For all you guitar enthusiasts

[Red Kittie Kat]

Just saw this about Gibson's Self-Tuning Guitar



It's every guitar player's nightmare: you step onstage, strike your rock-god pose, triumphantly strum the first chord of a song--and discover that your guitar is out of tune.

A new line of instruments from Gibson Guitar now promises to banish this scenario to the dark ages with high-tech self-tuning technology built into the company's flagship electric-guitar models.



http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19462/

[Kool]

That's pretty cool. Seems like a bit of overkill but might be nice.

[Red Kittie Kat]

I wondered what you might think about it ... not knowing a whole lot about guitars I wondered if it seemed like something that was plausible ;)

[seamas]

Plausible, but something only the tone-deaf or amateur would be intersted in.


One of the most important skills is tuning by ear (with reference note). An electronic tuner can be handy, but there are a ton of players who can't tune without one-which is sad.

[LeftBrain Artist]

That is pretty neat, but I see it as yet something else that can go wrong on stage. Its bad enough having to deal with breaking strings, accidently hitting toggle switches, making sure fresh batteries are in for active pickups if you have them - now what if a servo motor conks out. or the built-in tuning software gets glitchy.

There's no substitute for having one or two backup guitars tuned up and ready to go in the wings.

Besides, most guitar players I know all tune by ear - I usually tune my bass with an electric tuner of some sort to eliminate guess work, but most guitar players I've played with seem to have an unreasonable aversion to using a device to tell them how to tune. They usually ask me for an A or an E and do their thing. I'm betting most players don't want a device overriding their carefully wrought systems of tuning.

[Kool]

I wonder how many batteries the servos take? I'm the same as you LBA, I can tune by ear but usually use a tuner, heh heh pretty much everything has a tuner in it now days. This is just a gimmick now but maybe in the future they could make it programmable to change tuning with a button push. :shrug:

[Virgo Nightingale]

maybe in the future they could make it programmable to change tuning with a button push. :shrug:
Now THAT would be pretty cool. Though probably cheaper to just buy a separate guitar to keep alternately-tuned on stage with you.

[seamas]

Didn't the Steinberger bridge have the ability to "lock" into several tunings?

I remember seeing a demonstration of how advanced that bridge was engineered, but the demonstrator didn't exactly clarify whether it was an ability to set a D Magor and G Magor, or just drop or raise the whole set a half-step.

[Virgo Nightingale]

Yes. I couldn't find any detailed info about how it exactly worked, but I doubt it would be able to do more than transpose the whole thing by more then a step or two. You'd probably snap your strings if you tried to tune up too high.

Hey Kool:

In 1987, HAZ Labs, who provided the electronics for Steinberger (with the exception being the pickups, which were from EMG, Inc.), built roughly two-hundred TransTrem units for the bass. Popularity was never there, and no further bass trems were ever built. Basses equipped with TransTrems are quite rare and valuable as collector's items.

[urstwile]

Besides, most guitar players I know all tune by ear - I usually tune my bass with an electric tuner of some sort to eliminate guess work, but most guitar players I've played with seem to have an unreasonable aversion to using a device to tell them how to tune. They usually ask me for an A or an E and do their thing. I'm betting most players don't want a device overriding their carefully wrought systems of tuning.

I'm one of those. Having had a few guitars in my life, each with their own quirks, I found this paragraph of particular interest:

Some also feel that digital tuning systems can't ultimately counteract the often contrary nature of a guitar's organic materials.

I know this to be true, and often, when I've used electronic or later digital tuners, the guitar ends up sounding out of tune.

I'd be interested to hear what these sound like, however. Maybe they've worked out some of the kinks. Until then, I prefer my A440 tuning fork. :)

[moot]

There are some things that will never change for a guitarist. When you're a serious musician, having complete control over your sound is like quality control for your product. Instead of paying more for a guitar that will tighten the strings to match a certain frequency, with extra little parts to break and calibrations to drift, perhaps you could buy a guitar with a good set of locking tremolo/nut/tuners/what have you. Eventually you can shell it out for an extra guitar to leave in an alternate tuning all the time. If you would rather spend money to enable yourself not to learn tuning by ear, you're doing yourself a major disservice.

This is not to mention that very subtle changes in tuning - even detuning the guitar slightly - can make a huge difference in your sound and style. Ask Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) or David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) who selectively used their guitars intentionally out of tune in the studio to convey a different mood.
[moot]

[Virgo Nightingale]

Somewhat off topic but quite interesting (or at least I think so ;))...


There are actually different tuning systems. One (which I believe is what digital tuners use) is called "equal temperment". This method basically divides the octave into 12 equal semitones. "Meantone temperment" is somewhat similar, but the ratios are based on the fifths and fourths instead of on the octaves. If you have an exceptional ear, these tunings can result in certain notes sounding ever so slightly off in certain keys.

"Well tempered tuning" essentially uses the ear to find a happy medium between all of the keys, so they all sound equally in tune (or equally out of tune, however you want to look at it). Every key sounded ever-so-slightly off, but there was no key that sounded bad, making your piano more versatile if you played in all sorts of different keys.

Johann Sebastian Bach soon noticed that each and every key on a well-tempered piano would have a particular and distinct feel to it. He wrote "The Well-Tempered Clavier", a collection of 24 pieces (alternating major and minor pieces in each of the 12 possible tonalities and moving up chromatically) to explore and take advantage of the 'flavors' each and every key presented.


Ah... this post just totally justifies me getting my music degree for which I'm still paying off my student loans but not using in the slightest... Well worth every penny...:D

[urstwile]

Wow, Virgo, it's been a long time since I thought of all that stuff, but I know exactly what you're talking about. I made it through about a year's worth of music theory training at Manhattan School of Music before I realized it wasn't the right choice for me. I still love music theory though.

Maybe I've just always owned bad guitars, but I've always found that guitars tuned digitallly (even-tempered) sound off to me, whereas those tuned for the idiosyncracies of the instrument sound better.

[Virgo Nightingale]

I just did a google search on digital tuner temperament, and apparently there are models that allow you to choose which type of temperament it uses. Good for anal-retentive musicians with exceptionally picky ears. :D

Maybe I've just always owned bad guitars, but I've always found that guitars tuned digitallly (even-tempered) sound off to me, whereas those tuned for the idiosyncracies of the instrument sound better. I find that to be true as well. I have a fairly sensitive ear, at least as far as whether all the notes in a chord are in perfect tune. It's like nails on chalkboard when a note is off. I'll notice my when my bf's guitar is out of tune before he will (and he's a professional :cool:).

My bf, knowing how I can't stand hearing things out of tune, loves to annoy the sh!t out of me by purposely singing (or rather screaming) songs totally off key. It literally makes me cringe.

[Red Kittie Kat]

Umm .. I am no musician ... but I can hear a sour note from a mile away and it really kills my ears.

If I was a musician I have a feeling I would be that anal retentive kind ;)

My nieces are learning the french horn and trombone right now ... so you can imagine my bliss :D