Playing by yourself?

Rllink · Dec 30, 2017

When sitting by yourself, does anybody just tune a string to something that sounds good, then tune the rest of the strings to that string, and then just play it? Over the holidays I've been playing a bit down in the basement just myself, and I've not been using a tuner. It is actually kind of different. Several times I've just taken a string and tuned it to whatever I thought sounded good with my voice, then tuned the others to that. I have no idea if it is in tune with anything but itself. Yesterday I went down to play a song that I found in the key of C, but the starting note to the song is a G. So I just tuned the second string third fret at G to my voice and tuned everything off of that. It really worked well. Instead of trying to sing to my accompaniment, I was accompanying my voice. I'm going to experiment with it more and see what I can do with it.

LarryS · Dec 30, 2017

Well so long as each string is tuned to itself it shouldn't matter about the exact tuning.

UkeStuff · Dec 30, 2017

Hey Rollie...Happy New Year. Heading to PR any time soon?

You are welcome to experiment with tuning all that you want..even trying alternate tunings of each string (changing their intervals from each other).

You’re sort of doing what Irving Berlin did...he could only play in one key on the piano, so had a special piano built that would transpose the keys to whatever key he wanted to play in, still using the same keys (the black keys, if memory serves).

Just make sure that if you meet up with others, that you get it back into the same key...

Tootler · Dec 30, 2017

I always check my tuning with a tuner. Like ubulele says, it's quick and reliable and given the physical properties of polymers ( which is what our strings are made from) it maximises the chances of the tuning remaining stable over time.

anthonyg · Dec 30, 2017

Just having an instrument in tune with itself was pretty common in the days before cheap clip on tuners. If you ever critically assess the tuning of old recorded pop songs you will find that they are all over the place pitch wise.

Rllink · Dec 31, 2017

In not a big tune by ear sort of person. If I were going to do some serious playing, my tuner would be the first thing I grabbed, after my uke. I don't have that great of an ear for it. I'm just playing around and finding out some things about it.

KohanMike · Dec 31, 2017

You can accomplish something similar with a capo, or take it further and transpose the key. I'm one who's a stickler for being in proper tune, especially because I'm very bad at tuning from string to string. I have a built in or mini headstock tuner on all my ukes and basses, for me it's one of the greatest inventions ever made. Also, I practice to recordings I've made of our rehearsals that are in tune.

Patrick Madsen · Dec 31, 2017

I usually end up playing second and third chord positions so tune to the third fret. I don't like having a tuner on my head stock; I tune and take it off for the rest of the time and tune by ear. It's an arm reach away. I'm finicky on tuning; pitch I don't care. If it's in tune, it's the chord shapes that matter.

If I'm reading this right Rick, you change the pitch and tune to it. Are you changing chord shapes to get the sound you want? This sounds like a fun thing to do and a test to see how deaf my wife thinks I am.

Back in the day a good band depended how well in tune they were. I didn't have a problem too much with tuning; it was getting the right pitch without a tuner. I shudder remembering singing to girls, trying to impress them, with that old out of tune cheese cutter of a guitar. Now I just reach for the tuner and a uke and sing to my wife.

It's been a good while since I've changed tunings. This sounds like a fun thing to do. Change it to my voice. Oh God, those poor girls.

Nickie · Dec 31, 2017

When I play alone, I tune my uke by ear, then check it with my tuner. It's good practice to help me train my ear(s). I make myself sing to the uke's correct tuning, because I'm still green at singing.
Today our group was rehearsing, and the ukes were way off. I had mine tuned to my tuner (which was checked for accuracy with my piano) but the other uker insisted that MY uke was off, so I tuned to hers. Later, she admitted to have niggled with her tuner so that A was no longer 440.
It's a good thing I really like her.

Canada Jim · Dec 31, 2017

Patrick Madsen said:
. . . I don't like having a tuner on my head stock; I tune and take it off for the rest of the time. . . QUOTE]

Good idea Patrick. If you're one of the few people who read the instructions that come with a Snark, they say to tune your instrument, then take off the tuner. Don't leave it on your instrument. There are softeners in the rubber pads that will dissolve the finish on your headstock if the tuners are left on for long periods.

Those of us who have been playing stringed instruments for a few decades will recall tuning to a mouth harp or piano. . . Unless I am playing with others or using a rack mounted mouth harp, I tune my instruments to themselves. With the ukes, it's tuned to the old "My Dog Has Fleas" ditty.

Booli · Jan 1, 2018

99% of the time when I pick up one of my ukes, I will tune it relative to itself, and then verify with a tuner.

Striving for absolute pitch for GCEA based upon A-440 for tuning by ear would be futile because I have lots of ukes in alternate tunings, and NOT just alternate keys but some in perfect 4ths and some in perfect 5ths, and not all of them have an open A string that I can verify for A-440 by ear.

I am trying over the last year to at least get something close to A-440 in my brain so eventually I could actually tune an A string spot on, and then tune the rest of the uke itself.

However, after tuning by ear, I ALWAYS check against a tuner, as this is sort of a game for me to see how close I am by ear.

Back whe I was guitarded, I actually did not own any kind of electronic tuner. I tuned to an E tuning fork if I could find it, or the low-E string to a piano, and if neither were available, I would tune the guitar to itself. If I was playing with others, we would all tune to each other, with one person serving as the pitch reference, and not really care of were were in-line with A-440 unless we had a piano or violin player in the group.

Canada Jim · Jan 1, 2018

Booli, I can understand a piano (or mouth harp, whistle, autoharp. . .) which are more difficult to retune, but a fiddle is very easy to tune to itself or another instrument; at least as easy as a guitar, mandolin, ukulele or banjo.

zztush · Jan 1, 2018

Happy new year, Rllink!

Shamisen (三味線) has no fret wire at all. And we don't use tuners.
There are many alternate tunings in shamisen. The most popular tuning is honchoshi (本調子). We tune the lowest string C by our ear without tuners, tuning folks, tuning pipes or other instruments. When I am tired, I tune it bit lower for my voice. Then we tune second (centre) string F by ear. There is 4 degree interval between C to F. We tune it by ear, because there is no fret board. Then we tune third string one octave high C. All just by ear. And C is not fixed C. It takes about 5 years to master this tuning.

Booli · Jan 1, 2018

Jim Yates said:
Booli, I can understand a piano (or mouth harp, whistle, autoharp. . .) which are more difficult to retune, but a fiddle is very easy to tune to itself or another instrument; at least as easy as a guitar, mandolin, ukulele or banjo.

Jim -

This was all 25 yrs ago in the past, so there's no fixing it or anything, it's just what happened back then.

The issue with the violin was not the instrument, but was typically the player and them being adamantly hostile about having correct pitch reference in their A string. Some battles are not worth fighting so we would just tune to the violin. I despise hubris, but this seemed to be common amongst the classically trained violin-players around me at the time. C'est la vie.

It was an ego problem and not an instrument problem. Most of these were classically trained players that felt jazz and celtic music was either 'beneath them' or some kind of blasphemy for which they'd be punished later on in life.

At the time, there were no 'fiddle' players near me, only those violin players that had hopes for lifelong work in an orchestra, and thus could not play anything without a music sheet in front of them, and it was often difficult to get them to feel comfortable improvising.

I was not the decision-maker, and I really did not care who was the pitch reference. I just wanted to play music.

SoloRule · Jan 1, 2018

Does any one remember using one of these ??

[/url]360335000000000-00-500x500 by Brenda Lee, on Flickr[/IMG]

Booli · Jan 1, 2018

SoloRule said:
Does any one remember using one of these ??

pitch pipes

yes, and maybe it's just me, but I hated them with a passion. They always sounded like a honking of dying geese and not musical at all.

I frequently and 'accidentally' always 'lost' one if it was given to me.

Much preferred the tuning fork which I'd strike on something metal and then place the end on the headstock or the bridge while tuning to it.

Jarmo_S · Jan 1, 2018

Yes Brenda. I got my classical guitar over 40 years ago. Also a tuning pipe thing, but never used it.
I bought a 440 Hz A4 tuning work. Needed to learn the relative tuning with 5th and 6th string harmonics etc octave tuning tricks.

Kids these days just put a clip-on tuner and are much better of and also get probably a more accurate tuning.

I always keep my uke in standard tuning when playing by myself.

SoloRule · Jan 1, 2018

I envy those like Camsuke can change tuning base on what sounds best on the instrument.
All my ukes, Baritone even my Kiku are in standard tuning (yes I managed to find strings to make the Kiku to standard E tuning).
That's all my ears can handle.
Glad I am not the only person threw away the pitch pipe

bratsche · Jan 1, 2018

I have my 54 year old A=440 tuning fork and still use it - it's sitting on my desk in front of me right now. We are old friends.

Also hated the pitch pipes - besides sounding dreadful, I think you could blow them out of tune eventually. I do prefer to tune to 440 consistently; I never had perfect pitch but could identify what key an orchestra was playing in from the resonance of the open strings, just due to familiarity. And after all these years, I can finally hear it in the strings of a piano, too. (Playing with one regularly of late has helped in that regard.) But with wind instruments, I am still clueless.

I do keep electronic tuners on my ukes, because the softer nylon or fluorocarbon strings are so prone to go out of tune, something I never had to deal with on my steel stringed mandolin family instruments, which would often stay in tune for months at a time. But the ukes are very sensitive to temperature changes of my body heat, as well as my environment, and when one starts to go out by small increments, it's handy to have the tuner there because the culprit strings can vary, as well as the direction of their intonational malfeasance. I was resistant to the idea at first on general principles, but practicality won out, especially since they have little ones that are so unobtrusive on the underside of the headstock.

bratsche

70sSanO · Jan 1, 2018

I use a tuner and then unclip it. Many decades ago I used a piano to tune one string on my guitar. Back then, the person with a tuning fork or just had good pitch would tune up his guitar and we would tune to his. But as a garage band it was not critical. Obviously a band with a keyboard was a plus. After all these years, I'm pretty good at getting close to the "correct" pitch.

Tuning to a different key, when playing alone, can be advantageous for both the vocalist and the ukulele itself. I would think that more often than not, standard tuning does not necessarily produce the best sounding and playing ukulele, or even guitar. There have been times when an instrument in a store played and sounded so nice, but it was slightly de-tuned and that made it seem much better than it was at pitch.

The flip side is not being able to play with others. I used to detune and capo, but on a ukulele, I hated using a capo so I tune my ukes to the"proper" pitch.

John

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