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Posts: 15725
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
RE: How to get better intonation (?) (in reply to bahen)
quote:
ORIGINAL: bahen
Thanks, Ethan. That's interesting. Can you explain what's going on with the frets? (I don't know much about the intonation debate.)
You can search archives for “End of intonation problems” or “Tuning by Ear”. These circular arguments, including one Escribano had to shut down, lead to this about tuning again, and on Page 2 I post a video I made about technique of playing vs the construction tricks to deal with intonation issues.
Basically, these wacky fret designs and compensated bridges are splitting the difference with players who carelessly place their fingers on the fingerboard rather than using their ear to manipulate the pitches relative to the music.
RE: How to get better intonation (?) (in reply to Ricardo)
Cheers, Ricardo. I'll take a look at those threads at some point. I've been revisiting your long video on tuning on YouTube. Tuning with harmonics on fifth and seventh frets has been a game changer for me. Much better than the digital tuner I used to rely on, which always made my guitar sound a bit off—especially the D string, and I'd be interested in learning if that's just a quirk of my instrument, the strings (first pair on this new guitar), or it's well-known that D strings can be a bit weird (on account of them being the weakest of the strings).
Posts: 1708
Joined: Jan. 29 2012
From: Seattle, Washington, USA
RE: How to get better intonation (?) (in reply to bahen)
quote:
Can you explain what's going on with the frets?
What Ricardo said. And it doesn't really sound particularly more in tune to me. I think violin family instruments can achieve it because there are no frets, so the tuning can be adjusted for each key, each note. And a piano can achieve it because it is tempered with multiple strings for each note. A guitar is a guitar is a guitar.