Playing de-tuned strings - on purpose?

[Wesley]

I'm sure that 99.9 percent of the time that we all attempt to play with strings that are tuned in unison. But listening to a lot of blues and jug band music like I do I've often heard old time bands playing instruments that are - shall we say - not perfectly in tune. Unless they are really bad I can see where that sound lends itself to some types of music. So I'm wondering if any of you have had situations where you tune so that's it's close enough - but not quite perfect?

[Rob Gerety]

Nope, got to be in tune.
But, I might tune down a half step or a step to get a different voice.

[JEStanek]

If it gives a flavor to the music you're making that works I say go for it. I prefer for my strings to be as close to each other as possible. But I don't gots da blues.

Jamie

[mandroid]

Radim Zinkle made a recording using 12 different tuned intervals 'Galactic Mandolin' , I think it was.
Unison to Octave
changed string gages as needed, had a composition for each tuned interval.

[Coffeecup]

They have to be in tune for me but I sometimes find that I unintenionally bend the E and A strings slightly. The bend isn't enough to be off the melody but one string in the pair bends more than the other, just enough for an "out-of-tuneness" to be noticeable.

[250sc]

"So I'm wondering if any of you have had situations where you tune so that's it's close enough...."

Only when I'm drinking. ;-)

I try to be as close as possible to being in tune.

[mandocrucian]

On some blues stuff, I really want that raw dirt-road sound of the old blues mando players, so I will intentionally push one string into the other (of the pair)with my fretting finger(s), so that the pair goes slightly out. You hear that sound with guys like Yank Rachell...they just had tough and calloused hands and it just happens that way (like old geezers playing out-of-tune fiddle cause they really don't play that good). But, on that stuff.....it just sounds appropriate. (Like "honky tonk piano" setting on a synth, rather than "baby grand")

So I do it intentionally to get that "sound" whenever I want it, rather than detuning the strings slightly at the tuners. When you can't do it any other way, it's just bad playing technique, but when you can turn it off and on and use it for textural/tonal reasons, then it becomes an advanced "extended technique".

Incidentally, accordions are tuned "dry" or to various degrees of "wet". Dry, the two reeds are exactly in unison. Wet (think Parisian musette), the reeds are slightly off from each other so that you get that wavering (beating) sound since the sounds waves are moving at slightly different speeds, and slightly cancelling each other so the volume wavers.

Recording session guitarist Tommy Tedesco would do the same thing with mandolin, tuning wet, when he had to do Italian mandolin orchestra type backgrounds because it gave him a bigger sounds and he could get by with fewer overdubs. Created the illusion of more mandolins. (Low tech acoustic chorus pedal!)

Niles H

[CES]

I've heard of guitar players who primarily play rhythm/chords tune their B string just a tad flat, as part of a sort of on the fly Buzz Feinten approach, but that's so it will sound more IN tune, not out of it.

I try to get them as close as possible, as out of tune pairs drive me nuts when playing melody...I can tolerate it a little better when just chording, though.

Punch Brothers have a new song where Noam scratches the head of his banjo and Thile plays an upstroke below the bridge, then a downstroke above the nut...the result is rhythmic, modal bliss. Really, it sounds too cool...

I think for the most part I worry too much about having the thing perfectly tuned, when in reality just tuning it to itself will often work just fine.

[Jake Wildwood]

I've heard of guitar players who primarily play rhythm/chords tune their B string just a tad flat, as part of a sort of on the fly Buzz Feinten approach, but that's so it will sound more IN tune, not out of it.


In the days of uncompensated saddles... and on all of my old guitars... that's exactly what I do. :)

But RE mandolins? It hurts my ears to have them out of tune. It's like listening to a car misfiring its cylinders. Yick.

[EarlG]

I had one mandolin player tell me he does put one e or a string out of tune so the sound would "cut" better. He might have been messing with me, I don't know.

If one of my strings goes out it drives me nuts. Very nasty sound.

[Capt. E]

I swear I have seen alternative mandolin tunings where individual strings on a course were tuned differently; like ea on the high string. I printed one diagram out once but can't find it.

[Bic Parker]

This is something that is often done with pianos for either certain effects (i.e., the Honky Tonk sound, which can be augmented by putting tacks on the felt hammers). Many piano tunings on the 3 string courses (mid to higher notes) are sometimes done with one string on, one string just barely barely sharp, and one just barely barely flat, giving more of a chorus depth to the sound. Since the piano is tempered across its range, there could also be a bit of a theoretical argument as to what of the 3 strings is actually out of tune, too ;)!

The mandolin, though, is a bit limited to these effects because the strings sounds are more exposed and picked/plucked rather than hammered, so any out of tune effects just simply sound out of tune more than anything.

[allenhopkins]

I swear I have seen alternative mandolin tunings where individual strings on a course were tuned differently; like ea on the high string. I printed one diagram out once but can't find it.

Get Up John tuning, (http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/showthread.php?p=588812) e.g.

[Fretbear]

Tony Rice dealt definitively with the old guitar B string conundrum on his instructional DVD. He said that it's tuning must be adjusted according to the key that you are playing in and that "such is life".
There has been more than a few instances of out-of-tune mandolin being recorded (even famous, well-known ones) and I will not mention any names so people won't get upset. In at least a few cases, I think it was from recording on instruments that weren't set-up/adjusted/strung heavily enough to get in and hold their tuning perfectly. You may die, your recordings will live forever.....

[Goodin]

I do this all the time when I play guitar live with my traditional Irish band. I use a sliding capo tuned to DADGAD. On one particular tune set I will slide the capo in the middle of the set at the tune change from the 5th fret, to the 7th, and all the way to the 10th fret (for tune in C). With the loose tension of DADGAD and the capo getting tighter on the strings up the neck the string bending at the frets will cause the intonation to go higher. Sometimes as much as 20 ticks but usually about 10 ticks. In a band situation it is only noticeable on the low D string so to compensate I will tune that string down about 5 ticks so when I get the capo up to the 10th fret it will go sharp 10 ticks but only be 5 ticks sharp from 440. I don't think most people notice if it stays less than 10-15 ticks.

[Perry]

Tempering.....

yes Tony Rice does demonstrate it well on his DVD. He tunes his B string slightly flat.....and when he is done boy does he sure sound in tune....interestingly Norman Blake talks about tuning on his first Homespun DVD and he tunes his B slightly sharp...and when he is done boy does he sound in tune :disbelief:

I suppose different instruments need to be tempered in different ways. Watching both of these guys tune up without an electronic tuner is really worth checking out.

Did you ever notice that sometimes you pick up your instrument and it just sounds right and perfectly in tune? It seems that its almost never a result of having just tuned to an electronic tuner but rather your instrument accidently slipped into the appropriate tempered tuning. Learning what that is for your instrument is the key.

I've noticed that if you tune your mandolin A strings slightly flat and play something out of G it sounds a little sweeter.......

Detuning to capture the blues vibe is something I never do (actually I don't know if I ever get really in tune to begin with!) If those guys had the quality instruments, strings and tuners that we have today I bet they would probably have chosen to play in tune. As an example check out Gerry Hundt's YouTube clip where he plays a Harmony batwing that's tuned correctly. Still sounds authentic to me.

Pushing the strings 'out' of tune on the fly seems a better approach.

Steve Kimock the guitar player has some interesting thoughts about tuning...
he talks of how the old blues guys had it right because they played the minor third properly and that in modern music we tend to play the minor thirds a little sharp.

I was jammin with my buddy the other day and he had accidently pushed the button on his tuner and was tuning to A442 where I was A440; we were scrathing our heads all jam long until the last tune when he noticed the problem!

[Capt. E]

This is something that is often done with pianos for either certain effects (i.e., the Honky Tonk sound, which can be augmented by putting tacks on the felt hammers). Many piano tunings on the 3 string courses (mid to higher notes) are sometimes done with one string on, one string just barely barely sharp, and one just barely barely flat, giving more of a chorus depth to the sound. Since the piano is tempered across its range, there could also be a bit of a theoretical argument as to what of the 3 strings is actually out of tune, too ;)!

The mandolin, though, is a bit limited to these effects because the strings sounds are more exposed and picked/plucked rather than hammered, so any out of tune effects just simply sound out of tune more than anything.

This sharp/on/flat tuning is what you find done on accordions, especially ones with three middle reeds, though two reeds will work just fine to create the effect as well. The degree of difference determines the amount of wavering tone. A lot of waver is called wet, no or little waver is called dry.

[Capt. E]

Tempering.....

Did you ever notice that sometimes you pick up your instrument and it just sounds right and perfectly in tune? It seems that its almost never a result of having just tuned to an electronic tuner but rather your instrument accidently slipped into the appropriate tempered tuning. Learning what that is for your isntrument is the key.

I've noticed that if you tune your mandolin A strings slightly flat and play something out of G it sounds a little sweeter......

Cajun accordions are purposefully tempered tuned. On a C tuned accordion, it allows much sweeter tone for songs played in the keys of G and F.

[EdHanrahan]

Tony Rice dealt definitively with the old guitar B string conundrum on his instructional DVD. He said that it's tuning must be adjusted according to the key that you are playing in and that "such is life".

I hate to throw a hornets' nest, but never mind intentionally MIS-tuning, because there's a bigger "tempering" issue, one that I've never seen mentioned here on the Cafe:

Sorry if I'm not enough of a musician or of a physicist (or at all of a physicist!) to explain this easily, but the raw fact is that no single tuning of a fretted instrument can allow it to play =absolutely= in tune in all keys, as Tony apparently realized. The reason is that, in the purest musical sense, an octave is NOT exactly divided by 12; there are slight but real differences.

But western music (hemisphere, not cowboy) normally does use an even division by 12, called the "tempered" scale. That allows, say, a piano to come VERY close in any key, even if it's not exact. Violins etc. don't have that have problem, as the player's ear & touch controls the exact pitch produced. I believe that way back, say prior to "The Well-Tempered Clavier", orchestras DID play in the pure musical scale for the given key.

Fretted instruments have a bigger problem in that each string, unlike piano, must produce many different notes, and cannot maintain absolute accuracy across all frets in a given key, much less all keys - regardless of how accurate the fretting is. But yes, it usually is close enough (like several cents) or we wouldn't all be in love with music!

And as noted by some above, there are times when our own tunings just sound better and come closer to ideal than the strict tempered scale, or our tuner, would indicate.

Note that some guitars utilize the seemingly hokey Buzz Feiten tuning system that incorporates an intentionally staggered nut. I understand that it IS a help when playing in (some?) guitar-friendly keys, but creates havoc in most (all?) of the non-guitar-friendly keys, like Bb, Eb, Ab, etc.

[Link]

In the classical world, strings are sometimes tuned to a completely different note, a technique known as scordatura.

[DerTiefster]

I think Ed a couple of posts up hit it exactly. The natural scales don't -quite- match up with each other and we use the even-tempered scale to hit all of them just a little wrong but not much wrong. If you tune your mando -exactly- to fifths, you won't like certain chords because they sound too much out of tune.

Otherwise, sometimes I've heard of folks tuning their strings to give a slight beat frequency (1/2 Hz off or so) so there is a voice-like vibrato. It's entirely up to you.