# Tuning By Ear



## Bastille day

With the low E string is in tune, I have a hard determining whether the pitch is higher or lower on the other strings. Not sure if it just me or if others have this problem. My classical guitar is easy to tune. But my Indonesian Telecaster is very difficult. So today I tuned my classical first, then used it to tune my amped Telecaster. I do know when your not sure, down tune the problem string and come up to pitch. I also noticed on my Telecaster, a little bit of pressure on the fret, can really change the pitch. Not like this on my classical. Even the pitch from a 7th fret to the 2nd fret of next string type of tuning, the pitch sounds quite different. Any ideas much appreciated. I would prefer to learn to do this without a tuner.


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## Distortion

I tune the A string myself with a tuner and then tune with the harmonics at the fifth fret. IT has taken me many years to tune good and it comes with practice. I can hear the harmonic pulse way better than the tone differences.


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## bw66

As you said, if in doubt, downtune until you know you're lower and then tune up to pitch - you should always tune up to pitch anyways. One trick that I give to my students is to sing or hum the pitch of each string - when you sing the two notes, it's way easier to tell which one is higher.


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## Bastille day

Thanks distortion, could you explain the difference between a harmonic pulse and tone.

I been researching perfect pitch and it's estimated 1 person in 10,000 have it.

Anne Murray, Ella Fitzgerald, Paul Schaffer , it's claimed, all have perfect pitch.

There was also an article that claimed Hendrix had no tuner and would go to the local guitar store, strum the strings, go home and tune his guitar.


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## Bastille day

bw66 said:


> As you said, if in doubt, down tune until you know you're lower and then tune up to pitch - you should always tune up to pitch anyways. One trick that I give to my students is to sing or hum the pitch of each string - when you sing the two notes, it's way easier to tell which one is higher.


Never thought of that, thanks.


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## Budda

If you have an electric guitar (or anything), use a tuner. There will be no uncertainty as to if you're in tune or not. Tuning by ear is great for when you're at home and only need to be in tune to yourself, but as soon as there is a second pair of ears involved, use a tuner. Knowing how to tune by ear is a very useful skill, but using a tuner means you're 100%, every time.


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## Guest

Bastille day said:


> Thanks distortion, could you explain the difference between a harmonic pulse and tone.


Think of it as a 'wobbling' effect as the harmonic gets closer to the next.
It's explained in this vid at the 1:15 mark.


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## Scotty

laristotle said:


> Think of it as a 'wobbling' effect as the harmonic gets closer to the next.
> It's explained in this vid at the 1:15 mark.


I used to do this all the way through. Now I use a tuner to get the Low E right, use harmonics to tune E-A and A-D. Then I play D-G, G-B and B-E open and use the "wobbling" method, but I check to see if both E's are matched (either open or harmonic at the 12th). Sometimes I tune the Low E, match the high E and then backfill by the above method. It's kind of backwards maybe, but it works for me


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## Guest

I set my 'A' with a tuning fork, then do the 5/7 harmonics like the vid. 
Then a back stroke 'G' chord and fine tune the low 'E'.


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## fretzel

Scotty said:


> I used to do this all the way through. Now I use a tuner to get the Low E right, use harmonics to tune E-A and A-D. Then I play D-G, G-B and B-E open and use the "wobbling" method, but I check to see if both E's are matched (either open or harmonic at the 12th). Sometimes I tune the Low E, match the high E and then backfill by the above method. It's kind of backwards maybe, but it works for me


I tune quite similar. Always start with getting the A in tune. Sometimes use harmonics for D or play octave on the 7th fret. then tune open G with open D. then tune the B by playing the D on the 3rd and match with D string. High E gets tuned to B and then check with low E.


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## dradlin

I tune the A string to a reference tone, then tune each open string to the corresponding fretted note on the A string. This avoids accumulated error by using a single reference (A string), and accounts for error inherent to the equal temperament fret spacing that is at odds with all harmonics except for the octave.

It's important to understand too that being based on the equal temperament tuning system which is inherently dissonant to varying degrees between intervals, a guitar is never truly "in tune. Finding the right compromise is the goal.


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## amagras

One gets used to things and learn. I always use my electronic tuner but after every change of strings I like to tune the entire guitar by ear just to switch the paradigm. At first I used to remember the first note of my ringtone stuck in my memory because I knew it was C but with practice I started to tune the 1st string from other memories or simply by heart.
It worth mentioning that the guitar has to be in good shape.


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## Percy

I never thought that I could tune my guitar without a tuner......I think it is about 4 or 5 years since I owned a tuner......I do not have the greatest ear....

What I did was remembered what the open strings sounded like and now I no longer need a tuner.....Music memory try it....it works.....


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## ronmac

If you are a solo performer there is no need to be in perfect signature tuning, but it is important that each string be in perfect tuning relative to the others. As part of an ensemble it is important to be in perfect signature tuning, relative to all others, and that requires a good tuner, or at the very least "x" number of band members who can hear each other and have attained perfect relative pitch. That almost never happens...


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## Guitar101

Perfect pitch is a myth. Get a tuner.


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## Guitar101

Double post (stupid tablet)


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## bw66

Tuning by ear is especially useful when playing with a fixed pitch instrument, like an acoustic piano or an organ, which may not be in "concert" tuning.


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## flyswatter

I can tune a guitar relatively well by ear in a quiet environment, but as there is so often noise/ amplification/ ambience involved in any situation besides my practice room at home, I keep a tuner on my pedalboard, and one of those little $15 Korgs in the guitar case for the times I'm plugging straight into the amp.

Tuning by ear is one thing, but even when you can tune the guitar to itself, being in correct A440 pitch for the sake of other instruments is equally important. A tuner gets you there every time.


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## Robert1950

I grew up playing in the 60s. There was no other way. Thankfully, there was a piano where we practiced so we could get close enough to A440. When no piano was around, we had to tune A440 (we hoped!!) off the tenor sax. I will always fine tune, re-tune a string or three that need it by ear. But I also have a little Korg and a pitch black on the board. I have had my guitar tuned just right by ear and have gone to tuner and found the whole thing was off from A440 by a fair amount.


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## Adcandour

My guitars stay in tune pretty well. If I'm not using the 11r with a built-in tuner, I use my son's voice.

He has perfect pitch. It's insane.


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## Moosehead

I have tuned by ear most of my life and only got a tuner (pitchblack) a few years ago. I used to use a piano to get close but if you listen to enough ac/dc your ear remembers what the A should sound like. Think Hells Bells.


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## Adcandour

I've tried that with Nothing Else Matters, and I'm still usually off by a whole note or more. The way my son does it is completely outside my understanding. 

he'll name any note whether it be E or C# or whatever. He can even tell me if it's not quite sharp or flat.


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## purpleplexi

adcandour said:


> I've tried that with Nothing Else Matters, and I'm still usually off by a whole note or more. The way my son does it is completely outside my understanding.
> 
> he'll name any note whether it be E or C# or whatever. He can even tell me if it's not quite sharp or flat.


That's because you are an amateur. Maybe take up knitting?


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## Adcandour

purpleplexi said:


> That's because you are an amateur. Maybe take up knitting?


So, you've got perfect pitch..or is that the beer talking?


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## fredyfreeloader

adcandour said:


> I've tried that with Nothing Else Matters, and I'm still usually off by a whole note or more. The way my son does it is completely outside my understanding.
> 
> he'll name any note whether it be E or C# or whatever. He can even tell me if it's not quite sharp or flat.


Being born with the ability to hear someone sing or play a note and tell the other person what that note it is, is both a blessing and a curse. Many people get very upset when you tell them they are slightly off maybe a 1/4 tone or less, sometimes only just a hair, when I would hear it I sort of cringe. I've been told so many times to just fuck off , you don't know what your talking about. Now I simply ignore the slightly off sound and hope the rest of the group drowns that slightly off person out. Besides I'm old. What do I know ?


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## Moosehead

Having a good ear is more of a blessing you're born with but it can be learned! Or honed to be better at hearing what's being played. I don't have perfect pitch. That's a whole other level. But I can hear something and instead of saying what notes are what, play it on guitar or piano. A lot of people can to some extent. Tell me you can't tell a E, A, D, or G chord when you hear them. Put the tabs and chord charts away and try learning some CCR tunes by ear. Should be able to figure out some of the 3 chord song pretty easily. Then try some leads, theyre pretty melodic and easy to memorize.


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## Bastille day

I had a steel guitar player tell me his bandmates let him tune up first, then they would tune up to his settings.

Be interested to hear from others if this is a common practise as it would require everyone else to tune by ear.


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## Guest

Years ago, I used to jam with a buddy who only played 12 string.
He would spend twenty minutes tuning up.
We would tune to him to save time.


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## Mooh

I don't have perfect pitch but I have very good relative pitch, ie, once I have a note in mind I can tune to it and to intervals from it. Therefore, a tuner gets me started and erases doubt as I go but I can live without it. In a noisy situation or when my attention is divided (talking to band members, addressing students, etc) the tuner is simply faster, easier, and more convenient. In the electric band I use a Boss ME-80 with a built in tuner, in the acoustic bands a simple clip on Snark, generally tweaking by ear as required.

After growing up with a piano and tuning forks an electronic tuner seems like magic.


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## bw66

Mooh said:


> After growing up with a piano and tuning forks an electronic tuner seems like magic.


... or a pitch pipe!


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## Mooh

bw66 said:


> ... or a pitch pipe!


Had one of those but it wasn't even in tune with itself. Had a Melodica that was in reasonable tune though.


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## JBFairthorne

Honestly, I think it's cool to be able to tune by ear but with all the inexpensive options for tuning accurately coupled with the relatively low percentage of people that can ACTUALLY tune by ear accurately (as opposed to getting close)...I just don't see the point.

I recall one riff wrath. One guitar was out. Someone said, let's tune to that. I said why don't we all just actually tune to pitch? It doesn't take more time to tune to pitch than it does to tune to out of pitch.


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## bw66

JBFairthorne said:


> Honestly, I think it's cool to be able to tune by ear but with all the inexpensive options for tuning accurately coupled with the relatively low percentage of people that can ACTUALLY tune by ear accurately (as opposed to getting close)...I just don't see the point.
> 
> I recall one riff wrath. One guitar was out. Someone said, let's tune to that. I said why don't we all just actually tune to pitch? It doesn't take more time to tune to pitch than it does to tune to out of pitch.


Yes, there is absolutely no good reason for an easily tuned instrument to be tuned to anything other than concert pitch (or A432 - if you're one of those nut-bars :-D ). It _can_ be handy to be able to tune to a piano or organ though.


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## 4345567

__________


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## Mooh

I agree, there is no excuse for being out of tune, other than your hearing sucks and you just don't know. All the more reason to check often.

An elderly musician once tried to convince me that electronic tuners would become a crutch and no one would know when they were out of tune. I disagree entirely, as electronic tuners train the ears to experience and adapt to good tuning while not excepting bad tuning. It's THE way of learning to tune by example.

Tuning guitars by ear is usually misunderstood anyway. Comparing harmonics, or comparing fretted notes with open notes are rough and tumble methods without comparing octaves and chord intervals. Most folks don't do it very accurately because they don't can't match pitches well, and/or don't compare octaves and fifths.


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## DeSelby

A fairly short video by Martin Taylor talking about tuning. He uses a tuner as a starting point.




I was at a workshop with Peter Bernstein a few weeks ago and he talked about using a tuner and retuning from there, much as Martin does. He spoke about it as a means of tuning up your ear. One thing I have observed and I have never seen discussed though the OP did hit on it, is that a tuning that works for one person won't necessarily work for another. I'm not talking about alternate tunings but rather that each player's touch is slightly different. I have played an instrument that sounded great when the person who had tuned it was playing it, but needed tweaking when I was playing it.


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## DeSelby

Guitar101 said:


> Perfect pitch is a myth. Get a tuner.


Ummm, no. I knew someone who had perfect pitch. But I'm not sure that it's not more of an affliction than a gift  Basic requirement is relative pitch which I still struggle with after 40+ years of playing. I'm good on close intervals but am still working on large intervals like b13. I wish my ears were better so I am still working at it.


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## DeSelby

purpleplexi said:


> That's because you are an amateur. Maybe take up knitting?


'You're fired'. Donald Trump attends the forum. Way cool.


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## Budda

This thread is still going?

If you play live, plug into a tuner. Period.


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## Alex

DeSelby said:


> A fairly short video by Martin Taylor talking about tuning. He uses a tuner as a starting point.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I was at a workshop with Peter Bernstein a few weeks ago and he talked about using a tuner and retuning from there, much as Martin does. He spoke about it as a means of tuning up your ear. One thing I have observed and I have never seen discussed though the OP did hit on it, is that a tuning that works for one person won't necessarily work for another. I'm not talking about alternate tunings but rather that each player's touch is slightly different. I have played an instrument that sounded great when the person who had tuned it was playing it, but needed tweaking when I was playing it.


Great vid.


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## DeSelby

Budda said:


> This thread is still going?
> 
> If you play live, plug into a tuner. Period.


I think you need to qualify your response, well maybe you don't. i.e. if you play at volumes where the gist of the music is in the performance, you are right. Page was notorious for being out of tune when playing live and he would well have benefited from having had a tuner in his tool box. I think in the studio he was more judicious, though that's debatable. It still stands in good stead that he is one of the most influential guitarists of the past 40 years. Some of the greatest recordings ever made had musicians playing instruments that weren't in tune. Especially when the recordings capture the moment of live performance, in all of its imperfect brilliance and spirituality. To my mind, Joseph Spence, the great Bahamian guitarist, shows this incontrovertibly. My response was to the OP's question and I think if you take 10 minutes to watch the Martin Taylor video I posted, you will understand why he might be experiencing the problem he has in tuning his guitar. It's a perfect imperfect instrument. YMMV.


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## Budda

Qualify it how?

Are you going to perform for others? If you are, you plug into (or use, in the case of acoustic instruments) a tuner. If you're in the studio, your producer/recording engineer/bandmates should be prompting you to tune often.

I'm not discussing the imperfections inherent in the design in the guitar, I'm saying tune your instrument. If it needs a setup to be intonated, get that done *before you step near a stage*.


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## High/Deaf

Playing for shits and giggles, I don't care if people tune by ear. I hope they get close enough to not screw the rest of us up. 

But on stage, playing live/loud, we all experience ear fatigue. Even if you can tune close enough at the beginning, you sure as hell can't by the end of the night. I played with a guy for a couple years who did this. I got frustrated and would tune his guitar electronically/accurately at the beginning of each set. At least he started in the ballpark. He was a good player and had a good ear, he just thought he was too good.


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## DeSelby

Budda said:


> This thread is still going?
> 
> If you play live, plug into a tuner. Period.





Budda said:


> Qualify it how?
> 
> Are you going to perform for others? If you are, you plug into (or use, in the case of acoustic instruments) a tuner. If you're in the studio, your producer/recording engineer/bandmates should be prompting you to tune often.
> 
> I'm not discussing the imperfections inherent in the design in the guitar, I'm saying tune your instrument. If it needs a setup to be intonated, get that done before you step near a stage.


Posting is always optional  I don't disagree tuning your instument is an obvious precondition to playing and that a tuner is helpful and in a live setting at high levels of volume, most likely indispensable. It's interesting though that many competent musicians playing live will often tweak their tuning even during the course of a tune. And I agree, having the intonation set before playing should be tacit. What I meant by 'qualify your response' was that the treatment of the subject doesn't necessarily require dogmatic conviction. If you require others, your producer/recording engineer/bandmates to prompt you, then your ears and attention aren't doing their job.


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## Budda

I dont require any prompts to tune - I check any time i get a few seconds to do so. I am saying that in any environment that it is wise to do that yourself. 

If you are playing, you should be in tune. It's a good habit.


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## DeSelby

High/Deaf said:


> Playing for shits and giggles, I don't care if people tune by ear. I hope they get close enough to not screw the rest of us up.
> 
> But on stage, playing live/loud, we all experience ear fatigue. Even if you can tune close enough at the beginning, you sure as hell can't by the end of the night. I played with a guy for a couple years who did this. I got frustrated and would tune his guitar electronically/accurately at the beginning of each set. At least he started in the ballpark. He was a good player and had a good ear, he just thought he was too good.


I don't know anyone who doesn't use a tuner these days. Hell they cost $20 or so and they get you to a really good aproximation. Good reference point and quite workable. But the tuning will be slightly out as Martin Taylor says in the video. He even speaks to why this is the case. Again, my first post on this thread was in response to the OP's question and was meant as a constuctive contribution to what I see as an intriguing subject. On the other hand maybe I should have shown forbearance and just sailed on by. Especially if the consensus is 'close enough for r&r' and expressions of diktat are the prevailing sentiments. p.s. you probably mean 'wondering' in your signature.


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## DeSelby

Budda said:


> I dont require any prompts to tune - I check any time i get a few seconds to do so.


Apologies. I should have used 'one' rather than 'you'. I didn't mean 'you' personally though I can see how you would have read it that way. Us getting a bit contentious and all


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## Bastille day

For you younger players, I knew a country music guitarist who I have seen use the dial tone on the telephone to tune up.

This is going back to he 1970's when they still had "party" lines and the beer bottles were short and stubby.


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## bw66

Bastille day said:


> For you younger players, I knew a country music guitarist who I have seen use the dial tone on the telephone to tune up.
> 
> This is going back to he 1970's when they still had "party" lines and the beer bottles were short and stubby.


Johnny Cash apparently did that - it's pretty close to an "F" IIRC.


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## DeSelby

Bastille day said:


> For you younger players, I knew a country music guitarist who I have seen use the dial tone on the telephone to tune up.
> 
> This is going back to he 1970's when they still had "party" lines and the beer bottles were short and stubby.


Thank you. I checked it out. And it is a F#. Wow. That's great. Now if I could only convince my daughter to get off her cell phone and start using a land line  I loved stubbys but my brother makes the best home brew I've ever tasted. Hops, double malt, and no sugar. Amazing shtuff.


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## oheare

Dial tone is supposed to be 350Hz and 440Hz mixed. 350 is ever so slightly flat of F if a is 440.

(Recovering phone geek, me)


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## Jamdog

oheare said:


> Dial tone is supposed to be 350Hz and 440Hz mixed. 350 is ever so slightly flat of F if a is 440.
> 
> (Recovering phone geek, me)


So we should tune your flat F and A, using the phone?


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## jordileft

I developed recently an app for training to tune by ear your guitar, if you are interested it's published in google play store. It's called "TuneByEar Guitar". If you wanna check it out maybe you can give me some feedback for improving it, as it's my first android app.


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## emoshurchak

Bastille day said:


> I also noticed on my Telecaster, a little bit of pressure on the fret, can really change the pitch. Not like this on my classical. Even the pitch from a 7th fret to the 2nd fret of next string type of tuning, the pitch sounds quite different. Any ideas much appreciated. I would prefer to learn to do this without a tuner.


With jumbo and medium jumbo frets the pitch will change if you apply too much pressure when fretting a note. Although it is good to know how to tune a guitar by ear, I agree with most of the other responses that recommend using tuners which have become reasonably priced. The guitar is an imperfect instrument and temperament tuning is a compromise due to the straight fret design. Here are a couple of interesting vids that explain the issue...


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