You can tuna fish, but you can't tune a piano

[Beestie]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

As for me, I'm playing fretless bass on one song right now for an audition next week, so I won't have ANY of those tuning problems

fretless? Holy crap - you just earned my respect (you already had it but anyway). Only real men and women play fretless.

I played guitar for years (I sucked at it but I was stubborn) -working without frets is unthinkable. Anyone who can do that is in a different league, imho.

[Elspode]

Fretless bass takes a really odd combination of dedication, skill and artful expression. When played with these three elements all working together, it is one of the most beautiful instruments there is.

When I try to play fretless bass, it sounds like anthropomorphic rubber bands being strangled by a garage door.

[Undertoad]

It's the toughest challenge I've had on bass, but I've been in the mood for a challenge. I have a good ear so I can tell that ALL my notes lack dedication, skill, and artful expression. We'll see!

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by marichiko

Well, I don't watch TV, so I missed the rose bowl parade, and I am neither a mathematician nor a musician, so up until I met Mike, while I knew mathematics had certain correlations with music, I didn't know about the Pythagorian thing. My knowledge of Pythagorus ended with the theorem. Maybe my education was woefully lacking in that regard. I was actually rather surprised when Mike mentioned it since he never attended college and claims that all he did in high school was play guitar and drop acid. Shows how little I know sometimes, and how much more other people do.

I didn't know it either, before that float was announced. But they(float committee) felt that enough people knew about it to make the connection.

[Clodfobble]

This sounds like the other string is resonating because it has the frequency of the first, do I have this right?

Yep. Like that bridge (in San Francisco maybe?) that happened to have the same frequency as the wind one day and vibrated itself apart. Video footage of it was floating around on the internet awhile back, anyone happen to have it? It was so amazing.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Galloping Gertie

[Clodfobble]

You rock, Bruce.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by Slartibartfast

I''m not sure Clodfobble. On a piano, all the strings have a damper on them to begin. When you strike a key, the damper on those strings alone rises to let them vibrate. As soon as you let a key go, the damper comes down again.

Clod described what I want you to do accurately. Don't let ANY of the other strings resonate, and you'll hear the difference between the note you play and the note you hear.

the damper on the strings really doesn't stop them from moving along their length. The resonance of ALL The other strings is critical to the sound that we call "the piano".

This might get overly scientific

Originally Posted by Elspode

So strange is this problem on a guitar, that differently fretted instruments are produced to make up for this inherent problem...

http://www.btinternet.com/~steve.sed...Pythagorus.htm

http://www.novaxguitars.com/Pages/fr...toGallery.html

I have a $2k Martin HD 28, the instrument I have desired my entire guitar playing life, and it still suffers from the inability to have any given note on the neck be exactly the same as the same note somewhere else on the neck. I even go to the extent of tuning my low E string differently for songs that use predominant Em themes (highly prevalent in Pagan and traditional music) and songs that use predominant G major themes. Basically, if you tune the low E so that it sounds right with an Em or E maj chord, it sounds out of tune when you play a G rooted chord, and vice-versa.

Nothing wrong with the instrument, it is just how they are made. The links above show a couple of different approaches to addressing this issue, with the most radical being the "fanned fret" approach of Mr. Novax. Fascinating.

Hey, thanks for the links, Patrick, especially the first one! I just showed it to my computer challenged but musiclly gifted friend, Mike the musician, and he liked it and the resulting links so much that he actually sat down at my computer and started reading them all. He even had me bookmark the site for him. I may drag him into the 21st century yet! BTW, what kind of music do YOU mostly play?