Tuning tech catches on with guitarists

No matter how accomplished they are, musicians who play fretted instruments spend a lot of time playing out of tune.

Strings stretch and bind. Fluctuations in humidity and string tension cause instrument necks to bow, arch and twist. Something--it is not always clear what--throws string pitch out of whack. Professional players on stage and in recording sessions find themselves twisting tuner knobs between every song and sometimes in the middle of songs.

"It is maddening that we play instruments that do not stay in tune for very long," Mike Marshall, one of the top mandolin and guitar players on the acoustic-music scene, wrote during a recent online discussion on the topic. "This seems a bit insane, considering the fact that we are surrounded by so much incredible technology."

Technology, it turns out, does offer a remedy for tuning problems--at least for those who play electric guitars. Backers and users of an electronic system called the Performer say it offers a big leap beyond the ubiquitous electronic pitch readers that, while reasonably accurate, still require the player to tune manually. It's also seen as a way to let players use the same instrument for a variety of musical purposes.

Those attributes have helped sell the system to rock icons Graham Nash, Jimmy Page and Joe Perry, along with other concert-stage veterans.

With the touch of a button, The Performer is designed to automatically tune open, unfretted strings to whatever notes the player programs into the system's computer. The retuning can happen any time the player has a moment to strum on open strings, even in the middle of a song.

It works via a system of sensors, computer electronics and miniature motors and mechanics designed for installation in the bodies of Fender's Stratocaster and Telecaster guitars, and Gibson USA's Les Paul.

In their quest for new and distinctive sounds, guitar players can easily load up on pre-amplifiers, digital sound processors and other effects gear designed to change the sound of the instrument with the touch of a foot pedal. Using alternate tunings is another way to change the sound and enhance the playability of a guitar, but it often is handled in a very low-tech way--manually. Onstage or in the studio, when it is impractical to spend several minutes retuning, professionals typically pretune several guitars and switch from one to another between songs.

Onstage or in the studio, when it is impractical to spend several minutes retuning, professionals typically pretune several guitars and switch from one to another between songs.

As it is currently offered, The Performer is designed to readjust the tension on all six strings simultaneously in about five seconds, with the push of a button. A small LCD screen cut into the guitar body displays the note, octave and "cent value" of each string. (A cent is a unit of relative pitch; there are 1,200 cents in one octave). Neil Skinn, the man who developed the system, says the gadget's tuning is accurate to within 2 cents.

Skinn says he began exploring automatic-tuning concepts as a hobby in 1983. His design for The Performer's tension-correcting mechanical devices, which help pull and release the string ends, was inspired by the rocker arms on oil derrick jack pumps. Coming up with an electronic sensor system and writing a software program that could control the system, though, proved much harder.

By the end of 1985, Skinn had decided that the cost of producing an automatic tuner--which at the time would have worked only for standard tuning--made further development unfeasible. But two years later, while enrolled in an electrical-engineering program and working for a scientific-instruments company, Skinn discovered that the vibration analysis at the heart of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy--a tool commonly used to analyze organic compounds--also could be paired with magnetic pickups to accurately determine pitch.

A colleague, meanwhile, developed software that could calibrate the pickup and mechanical systems so that string pitch could be changed while the strings vibrated. By 1988, Skinn had quit school and had begun raising funds that would enable him to work on the project full time.

used "comprise" backwards

The whole "comprises" the parts.<br />"Comprise" roughly means hold together. People think "com" means "with" but it's really closer to "together", at least with the way Americans use "with". Comprise is like having a big pair of arms wrapped around the pieces.<br /><br />New strings. That's the tuning that wears me out when I'm playing.<br /><br />What's the 12 lbs?

[chassoto--2008]

Guitars are sooooo dark ages

Everybody knows that modern rockers use keytars. Oh, and piano <br />key ties! Mugatu! Mugatu! Mugatu!

[Michael Grogan]

Hmmm?

Only the ones that can't play.

[KTLA_knew]

If you're not a musician

That's true if you're not talking about musicians.

[askirk87]

Too bad....

It really is true though. A good musician must have his piano key necktie. Too bad Mugatu's stint of fame, begining with the invention of the piano key necktie, led to his eventual downfall...

[Dibbs]

ah yes

my keyboard-belt has brought me many years of good luck!

[David Arbogast]

No Good

New strings do stretch like crazy... once they pass their initial stretch phase, they aren't too bad. For those who understand and appreciate acoustics, these systems only provide a baseline for tuning purposes.<br /><br />The acoustical properties of the instrument as well as the room in which you are playing have a great deal of impact on the sounds you produce. So much so, that a perfectly tuned instrument (according to the computer), may sound out of whack. Experienced musicians start with a base tone and can turn their instrument by "listening" to it in the actual environment the audience is in. The result is a better sounding instrument that is tuned properly for its performance environment. A computer may guarantee that a string is vibrating at a given frequency, but it isn't evaluating the overall sound with respect to environmental acoustical properties.<br /><br />In the end, it doesn't matter one bit what the computer says... it has to *sound* good.

[David Arbogast]

I should add....

No stringed instrument has *perfect* intonation... which means that if you are playing your guitar mainly on the upper frets, your tuning will be off if your "computer" helped you tune open strings...

I agree and disagree.

"In the end, it doesn't matter one bit what the computer says... it has to *sound* good"<br />Anyone who has ever programmed a computer will know that a computer doesn't know or say anything. Its a machine that does what it is told to do, nothing more and hopefully nothing less. Therefore if it says that a guitar is out of tune, its because it has been programmed to analyse sound waves and compare them to what a guitar "should" sound like. In the process of writing such a program one would be wise to speak to musicians and people who know what they are talking about a whole lot more than any sole computer programmer. <br />I would suggest that the makers of this product have considered this. Therfore it does matter what a computer says. It says what its been told to say. It says what a musician has told it to say.<br />I do take your point however that there is no "right" sound for all environments and all guitars.

[smfriedland]

No Good, maybe not

Another way to look at this system is to consider that it can also hold any tuning you have set the gutar to. What it will do then is insure that the sound which has been, sometimes painfully, created by careful adjustment doesn't change during a set. That makes this highly interesting. So if it sounds good, this will help keep it that way.

[Darwin Hall]

Equal opportunity

Now what about us bassists? Personally I thought Ned <br />Steinberger's answer was, and is, far more elegant and complete.