On Mon, 2004-20-12 at 01:16 +0100, Christoph Eckert wrote: > > I think this is called "well tempered tuning". > > I know what well tempered tuning is, where it comes from, why > we need it and that most popular instruments are tuned in > this way. > > But what I do not know: Do guitarists tune the six strings in > pure tuning, or do they add some aberration to make them > tempered? Well.. there really is no "pure tuning" - it's something of a trade-off. You can tune your guitar so certain things sounds right, and others not. If you tune the B string to be exactly in tune with the B on the second fret of the A string, then tune the high E to the B string, the high E will be quite a bit sharp of the low E string and things will sound like garbage. There just isn't a "perfect" tuning (which is kinda frustrating until you learn to deal with it) E major and A major (chords) are the obvious examples (and all bar chords of the same shape). If you tune it so the E major chord sounds right, the 3rd of the A major will be flat, and if you tune so the A major sounds perfect, near everything sounds like crap. :) It's always that damn B string. Personally, I tune the B string a bit flatter than it "should" be and shoot for the best of both worlds (making sure the high E and low E are dead on). Every guitar is different as well, particularly acoustics where the adjustment is far more limited. (Not sure what this means in terms of well-tempered etc. though) -DR-
