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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
About tuning Just and ET
About tuning Just and ET
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K_Hungus
66 posts
Jan 17, 2012
10:05 AM
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I’ve finally found a good (downloadable) tuner. I Don’t really understand ET and Just. All I know is when I tune, I’ve to raise and lower pitch of certain notes (I use a chart for that), to get the ‘typical’ marine band tuning. With more sweet sounding chords. That tuning is more like just intonation. So that’s all I know, and will be all I suppose. I tried reading in to it, but that’s all I could grasp.
With this tuner there has all sort of options. One is you can select the key. What should I choose here? Should this always be C or do I have to change it to the harmonica key I’m tuning?
The rest of the options is I set A to 443 and choose ET and use the chart I have.
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Frank
107 posts
Jan 17, 2012
10:34 AM
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Does it have directions? What's the link - I'll check it out and see what's up...
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arzajac
720 posts
Jan 17, 2012
11:15 AM
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ET is when you tune every hole to the pitch. On the tuner, the needle will go to zero. To use any other tuning, you adjust some notes a few cents up or down so that when they are played together, they sound better. This due to overtones.
When you strike a low key on a piano, you don't only hear that note, but a series of overtones - you basically can hear the hole chord as the sounds resonates through the whole instrument and making other strings vibrate. That's one reason why playing chords on the low octaves of a piano sounds terrible.
Carefully adjusting the tunings of adjacent holes on a harmonica by a few cents allows the harp to play overtones that harmonize well with each other.
Here is a list of tunings as they relate to ET (the numbers are deviations from zero)
http://www.deltafrost.com/diatonic-harmonica-tunings-an-update_topic6473.html?KW=Diatonic+Harmonica+Tunings
Here is Richard Sleigh's article on the subject:
http://www.harmonicatunes.com/justintonationtuningforharmonicas.shtml
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Jim Rumbaugh
645 posts
Jan 17, 2012
11:43 AM
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I have used the AP tuner program for years.
quick answer. You select KEY if you select JUST INTONATION, or one of the other variants that is key dependent. (C harp, key of C, A harp, key of A etc) If you select EQUAL TEMPERMENT, key is not an issue.
In the last year, I also downloaded a free tuner ap from Seydel. I like it also. The seydel ap seems to average the pitches and does not fluctuate as much.
I leave my AP tumer on ET and A=442.
warning, I have opinions, but I'm an amature at tuning, take what I say with that in mind.
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HarmoniCollege March 24, 2012
theharmonicaclub.com (of Huntington, WV)
Last Edited by on Jan 17, 2012 11:45 AM
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K_Hungus
68 posts
Jan 17, 2012
9:10 PM
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@arzajac yes I know those deviations, and used them to tune before. But that was on another tuner (where there was no option to choose 'key'. I'll read that article thanks!
@ Jim, okay. That's what I did with the first harp I've tuned with the AP tuner so far. It was a C harp. I put the tuner on ET left the key selection on C. And used the chart for certain holes (like the 3 draw is -11 cents).
It works amazingly well with that tuner. But I just wanted to be sure if it was the right approach, so thanks for that.
It's a great tuner. I can finally get beatless octaves and chords. Because compared to the tuner I used before it's very visual.
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