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Lesson 1c: Tuning with an Electronic Tuner 2 Responses Posted: January 19, 2010 Last Comment: January 7, 2010 |
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Posted: January 7, 2010 |
Parker, my understanding of guitar tuners is that they are limited to the exact pitches of the guitar strings in those octaves. The two 'E' strings on a guitar, for example, are both much lower than the violin's 'E,' and therefore the guitar tuner doesn't really function well when dealing with the violin's 'E' string. Bowed string players most often use chromatic tuners, which can tune any pitch in any octave. The issue of temperaments quickly gets very technical, but pianos and most keyboard instruments are tuned using equal temperament (which means that the octave is divided into 12 equal half-steps). This tuning allows keyboard players to play in any key without having to re-tune the instrument, but it also means that fifths on the piano will be slightly smaller than the violin's perfect fifths (for reasons a bit too technical to address here). Most standard guitar tuners and chromatic tuners use equal temperament (and they will be clearly labeled if they do not!), which means that if you tune each string of your violin with a chromatic tuner, there will be a miniscule difference between what the tuner says is correct and the result you'd get if you knew how to tune by ear using perfect fifths. Still, you're safe using a chromatic tuner for each string when you're learning to tune, since the difference is quite small. I hope this information helps! |
Posted: January 7, 2010 |
I have been using an electric guitar tuner to tune my violin, but it I don't think it sounds exactly right when the needle says it is in tune. I was just reading about tempered intruments, (which I hardly understood at all), and I wondered if guitars and violins might be tuned slightly differently and this might be the problem. Any thoughts? |