Author Topic: Stretch tuning for bass? (Read 142 times)

LMiwa · « **on:** July 10, 2009, 08:11:39 AM »

Most pianos are stretch tuned to some degree, depending on the type of piano. If you play bass with such a piano and tune your bass perfectly according to a tuner, won't your strings actually be tuned a bit higher than the same notes on the piano?

I've always matched my A string to the piano and then tuned by ear from there. But obviously using a tuner is faster and more accurate. I'm just trying to figure out exactly how I should set my tuner to get my bass to match the piano.

adriaan · « **Reply #1 on:** July 10, 2009, 08:36:06 AM »

I've always found that there is more of a problem with digital pianos, which appear to have a built-in linear tuning on the low end, that you won't get on an acoustic piano that has had a careful tune-up.

Tuners are tools, tuning is an art. Use the tuner first if you're not comfortable doing it by ear, then adjust by ear until you're comfortable with the intonation. The top strings usually need to be marginally sharp.

gyonnii · « **Reply #2 on:** July 10, 2009, 09:09:47 AM »

When I went to Berkley school of music, my music teacher use to emphasize A440 and to train your ear for perfect pitch he had us buy a tuning fork and place it by our ear and then touch the base of it in front of the ear, just below the temple. This helped train you for pitch, vibrational tone and fading sustain which determined basically how long you can hear.
We recorded each others time on how long we could hear till the tuning fork tone was no longer, you wouldn't believe how much it varied in the class.

LMiwa · « **Reply #3 on:** July 10, 2009, 09:28:08 AM »

Until recently, I've never used a digital tuner. I've always tuned by ear. The lighter gauge, longer scale strings were always easier to tune with the piano as they are closer to the ideal vibrating sring. The heavy gauge flatwounds on my Fender (like steel bars!) were always a compromise.

So now that I have a tuner built into my preamp, I was wondering if I could set it up a certain amount flat (match the A on the piano maybe?) and then just get lazy!

adriaan · « **Reply #4 on:** July 10, 2009, 09:53:22 AM »

If you're playing in a setting with an acoustic piano, there is no way it is guaranteed to be tuned at A=440. In that situation everyone MUST tune to the piano simply because everyone but the pianist has any control over the tuning.

Ask the pianist to play some slow basic changes, play against that and fine tune.

georgie_boy · « **Reply #5 on:** July 11, 2009, 08:09:40 AM »

Words of wisdom from Adriaan.

LMiwa · « **Reply #6 on:** July 11, 2009, 10:02:27 AM »

Adriaan,

Yes, that's what I've been doing for years. I've found the piano is actually about an A434 and the A I tune to is about an A107. I was just hoping for a shortcut using the tuner, now that I have it!

Most of my basses I can tune by just matching the piano A and then tuning the bass to itself. It's that flatwound Fender that gives me the most grief.

Loch

811952 · « **Reply #7 on:** July 11, 2009, 10:30:44 AM »

I find that the variation in pitch varies GREATLY for me depending upon attack and a host of other environmental factors. My pitch changes depending upon how I'm holding the instrument even, and I'm not really a ham-fisted player either. So I get it close with the tuner and tweak it from there over the course of a song or two during soundcheck (and after temps have stabilized). I usually don't have to touch it again until the next gig. For a fretted bass, close is the best I'm ever going to do. Now on a fretless it's an entirely different story, especially gigging with horn players...

John

bob · « **Reply #8 on:** July 11, 2009, 12:37:31 PM »

Loch,

It seems you have a pretty good ear, as well as some understanding of how strings vibrate, and that your main issue is with the steel bars on your Fender. From what you're saying, it sounds like you don't generally have a problem tuning your other instruments - whether to a piano, a tuner, or just to themselves.

So - what kind of flats are you using, and have you tried, or considered, others that might be somewhat more flexible? And with the ones you currently use, are you able to accurately set the intonation?

Depending on the strings, and their age, the various harmonics may be aligned better or worse, and be more or less pronounced relative to each other. When these things aren't so good, they can confuse tuners (some more than others), as well as your ears.

Your original question about stretch tuning is perhaps more interesting, but it doesn't sound to me like that's the real issue here.

LMiwa · « **Reply #9 on:** July 11, 2009, 04:39:09 PM »

Bob,

It's not a problem tuning by ear, it's just a little slower and can't be done silently. The turn the key until the light's in the middle simplicity is certainly appealing. Obviously, just setting my tuner to A440 and then tuning my bass to that won't work. So I was wondering if anyone who plays with a piano has found a workable way to use a tuner. If not, I'll just keep doing it by ear!

The strings I use on that particular P-Bass are Fender Flat 9050ML. It's a maple neck / ash body bass and these strings give it a really snappy low/mid punch without much high end. It has exactly ONE great sound! It seems there's a pretty quick mis-alignment within just the first few harmonics. It doesn't seem to be a string age thing, as new ones seem to be just about the same. I think I could probably do a Jamerson and never change them and they'd still sound the same! It takes a while to get them tuned and certainly requires more than just play an A from the piano player. But when we just HAVE to have that sound, we deal with it.

I use TI Jazz flats on my rosewood neck / alder body Precision. It's a much rounder and mellower sound, and quite a bit more flexible. The TI's are VERY easy to tune.

Loch

hankster · « **Reply #10 on:** July 11, 2009, 05:38:17 PM »

It's the tempering on a piano that causes the tuning issues. You have to use your ears. And you have to retune to play in the sharp keys after tuning to play in the flat keys, unless you are playing a fretless instrument in which case your hands will do the work if you play enough. There is no magic answer to be found in any kind of tuner.

bob · « **Reply #11 on:** July 11, 2009, 05:44:50 PM »

Yes, well, I was going to suggest the TI's partly for that reason... but I guess not.

Anyway, it seems to me that if you can tune your tuner to the piano, then you should be able to get pretty close from there. I don't know what sort of tuner capability you have, but it sounds like you can calibrate it to something other than 440 - perhaps you could mic the piano A, and adjust the calibration until the tuner matches? Just a thought, not that I've ever done anything like this myself.

David Houck · « **Reply #12 on:** July 11, 2009, 05:47:06 PM »

Hi Bob!

David Houck · « **Reply #13 on:** July 11, 2009, 06:02:49 PM »

I'm currently reading Barry Miles' biography of Frank Zappa, and coincidentally enough just read a passage on tuning that might be helpful.

[At this point in the book, Zappa is in his senior year in high school and] could never properly assess his musical compositions unless he heard them, so Ballard [his high school music instructor] arranged for the school orchestra to play them. Frank wrote out the parts in chalk on the blackboard and, with him conducting, his bewildered schoolmates played their way through ?The String Quartet?, a composition that included the pieces known eleven years later as ?Sleeping In A Jar? and ?A Pound For A Brown On The Bus? when they appeared on Uncle Meat ? The school used a tuning device that put out a tone. There were two settings: A and B blat. Frank took the first violins and tuned them to the A, then tuned the second violins to B flat, guaranteeing that whatever they played would be dissonant, no matter what notes appeared on the score.