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Tuning by ear...

#62
I always use a tuner to get the first note. Then I tune using harmonics as to make sure that one string matches perfect with others.

I think part of it is Just the pure pleasure behind listening to the Sounds. Feeling the sounds rather.

When I'm the slightest bit off I notice the different feel in the two two vibrations. The further away the faster of a tremolo/vibrato feeling/hearing I sense. As it gets closer, the the slower and more elongated it feels.


Took me a long time to notice that I can feel the difference and not Just hearing it.
 
#63
Yes, tuning by ear onstage is unprofessional... except if you are Neil Young. Saw him during the Rust Never Sleeps tour, and they would have stage hands dressed like druids or sand people carry out a LARGE tuning fork, strike it, and set the end on stage so the whole stage resonated... and tune to that. Tuning as theater is the exception!
 
#64
Comrade Momenta said:
Well I tune by ear more for the fact that I can't afford a tuner more than anything else. I would consider it a useful skill to have by you know how it is these days. Technology makes things better, so we can stay dumber.
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Those snark tuners are literally the price of a starbuck's latte, and work great. Or if you have a smartphone there are free tuner apps. I do tune by ear at home and then check myself to keep sharp, but at a gig with all the noise around and people waiting a tuner is more professional in my opinion, and doesn't make me dumber.
 
#65
Tuning by ear should be one of the first things you learn when first beginning to play. This is something you should always know and be able to do. If you don't know or understand tuning by ear....you won't know if your out of tune when playing a song in a band environment in rehearsal or on stage. I will still tune my instruments by ear "at home" When I am playing with my band, I only use a tuner and my band mates only use tuners. We never have tuning problems. So yes tuning by ear is a must.......but never on stage. That's what tuners are for.
 
#67
nashvillebill said:
For us mere mortals, an electronic tuner is the way to go as I wrote in an earlier post.

However, I just came across this video of Junior Brown who grabs his tuning keys a whole bunch of times without skipping a note...poor quality video but boy can that guy play!
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Who'd have thought Jimi would have been reincarnated in a white cowboy hat.
 
#69
I bought a tuner last week, specifically because I didn't trust my 'ear' tuning.

When my guitarist friend comes around, his guitar is always in tune. So I ask him for an 'E' and go from there. I plugged into the tuner for the first time shortly after I'd gone through my 'normal' routine and I was bang on - no need to shift anything. My acoustic guitar was tuned without any external pitch reference at all and it was very close as well. Maybe I just got lucky?

With that said, even though I can tune accurately by ear, I'll take the tuner. It just eliminates me having a 'bad day'.
 
#70
Hmm. I thought tuning by ear meant you could know any note without having to hear it . I mean if you get someone to play you a specific note and go from there, i thought anyone could do that and it's not hard to be precise if you just know to listen to the vibrations. It takes longer than with a tuner but not that much. I prefer doing this myself as I don't trust my tuners. I mean, i'll usually use them for one string and then ill tune the other strings to that one by ear. Because if i tune all strings with the tuner independently of each other, pretty much everytime one or two is off by a little. If you just listen for the vibrations it's not hard to tune the rest of the strings by ear as long as you know one of them is tuned right. Nowadays anyway since i write song with keyboard in it, i tune myself on the keyboard. For some reason i suspect my keyboard doesn't give me the exact notes, at least not according to my tuners, so i'd rather tune myself to it since i can't tune my keyboard...
 
#71
GrumpiusMaximus said:
I bought a tuner last week, specifically because I didn't trust my 'ear' tuning.
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This is the worst possible reason to use a tuner. If your listening skills aren't good enough to tune without a tuner you have work to do.

It's funny how all the old guys who came up before tuners were small and inexpensive still value being able to tune without a tuner even though they might rarely do so anymore. I use a tuner on stage but at home I always tune by ear. It makes me feel like I'm taking a moment to connect with my bass before I start playing it....puts me in a listening state of mind.

And all of you people saying across the board that tuning by ear on stage is "unprofessional" are completely full of ****. Sure there are a lot of situations where it IS really distracting and anywhere from a little to extremely unpro but there are some where it isn't at all unacceptable. I'd rather hear someone tuning by ear and staying engaged with the audience than endure the dead air I so often see while some dweeb stares down at his pedalboard and completely ignores the audience. If it doesn't distract the audience from the music or the show then it's fine.
 
#73
When you set your bass back in the stand after soundcheck or between sets, the removal of your body heat makes it start going slightly sharp as it cools, assuming ambient temperature is <98F. It's subtle but real.

Use a good pedal-tuner to mute your easy-and-quick touch-ups. Proper tuning is important, and you folks that can accomplish this perfectly and unobtrusively on-stage "by ear" are way better than I am.
 
#74
jeffbonny said:
This is the worst possible reason to use a tuner. If your listening skills aren't good enough to tune without a tuner you have work to do.

It's funny how all the old guys who came up before tuners were small and inexpensive still value being able to tune without a tuner even though they might rarely do so anymore. I use a tuner on stage but at home I always tune by ear. It makes me feel like I'm taking a moment to connect with my bass before I start playing it....puts me in a listening state of mind.

And all of you people saying across the board that tuning by ear on stage is "unprofessional" are completely full of ****. Sure there are a lot of situations where it IS really distracting and anywhere from a little to extremely unpro but there are some where it isn't at all unacceptable. I'd rather hear someone tuning by ear and staying engaged with the audience than endure the dead air I so often see while some dweeb stares down at his pedalboard and completely ignores the audience. If it doesn't distract the audience from the music or the show then it's fine.
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If you actually read beyond the first sentence of my post, you'll see that I can tune by ear (and have actually been doing so since I started playing about seven years ago) but just wanted to eliminate the 'bad day' factor.
 
#75
Tuned by ear since I was 9 and first learned to play. I have at least relative pitch and can tune by ear very accurately. NO ONE can tune by ear as accurately as a decent tuner though. And anyone who intonates their instrument by ear is participating in an exercise of futility.

On stage, a tuner is a requirement. Not only is it more accurate, but 2 guys who can tune accurately by ear can easily tune their instruments and not be in tune with each other. No one comes to a show to watch you screw around tuning your instrument.
 
#76
GrumpiusMaximus said:
If you actually read beyond the first sentence of my post, you'll see that I can tune by ear (and have actually been doing so since I started playing about seven years ago) but just wanted to eliminate the 'bad day' factor.
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I read your post. For the most part you talked about not trusting your ears or your keyboard. I get it about the bad day factor though. Sometimes tired ears just won't hear where the pitch is very easily.

David Hayes said:
On stage, a tuner is a requirement. Not only is it more accurate, but 2 guys who can tune accurately by ear can easily tune their instruments and not be in tune with each other. No one comes to a show to watch you screw around tuning your instrument.
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Not true. I've seen quite a few people tune by ear on stage over the years. Ray Brown, Bela Fleck, Joe Pass, Edgar Meyer and every classical ensemble I've ever heard from a string trio to a symphony orchestra comes to mind for starters. Do I want to hear Kieth Richards and Ronnie Wood trying to tune to each other mid show in a 100,000 seat sports arena? No. I don't even want to hear a rock band in a 300 seat bar doing it. But to say, "On stage, a tuner is a requirement" is a pretty broad statement that simply is not always true. There are many stages where it is perfectly acceptable to tune by ear and a lot more where no one will notice one way or the other.
 
#79
I use a tuner, cause the times when the stage or performance area is quiet enough to hear correctly are very rare. Also, most of my playing is in theater pit orchestras and its too easy to mute the amp and read a tuner to check tuning between songs and during the stage action. It would be very distracting to be tuning while people are acting.
 

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