Is there a tuner that can work for chords?

I was thinking such a thing might be a neat self-taught beginner item. That way it'd help tell if you've nailed that E or not.

Interesting.

I'm not aware of anything quite like that, Sambient. Of course, there may be such a thing, but I think it would present quite a technical challenge. Tuners that work with one note at a time already struggle a bit with harmonics and overtones sometimes. I imagine that kind of thing might be a problem.

How did you envisage the gadget helping? I'm not quite sure I see how you'd use it...

I see it benefitting me as I am just starting to learn as helping me with best finger placement for my desired chord. Certain chords, though I have my fingers on the correct frets and strings, don't sound quite right to me at times. I was thinking if a device was sensitive enough, that as I moved my fingers slightly in their placement, or the creating different pressure, I could get a better sensibility of creating the best sounding, or purest sounding, note. It would also help train my ears further.
Flight of fancy stuff I guess. Probably would be a thoroughly expensive doohickey. And I have no idea if I've communicated what I was thinking well.

Identifying chords based on just the sound has been a topic of research in signal processing for many years. As far as I know, nobody's cracked it in a way that's accurate, works in real time and could be built into a consumer product. There are some software products out there that attempt it on sound files, but I've tried a few and wasn't very impressed with the results, even on material that should have been easy. Of course, it wasn't that long ago our tuners had to be told what note we were playing, so that could change at any moment.

Roland has, for many years, made an optical pickup for guitars that "reads" each string individually and produces MIDI data that can be used to control other instruments like synthesizers. That information could easily be used to determine what chord is being played, but it's an awfully expensive solution for a learning aid and doesn't catch some of the subtleties you're looking for.

What you could do, however, is use your tuner to verify that you're playing the right notes one at a time or find one of the many web sites that can form and play chords for you. If you've got the chord to the point where all of the notes ring out clearly and aren't "bent" compared to just plucking them with one finger on the fretboard, you've got it. Anybody can learn to form chords; the hard part is making the transitions from one to the other.

--Mark

maybe something along the lines of transcribe could help?

Its not an easy solution tho, it just shows the notes that are played at a time you still have to make out the chords and guess a bit, but its a good tool to find bits out. Still you have to do a lot work manually and try a bit around.

Get yourself a Chromatic Tuner. My Korg-CA picks up on chord notes. If I hold a G chord, the tuner says "G" if I hold an F chord, it says F. If I hold an E chord, it says E. Son on and so forth. but it won't say dimminished or... major 7 or minor... it will say sharp or flat.

You could just arpeggiate the chords, checking the intonation of each note one at a time.

JJ

Ukulele JJ said:

You could just arpeggiate the chords, checking the intonation of each note one at a time.

JJ

Click to expand...

Yup. That's probably the most practical way to go.

Not sure what the problem is. Assuming your uke's intonation is correct, if you have the individual strings in tune, the chord should be fine.

I've got a Korg CA too. Was quite suprised when it did actually pick up the chords.