Tuning without a tuner

[Count Bassy]

In the old days of the Test Card on Telly the tone that accompanied it was, I belive, a "B".

[NancyJohnson]

8 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

 

60Hz is half way between A# and B, but you would have to be in the states for that to be relevant.

 

Over here, our 50Hz is close to G but not exact.

 

There is obviously a bit of logic to what I posted and the second part of this reply.  It was a long time ago when someone mentioned this to me.

 

Personally, I prefer tuning to H# off the sound of my doorbell.

[SteveXFR]

16 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

Wasn't there some method of tuning a G via a 60 cycle mains hum?

 

That depends what country you're in. US uses 60Hz, UK uses 50Hz there's a bit of variation in that frequency as well. 

[Woodinblack]

47 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

 UK uses 50Hz there's a bit of variation in that frequency as well. 

Virtually none, there is a permitted 0.02% permitted variation, which is probably more stable than any tuner you are going to get. Old clocks used it as their time base.

[NancyJohnson]

49 minutes ago, SteveXFR said:

 

That depends what country you're in. US uses 60Hz, UK uses 50Hz there's a bit of variation in that frequency as well. 

 

Jeepers, we're talking about a comment made to me about 45 years ago, when everything buzzed like a wasp nest or hummed like a vicar.   I threw it in there and now we have people sucking on their pipes, going (assume Terry Thomas voice), 'Well, you know old boy, the bloody electricity this side of the pond cycles at a different rate of Hertz than in the colonies and that's where your comment falls down I'm afraid, old chap.'

 

When all this was fields we just made sure we were were all in tune with each other and that did.  No piano, no easy tuning method (pitch pipes, anyone?), no internet, no rack tuners, no mobile phones, no apps.  It was just, 'Can you play an E?' we'd tune to that and we were off.'

 

You'll note the title of the thread is 'Tuning without a tuner'.  That's what I answered, OK I was incorrect.  Meh. 

 

 

[BreadBin]

To be fair @SteveXFR's answer is straight to the point. I feel you may be reading more into it than necessary. 

[nekomatic]

18 hours ago, Rich said:

As a big motorsport fan in days of yore, the old F1 theme (that bit of F.Mac's "The Chain") is burned indelibly into my brain. Its first note is an A and I can make a pretty good stab at getting the correct pitch.

I only vaguely remember the F1 theme but I just hummed my guess at the first note to (very musical) mininekomatic1 and asked what he thought it was. He said A. I checked on the piano and it was a slightly sharp B flat. There may be something in this!

[neepheid]

1 hour ago, NancyJohnson said:

 

Jeepers, we're talking about a comment made to me about 45 years ago, when everything buzzed like a wasp nest or hummed like a vicar.   I threw it in there and now we have people sucking on their pipes, going (assume Terry Thomas voice), 'Well, you know old boy, the bloody electricity this side of the pond cycles at a different rate of Hertz than in the colonies and that's where your comment falls down I'm afraid, old chap.'

 

When all this was fields we just made sure we were were all in tune with each other and that did.  No piano, no easy tuning method (pitch pipes, anyone?), no internet, no rack tuners, no mobile phones, no apps.  It was just, 'Can you play an E?' we'd tune to that and we were off.'

 

You'll note the title of the thread is 'Tuning without a tuner'.  That's what I answered, OK I was incorrect.  Meh. 

 

 

 

My effort was an attempt at humour, sorry it didn't land

[SteveXFR]

2 hours ago, NancyJohnson said:

 

Jeepers, we're talking about a comment made to me about 45 years ago, when everything buzzed like a wasp nest or hummed like a vicar.   I threw it in there and now we have people sucking on their pipes, going (assume Terry Thomas voice), 'Well, you know old boy, the bloody electricity this side of the pond cycles at a different rate of Hertz than in the colonies and that's where your comment falls down I'm afraid, old chap.'

 

When all this was fields we just made sure we were were all in tune with each other and that did.  No piano, no easy tuning method (pitch pipes, anyone?), no internet, no rack tuners, no mobile phones, no apps.  It was just, 'Can you play an E?' we'd tune to that and we were off.'

 

You'll note the title of the thread is 'Tuning without a tuner'.  That's what I answered, OK I was incorrect.  Meh. 

 

 

 

I appreciate the effort you put in to that! Good rant.

[Musicman666]

Youtube …

Edited March 13, 2022 by Musicman666

[Downunderwonder]

Off the top of my head I don't think my inate pitch would be good for better than a semi tone either side. 

[Buddster]

On 11/03/2022 at 20:55, Lfalex v1.1 said:

I raised a question a while ago about recordings using non-standard pitch. @BigRedX came up with one of the most satisfactory explanations;

 

Recordings (particularly analogue ones) were often sped up or slowed down for pacing reasons (the song sounded too slow) or for timing reasons (to fit on given side of an LP, for example), leading to the off- sounding tuning. 

Played live,  it's all back to normal

This is very true, having had to do it myself for a couple of masters before going to the cutting room..

I've even seen where the varispeed on the mastering ½" was left on by mistake and nobody noticed until the end of the session where by the desk had been reset and the tape op had a very difficult conversation with the engineer! 

 

As an aside, on a particular session back in the 80s we had a piano tuner come in to tune the studio grand piano. We had a strobe tuner set up in the control room for everyone to tune to. I was asked by the producer to ask the piano tuner to tune the piano to the strobe tuner. He refused to tune each note to the tuner, but would tune A to the 440 of the tuner and the rest by ear. The minute variations in the pitches done this way added to the richness of the piano sound.

 

[Woodinblack]

Tuning a piano is a lot more complicated than working out the mathmatical pitch of every note and tuning with a strobe - that will give you not a very pleasant sounding piano. You start from the correct tuning and then work from there to make it sound better

[Boodang]

Tuning fork!

Back in the day, used a good old fashioned tuning fork then used harmonics to get the rest.

Ever the lunatic, Jeff Berlin recommends this method rather than an electronic tuner, so as to train your ears... he's probably got a point if I wasn't so lazy!

[Boodang]

On 11/03/2022 at 16:41, Lfalex v1.1 said:

And before anyone says clip-on tuner..

It's a headless bass! (And I don't own one!)

You don't have to clip your tuner, if you owned one, to a headstock... on my headless it works well just by clipping it to a control knob. They're obviously quite sensitive. 

[BigRedX]

I got my first electronic tuner - a Boss TU12 - in 1983. Before that tuning (especially at gigs) was a bit of a nightmare.

 

My first band was mostly a recording band, but we used a number of instruments with fixed or difficult to change tuning including two reed organs that were slightly out of tune with each other. Therefore we would tune to whichever fixed tuned instrument we were using on each particular song. As a result there are 4 or 5 different tunings used across all our recordings depending on the instrumentation for each song. At the few gigs that we played the set was often dictated by needing to stick to a single tuning for all the songs.

 

By the time my next band were ready to gig I had acquired a Wasp synth, which although it had many short-comics in a gigging situation, it's tuning was not one of them, so the whole band would tune to this. I can't imagine that the "tuning song" would have been a pleasant experience for our audience, but since all bands without expensive strobe tuners had to do this it was back then accepted as part of the gigging process.

 

IIRC I got the electronic tuner after 4 gigs with my next band, who were all synths. This time we had the added complexity of using taped backing with drums and sequenced elements on it, and in order to make sure the live and recorded instruments were in tune the first "song" was a minute or so of "Middle C" on the tape that we tuned the live synths to. IMO this was completely unacceptable so I scraped together about £35 for the Boss tuner. I don't think I've been without some kind of electronic tuning aid since then.

[Raymondo]

On 11/03/2022 at 20:59, skankdelvar said:

 

I used to think maybe one could use a landline dial tone but the UK tone "combines two 350 Hz and 450 Hz tones instead, creating a 100Hz beat frequency".  None of these tones are bang-on musical notes which makes it damn near useless.

 

The French landline dial tone is 440hz or A4 but you'd have to go France to use it so that's damn near useless as well.

I was told to dial my own number and the engaged tone was a G.

 

 

I did this often, and it seemed to work for me ... this was 1972 /3 though, maybe it's different these days.

[toneknob]

On 11/03/2022 at 23:52, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

 

It's actually the section before 'a flower' which is in D, but I always remember the vocal line 'bang, bang, bang - bang, bang, bang' returns to the D.

The other one is the opening E bass note of Tom Sawyer. I reckon I could tune to that pretty well by ear.

 

Apocalypse in 9/8 is E on the bass pedals from 16m44s to 20m 26s (on the Seconds Out version), which is nearly 4 whole minutes of tuning opportunity (assuming you can handle pedals and 12-string guitar simultaneously)

[zbd1960]

I have several apps on my phone. The one I sue most is Cleartune as I can change the temperament as well as transposition and the frequency of A (for some stuff I do I need A=415Hz rather than A=440Hz). I also use iStrobosoft. Both of my amps have tuners built in. 

[StickyDBRmf]

OP: With your ears?

I mean, I'm 64. I was in band. "Mr. Sandberg, the pitch." (It was trumpet). Whether I was playing trombone, or upright bass, I tuned up. (There is no "open Bb" on upright bass)

Grow a pair.

Edited March 14, 2022 by StickyDBRmf
more stuff.

[StingRayBoy42]

On 11/03/2022 at 17:46, Maude said:

Download the Boss tuner app to your phone. 

Free, works a treat and looks just like a TU3. 

 

Tuner linky.

 

Top tip, reduce sensitivity in the settings to make it more stable. 

 

Great recommendation, thanks!

[dclaassen]

17 hours ago, StickyDBRmf said:

OP: With your ears?

I mean, I'm 64. I was in band. "Mr. Sandberg, the pitch." (It was trumpet). Whether I was playing trombone, or upright bass, I tuned up. (There is no "open Bb" on upright bass)

Grow a pair.

Also 64, and have access to every nice tuner you can name. I can tune by ear, but, about 75% of the time, the guitar player is also (already) out of tune. It just works better for me to use the clip on pickup on my Korg to the headstock and tune. I will check it, and can tune on the fly with a bass I know well. Unless disaster strikes, I won't use a electronic tuner for the rest of the night. 

 

If I am fretting a bass (or guitar) out, I'll use a Peterson strobe...can't beat it. 

 

Oh, and I make sure my low B's intonation is spot on at the 12th fret...ya never know

[diskwave]

Remember when the first leccy tuners came in, sure took the fun out of shouting at anyone who could play any pitch of musical note. Anyway its only bass it, doesn't have to be in exactly in tune..(runs to the hills!) Unlike my oh so crisp fingerpicking acoustic which can take an age to get right.

[dclaassen]

1 hour ago, greavesbass said:

Remember when the first leccy tuners came in, sure took the fun out of shouting at anyone who could play any pitch of musical note. Anyway its only bass it, doesn't have to be in exactly in tune..(runs to the hills!) Unlike my oh so crisp fingerpicking acoustic which can take an age to get right.

Or a guy with a 12 string….

[Cliff Edge]

Way back when I started gigging there were no tuners except pitch pipes or a tuning fork.

so one guitar was tuned and the others tuned up to that. In the absence of either device one guitar was tuned to itself using the 5th frets, and rest tuned to it. 
We were almost certainly always not at 440 but hey, we were all in tune.