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How do you tune your bass?
- Thread starter Michael Favata
- Start date
I dont know why, but I can hear D's and G's in my head with near perfection....Its not a brag or boast because Im not sure why I can do that either lol....I use a tuner playing live but, if I absolutely had to (like often sitting on my couch), if I think of something in the Key of D, usually the intro guitar of Boston's "More Than A Feeling", I can grab that open D string, tune the rest of my bass, and Im ready to gig for standard tuned bands....Its a mystery to me why I can do that but at least its a good mystery lol
I use a pedal tuner if my pedal board is plugged in, otherwise a clip on. (I recommend the Turbo Tuner pedal and the TC Polytune Clip.)
I start with the G string and work my way down. On three of my basses I just tune with open strings because I know the intonation is adjusted well and further tweaking isn't usually required - my Stingray 5 in particular has excellent intonation all the way up the neck.
On my first bass, originally the nut slots were a bit high on 3/5 of the strings, which meant I couldn't tune using open string pitches on those strings or the notes in the first few frets would be sharp. At the time I didn't know the nut could be fixed - and this was pre world wide web so I couldn't just Google it - so I just compensated by tuning with the fifth fret pitches and that meant everything ended up pretty good as long as I didn't use open A, D, or G. Fortunately the E and B strings didn't have that problem so I could still hit open E no problem. An embarrassingly large number of years later I finally got the nut fixed, and now I tune that bass by starting with open string notes and just slightly tweaking based on pitch of a couple of fretted notes. ("Fixed" in this case means "significantly improved", not "perfect".)
I start with the G string and work my way down. On three of my basses I just tune with open strings because I know the intonation is adjusted well and further tweaking isn't usually required - my Stingray 5 in particular has excellent intonation all the way up the neck.
On my first bass, originally the nut slots were a bit high on 3/5 of the strings, which meant I couldn't tune using open string pitches on those strings or the notes in the first few frets would be sharp. At the time I didn't know the nut could be fixed - and this was pre world wide web so I couldn't just Google it - so I just compensated by tuning with the fifth fret pitches and that meant everything ended up pretty good as long as I didn't use open A, D, or G. Fortunately the E and B strings didn't have that problem so I could still hit open E no problem. An embarrassingly large number of years later I finally got the nut fixed, and now I tune that bass by starting with open string notes and just slightly tweaking based on pitch of a couple of fretted notes. ("Fixed" in this case means "significantly improved", not "perfect".)
ask for an in tune e, and tune the rest by ear using natural harmonics
At blues gigs I'll ask the guitar player for an A and tune from there harmonically at 5th and 7th frets. At other jams and gigs and such, tuners are the way. I only recently got a headstock tuner a few months ago. Boy what a great tool and I can't believe it took me so long to get one. For 20 years I've been hauling around a Boss TU-12. Sheesh.
I used to play at a church that had an acoustic piano that was tuned far too infrequently such that it was usually both slightly flat and not quite in tune with itself. So the "give me an E" method wasn't great given that its E may or may not be more out of tune than the rest of the piano.
I got best results tuning bass or guitar to sound good with the piano by arriving early and recalibrating my electronic tuner to match what my ears told me was the average flatness of the piano - perhaps A=438 one season, A=436 the next, then maybe back to A=440 if the piano had just been tuned.
The other obvious advantage to setting my electronic tuner to the piano and then tuning my bass or guitar from the tuner was that then I could tweak my own tuning at any time during rehearsal or performance, and do it silently, no need to interrupt the band to ask for another reference note.
won’t get Fooled again was one of the first. House of the rising sun is another good onefor an A
A good ear? As a percentage of the human race, not many that can do that. Very few people have musical recall like that.
Korg chromatic tuner or, if I want to be a bit fussier, I plug into my phone and use the Peterson iStrobe app.
I also have a Snark clip-on stashed in a drawer, I never use it.
I also have a Snark clip-on stashed in a drawer, I never use it.
This thread makes me wonder what orchestras use for tuning, if they rely on ears as in years past, or if everybody, brass, woodwinds, strings, even percussion all tune using electronic modalities. I also wonder if piano tuners now use electronics for tuning. I remember watching the piano tuner whacking his A440 tuning fork a dozen times getting all 3 strings of the A then using harmonics to tune the rest of piano. It was an hours long process..
G-D-A-E, foot pedal tuner. If setting up, then a Boss TU-12H.
I can do it by ear. I still have my tuning fork and pitch pipe. But the only real advantage to these methods is that they're extremely cheap. But...so are foot pedal tuners.
I can't stand headstock tuners in operation or in looks, and I don't find them particularly sensitive or accurate, or to offer any advantage over my foot pedal tuner.
I can do it by ear. I still have my tuning fork and pitch pipe. But the only real advantage to these methods is that they're extremely cheap. But...so are foot pedal tuners.
I can't stand headstock tuners in operation or in looks, and I don't find them particularly sensitive or accurate, or to offer any advantage over my foot pedal tuner.
A piano with every string tuned to a tuner sounds horrible when used in the real world, just as a guitar that had every note read dead on on a tuner would sound horrible when used in the real world.
They normally tune a few key notes, then tune the rest to them by ear by sounding commonly used chords.
In the real world, perfect pitch is near useless to a musician. Relative pitch is what is important to have.
Peterson stretched tuning is supposedly solid for piano tuning. It’s the super expensive strobe that uses stretched tuning, because mathematically precise tuning sounds bad across the octaves, the stretched tuner compensates, and allows you to tune harmoniously from top to bottom, the way tuning by ear would eventually lead to.
Decades ago, I'd ask the guitarist for open E, then tune my E string to that using a harmonic. After awhile I started asking for open A because I thought it was easier to hear.
Of course I'd use harmonics to tune my remaining strings relative to the E (or A). It would be via the usual "ping... ping", meaning a pause between the first string and the second. Then I saw a very good bassist hit the harmonics on both strings simultaneously. I realized it was perfectly valid, and less annoying sounding, so that's what I've done ever since when I'm not using a tuner, or doing a quick doublecheck after using one.
These days I'm all about clip-ons. The good ones are fabulous. Even the average ones are good... the typical problem is recognition of open low B, but when that happens the easy solution is to use the 12th fret harmonic.
Ya know, I just realized I'm the same as you: for years now I've been starting at high G and working my way down to low B (I'm a fiver guy, obviously). I don't know when or why I switched.
Of course I'd use harmonics to tune my remaining strings relative to the E (or A). It would be via the usual "ping... ping", meaning a pause between the first string and the second. Then I saw a very good bassist hit the harmonics on both strings simultaneously. I realized it was perfectly valid, and less annoying sounding, so that's what I've done ever since when I'm not using a tuner, or doing a quick doublecheck after using one.
These days I'm all about clip-ons. The good ones are fabulous. Even the average ones are good... the typical problem is recognition of open low B, but when that happens the easy solution is to use the 12th fret harmonic.
Ya know, I just realized I'm the same as you: for years now I've been starting at high G and working my way down to low B (I'm a fiver guy, obviously). I don't know when or why I switched.
I always start tuning from the G string. I found the tension of the high strings affects neck bow and thus tuning of all other strings the most.
When you start from the lowest string, it can be out of tune again when you are done tuning the G string.
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P.S. Here's the weirdest tuning situation I've ever encountered. My 11-member "mini big band" (5 pc horn section) was playing a tailgate gig in the parking lot of an NFL stadium (FedEx Field). We were running off of generator power... a big pro generator, I wasn't worried. The keyboard player brought his 1957 Hammond B3. Turns out that its tuning was off, and that was because the line frequency coming from the generator was non-standard -- apparently the tuning of his old B3 was dependent on line frequency. So, the rest of us had to tune to his B3, which was slightly sharp, as I recall.
That was also the first time I saw brass instruments being tuned. I was vaguely aware that they could be, I'd just never actually noticed it being done.
That was also the first time I saw brass instruments being tuned. I was vaguely aware that they could be, I'd just never actually noticed it being done.
