[52-6F-62]

Absurd. A guitar within tolerance is in tune. It's a fundamental feature of the instrument. Not a flaw.

Music doesn't live in an abstract realm of perfections, it is an expression however formed. The fact that we can measure it is one thing. But the music or instruments do not need conform to discrete measurements to satisfy.

I know engineers hate this, but ask any musician. It's like arguing that a sitar and its scales aren't right. Absurd.

[bob1029]

> Music doesn't live in an abstract realm of perfections

I agree with this in spirit, but there are practical ramifications of getting the frequency domain wrong. The human brain is very particular in this space. Even for completely untrained listeners. It's nothing like the human visual system. You're working on timescales measured in microseconds with auditory signals. Even where the instruments are physically positioned on stage is significant. Getting their pitch slightly wrong can be catastrophic.

[dahart]

Many musicians can readily confirm that the difference between temperaments can be felt and heard by trained ears. A guitar tuned to equal temperament has major thirds that warble audibly. It feels different when you use just intonation, which isn’t generally possible on a guitar.

[52-6F-62]

Indeed. But this is the guitar's design! Fixed temperament. There are many variations and other instruments that explicitly make that aspect of the instrument variable. There are even branches off of Spanish guitar design that use movable frets for that reason.

But fixed temperament and that warble/etc IS guitar.

[dahart]

Mmm no, that’s getting history and the causal relationships a bit backward. The early guitars, like their predecessors (lutes), all had moveable frets, and their designers were trying to figure out how to fret various other tuning systems before 12-TET became the standard:

https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iuswrrest/api/core/bitstreams/5c...

Some lute players were arguing in favor of equal temperament, and others were arguing against. It took a long time, but equal temperament eventually won, and the guitar we have today is the result of European music settling on equal temperament in general, not just for lutes, but for keyboards and ensembles. The guitar is fixed and fretted for 12-TET for the same reason the piano is tuned for 12-TET, because that’s the best compromise for all musicians. Guitar wasn’t designed to add warble, it evolved along with other instruments to support enharmonic modulation, which requires allowing a little warble. If we could have guitars without the warble, we would.

[52-6F-62]

Lutes? Alright, Grokipedia. I understand the evolution of stringed instruments. But I said Spanish Guitar.

Get off it.

[dahart]

Do you understand the evolution of stringed instruments? That response totally convinces me otherwise.

Please feel free to elaborate. What about the Spanish Guitar? It came from the vihuela which came from the lute. The Spanish guitar is equal tempered because the lute went equal tempered before it. Nothing about the Spanish guitar is unique in terms of temperament.

[kjkjadksj]

Why can’t you use intonation? Isn’t that just confirming the note is the same on different strings? And also the goal of bridge adjustment?

[dahart]

For the reasons the article explains. You can use “just intonation” a bit on a guitar, but it will only work for certain chords in certain positions. BTW note that just intonation is different from string intonation - I wasn’t talking about making sure the 12th fret is the same note as the 12th fret harmonic on a single string, I was talking about the tuning system called “just intonation” that defines what certain intervals are, and allows for perfect thirds and perfect fifths in some keys. But it won’t work everywhere on a guitar. It’s not possible to get (for example) perfect fifths on all string combinations in all positions, but it is possible to tune the guitar so you have a perfect fifth when crossing 1 string while in 5th position.

The goal of regular guitar intonation and bridge adjustment is to get the guitar as close as possible to 12 tone equal temperament (TET), which is slightly ‘out of tune’ as the article describes. 12 TET is the best you can do if you want something equally close to perfect fifths (or thirds, etc.) in all positions in all keys across all string combinations; that’s what 12 TET is for, it’s designed to minimize the worse case, at the expense of losing the best case.

[f17428d27584]

This article is just an introduction to the math behind 12-TET, why it exists, the tradeoffs, etc.

The only thing that is absurd here is your bizarre strawman that discussing equal temperament is somehow non-musical and that engineers can’t understand what music is because they want to measure things.

[52-6F-62]

The title is quite literally "Why can't you tune your guitar".

I didn't insert the strawman.

[Synaesthesia]

Have you heard of even tempering, on piano?

[relaxing]

Any musician with enough training will tell you which notes are out of tune on their well-tuned instrument, and how they correct for it as they play.

Just because we live with the trade-off doesn’t make it correct in any other sense.

[YZF]

I don't think this is generally true for the guitar. There are even songs that have notes intentionally out of tune (e.g. Scar Tissue by the Red Hot Chili Peppers).

Agree with the OP that the characteristics of the guitar, including its "out of perfect tune", is what gives its music its unique characteristic. It's not a bug it's a feature. There might be some people with perfect pitch who get annoyed but for most people that's "colour" and the sound they expect and associate with their favorite music. If you played those songs on an "ideal" guitar they would not sound right.

[kjkjadksj]

Outside of people like van halen also pretty much no one is exploring the entire neck on a single song. So the issue of the guitar not being perfectly intonated is irrelevant since they are using just a piece of its range.

[YZF]

A lot of simple songs are just open "cowboy" chords for sure. But those are played on the first frets while the guitar is typically intonated at the 12th fret and tuned with open strings. I would expect those first frets to be fairly "out" vs. the open strings.

[kjkjadksj]

If they are out most people don’t have the ear for it. A lot of people don’t even bust out their tuners and just tune off fretted note on previous string.

[relaxing]

“Whole neck” is irrelevant. Things can go out of tune at any fret.

EVH famously tuned his B string slightly flat to make his D (on the 3rd fret) sound better. Look it up.

[relaxing]

Frusciante is an amazing guitar player — check out his solo albums. He knew what he was doing putting those out of tune notes in.

[criddell]

Engineers hate it and so they invented the true temperament guitar. It’s like a regular guitar except the frets are a bit funky.

[tadfisher]

Even those are not "true-temperament" instruments like a piano, they adapt a "well-temperament" tuning system like Bach's keyboard tuning [0]. The end result is closer to true-temperament in some keys, and farther in others.

Oh, and that applies to standard tuning only. YMMV with alternative tunings, especially the open tunings.

0: https://www.guyguitars.com/truetemperament/eng/tt_techdetail...

[Copyrightest]

I am a jazz guitarist and am sympathetic to this comment: the way I tune my guitar these days is hitting an E tuning fork, playing a particular E7 chord, and deciding if it sounds good:

  e —0–
  B —0–
  G —7–
  D —6–
  A —7–
  E —0–

Learned it from Jimmy Bruno. I despise digital tuners. However it is worth noting: a properly-tuned guitar will never be able to play a “barbershop seventh,” which hits the natural harmonic dominant 7th and is so flat compared to TET that it’s really almost a 6th. The chord itself sounds more bittersweet and less “funky” than a TET dominant 7th. OTOH the TET chord is an essential part of modern blues-influenced music: being “out of tune” makes the chord sharp and strong, almost like a blue cheese being “moldy.” So I’m not beaten up about the limitations, it’s just worth keeping in mind: no instrument can beat a group of human voices.

In general your ears do not hear these little arithmetical games around mismatched harmonies. They hear things like “this chord sounds warm and a little sad, this one is bright and fun.”

[fuzzfactor]

There's more than one way to be sympathetic :)

With 12 of the strings on a sitar having equal (thin) diameter, but different lengths so they can be tuned to the 12 notes in the scale, these are also unplayed strings which contribute to the sound by resonating underneath the main course of strings which are the ones fretted and manually played on.

That's so endearing I guess that's why they call them sympathetic strings ;)

While my guitar gently weeps, etc. . .