to visit with a 7yo and 9yo who are beginning 2nd year guitar. The tuning is quick and simple and does not require the assistance or their non-musical mother.

Of course, down the road a few years, their tuning will become natural.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

I am on my fourth piano tuner, the first three were blind and tuned with a fork. I was a little disconcerted when the newest, sighted tuner, pulled out an I-phone and began tuning with red and green bars on an LED screen. He is a good tuner but insists on tuning to "true pitch" he cannot fathom why I used lower on a 115 year instrument. The sound of a breaking string is something John Cage might have enjoyed.

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: GUEST,crazy little woman
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 01:26 AM

I watched one of the videos. Check out that guitar - it has six tuners in a tight row, all of them absolutely identical. How is a rock musician sposed to remember which one he just turned and which one he didn't? How is he sposed to remember which way to turn it?

C'mon, guys!

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 09:06 AM

It was tuned when I bought it.

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: Will Fly
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 11:11 AM

The interesting - and probably the most important fact - is that every guitar tunes slightly differently. Electronic, clip-on tuners are excellent value for money - but, when I've used one, I do a manual "ear" check to make sure that its sounds sweet.

Every one of my guitars (and all but one is hand made) has its own slight tuning idiosyncracies, and every method of tuning - with tuning fork, by harmonics, by electric tuner will be slightly imperfect on one or another instrument.

"Automatic" self-tuners are no different.

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 11:26 AM

On an autoharp, the middle octave sounds pretty good using my old KORG...but the lower notes and to some extent, the higher ones, need some tweaking.... (the "relative tuning" referred to above). I had a discussion with Bryan Bowers 40 years ago where he explained to problem. I DO think that an electronic tuner could/should be designed so that one could adjust it to one's 'relative pitch' (what the ear hears) for each string. I already tune the autoharp 'slightly' below dead center for most lower notes. (I simply don't hear the high notes well enough to bother... but *shrug*.. who can hear teeny differences in most autoharps anyway? ;>))

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: GUEST,Ray
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 11:56 AM

I agree with Will Fly that every guitar tunes differently but, reading the blurd, it appears that the contraption can deal with that by way of a smart phone (whatever one of those is) app.

Electric tuners are a great way of making sure that everyone in a band/ session is tuned to the same frequency but I suspect that this device will get whole heartedly confused if someone else is playing/tuning in the vicinity. How do you make an accordionist play? Start tuning your guitar!

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 03 Aug 15 - 02:08 PM

Harmonics do NOT produce precise correct equal temperament tuning.

And anybody who thinks Martin Carthy is aimlessly twiddling is a moron.

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: GUEST,Rigby
Date: 05 Aug 15 - 06:02 PM

I have the Tronical Tune fitted on my guitar. I like it.

It's really just a natural extension of the idea of a digital tuner.

Subject: RE: Tech: Do We Need This Device?
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Aug 15 - 06:45 PM

When you play an instrument that can't be tuned in a session situation, as I do, the cheapie tuner, as employed by the typical guitar man (and, more distressingly, by fiddle players) is a Godsend. It means that we are all more or less basically in tune. What joy. But I can't help feeling that the guitar man ought to be getting just the one note on his tuner then doing things the proper way. But who am I.