Can you feel your bass being in/out of tune?

[Stilettoprefer]

Back story:
My Schecter has a slightly too sharp headstock angle to fit in my hardshell case correctly, so I have to spin the A string knob flat so that it doesn't rest against the plastic of the case.

So every day in band I tune up that one string using the 7th and 5th harmonics. The other day I realized that if I rest my arm on the body of my bass while tuning with harmonics, I can literally feel when the string is up to pitch. The body vibrates when that string is slightly off pitch and I try the harmonics, then it quits when the string is back on pitch.

[alec]

I do this a lot, but I just feel the vibrations in my left hand holding the neck. It might be more pronounced with a neck-thru bass.

[oniman7]

I've noticed this from time to time. Because of the uneven pitch, the sound wavers, and I guess you can feel that too.

For what it's worth, when I'm practicing without an amp, I can actually hear it a lot better if I rest my chin on the upper horn. I guess my head picks up the vibrations?

[Stilettoprefer]

Originally Posted by oniman7

I've noticed this from time to time. Because of the uneven pitch, the sound wavers, and I guess you can feel that too.

For what it's worth, when I'm practicing without an amp, I can actually hear it a lot better if I rest my chin on the upper horn. I guess my head picks up the vibrations?

I found that if the butt of my bass is resting against a table, it kind of uses the table as an amp and makes the notes ring out louder. Unamplified of course.

[JimmyM]

Yep, that's called "feeling the beats."

[1958Bassman]

When you play two notes simultaneously, it results in two other notes- the sum and the difference in frequency. You can't always hear the sum but when you're tuning, you'll definitely feel or hear the difference. This is called 'beat frequency' and as the difference between the two notes increases, the beating is faster. When you get closer to matching the pitch/frequency of the notes, the beating slows down. When it stops, the two strings are tuned. This can be done using harmonics or fretting the notes. If you play 4ths or 5ths, you can hear that the resulting sound isn't as loud when the strings aren't tuned properly.

Making contact with the instrument and chin or other bony part of the body results in the sound being conducted through the bones to the inner ear. If anyone is old enough, they may remember a radio that hung over the wearer's shoulders and neck- it was called Bone Fone and wouldn't be very audible to others, but definitely to the wearer through bone conduction.