Does anyone here intonate by ear?

[EADG mx]

?

[rakirksey]

Do you have perfect pitch?

[JustDavid]

Originally Posted by rakirksey

Do you have perfect pitch?

He may be about to find out.

[Ric5]

I play 5 string basses ... to get the low B dead on I use a digital tuner.

[CatfishStudios]

i do not .... i use a chromatic tuner.

[HogieWan]

when you say intonate, do you mean tune the bass or set the string length for intonation?

For either, why would you. If you needed to tune up and don't have a tuner, it's no big deal to tune to a guitar or piano.

[deaf pea]

Although I DO use a Peterson "flip-top" for silent tuning and adjusting intonation, I also listen to what I'm doing . . . you COULD say that I "intonate by ear" . . . but I really depend on (and believe in) what the Peterson's strobe tells me . . .

[seamonkey]

In my experience, it's a big waste of time to precisely adjust intonation while the string is still stretching.
When I change the strings - I do a quick 12th fret harmonic to fretted 12th and adjust based on what I hear.
Try it - it's not too hard.
Play awhile, retune, recheck, ... later, after the string settles in, do I get around to intonation with the tuner

[electracoyote]

I check octaves by ear up and down the neck after I have intonated with a tuner. If I hear descrepancies with the octaves, I check my work...with a tuner.

[VroomVroom]

I do it by smell. My nose is much better than my ears.



Sorry... Not to knock the OP, but...I guess I just don't understand why.

[steveksux]

I tune my bass by feel sometimes. Tune with harmonics, you can feel the warble if its out of tune. Its a great parlor trick, impress the guitard in your band.

Randy

[KPAX]

The fretless players do.

Originally Posted by EADG mx

?

[KPAX]

The fretless players do.

Originally Posted by EADG mx

?

[T-Bird]

Hi.

I do.

Originally Posted by rakirksey

Do you have perfect pitch?

What does having a perfect pitch have to do with telling two relative pitches apart?

Regards
Sam

[Joe Gress]

Tune the A with a tuner, then I do the rest by ear.

[Pilgrim]

For many, many years people tuned by ear - or by pitch pipe. When I took up bass again in 1997 after a 23-year layoff, I didn't know electronic tuners existed.

Once you tune ONE string on a fretted bass, tuning the rest of them is child's play because you have all the notes laid out by frets.

Intonation may be more difficult, but if you can set it closely enough that YOUR ear can't tell the different, it's close enough that no one ELSE'S ears will be able to tell the difference - especially when playing in a mix.

I use an electric tuner because I have one. If I didn't, I'd just pull out my old pitch pipe to set one note, tune all the strings, then set intonation by ear.

[Jo6Pak]

I ballpark the intonation by measuring out the G-string bridge saddle from the 12th fret, then stagger the subsequent saddles by the thickness of the string that occupies it. It usually ends up being very close. Close enuff for me, anyway...

[julio.gamiz]

Jaco didn't need a tuner

[Jools4001]

I've always set the intonation by ear. IMHO you're in a bit of trouble if you can't distinguish a pitch difference between a harmonic and 'fretted' note at the 12th.

If you can get it so that the two pitches are indistinguishable to you just by listening to them, and then check the octave on the open string (and on the 24th if you've got one), you should be able to get it so close that nobody will notice any intonation issues except somebody with perfect pitch - and in all my 40 years of playing I've only met one person who genuinely had that.

Of course I have tuners, but they seem overkill to me for somethong as straightforward

[Jools4001]

Originally Posted by julio.gamiz

Jaco didn't need a tuner

True. He had roadies to do all that