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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Tuning crisis
Tuning crisis
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jodanchudan
155 posts
Dec 07, 2010
1:53 PM
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I'm sitting here with an equal temperament G harp and I want to tune it to Just intonation (which I think is the sweet-sounding chord tuning - technical, eh?). I'm staring at the downloadable seventhstring tuner, which is currently set to 'no transposition' and 440Hz. I haven't tuned a harp before but I really don't like the sound of equal temperament. The seventhstring site features several swirling numbers which I don't understand. I want to retune this damn thing. Can anyone tell me what to do?
And please don't assume I have any prior understanding of tuning - I don't. You know those movies where a pilot suddenly dies mid-flight and some fantastically capable Ernest Borgnine-type guy in a control tower has to talk a member of the public (screaming alternately "I can't do this!" and "I can do this!") through a landing? I'm the guy in the plane, panicking over the controls. Imagine you're talking to him.
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nacoran
3365 posts
Dec 07, 2010
2:26 PM
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I can only help explain the tuner. I haven't done any retuning myself. Take it one note at a time. Play, for instance, the one hole (G) and look at that little blue arrow thingy that is sliding along under the -50/+50. That's telling you how many cents flat (minus) or sharp (plus) you are of the note. The letter it shows is the note you are playing. It seems to pick up background noise if there is no strong note being played, which might be why it's swirling letters! I'm not sure, but reading the instructions on the tuner you will probably want to turn off the 'hum cancellation' so you can play a sustained note without it ignoring it.
You'll need a chart for G Just Tuning and if you haven't already watched one or more of the videos on YouTube give those a look.
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Nate
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isaacullah
1283 posts
Dec 07, 2010
2:35 PM
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jodanchudan, the following information is a post from somewhere way way back in the archives where Dave Payne from Elk River Harmonicas posted his method for tuning a harp to JI. I saved it to my harddrive and use it every time I retune a harp, and I would suggest that you do the same! :) Also, if you go to Pat Missin's site, you can download retuning instructions there as well (they are very similar to the instructions I'm posting below).
Here goes:
Dave Payne’s Tuning method for a cheap Korg tuner and your ears…
Starting on the blow plate. Reed No. 1 is tuned to top dead center, right on at whatever the reference pitch is. You can use the tuner to tune, say on JI tuning, the 2 blow at somewhere around minus 14 cents. Tune the 3 blow at plus two.
All of these will be your best guess so far. As you sound the note, you won't be able to hold a pitch steady. Just hold it steady as you can, the needle will swing back and forth, try to minimize that swing to about 10 cents. Your actual pitch will be somewhere about the middle of the swing, or maybe a little on the sharp side.
But the PRECISE tuning of the harmonica isn't as relevant as you'd think. There is a window of elbow room you have... for instance, there is a huge window between harps tuned at 440 and 444 Hz, but all are OK, although 444 is a bit sharp for my ear. What is CRUCIAL is that the harmonica be in tune with itself. That's where your ear comes in.
You will be doing all the blow plate with the harp apart, you hold the two plates on the comb with your fingers to check pitches.
You can use another harp of the same key for reference, provided you want to tune your harp that same way. Blow 1 and 2 together. Do they react together how they should? Again, you are not listening for pitch. You are listening for an interaction of those two sounds. The sound energy from each will hit each other in the air and the effect of that is a little bit of a warble provide one is tuned higher or sharper from the EQ pitch, say if the 1 is dead on an A=442 reference and 2 is 14 cents flat, they will react to one another. At Equal temperment, both will be at 0, right in tune. The two sounds interact little and when played together, sounds boring as hell to me.
So your ear makes a decision, are they fighting too much? Not enough? You're looking for something like the speed of a warble.
If you are not satisfied, look at the tuner again and see what it says. Listen to the notes again, now you have to make a decision, provided your 1 blow is dead on and it should be, whether to sharp or flat the two blow. Make a very minor adjustment and repeat that process.
Now, on to the three, playing the two and three together, making an adjustment, then playing 1-2-3 blow together and making an adjustment if necessary.
Once you are happy with the 1-2-3 blow chord, it is pretty much ALL ear from this point on the blow plate. Put your mouth on holes 1-4, cover up 2-3 with your tongue. Now, you should hear the 1 and 4 blow played together ringing like a bell. There should be no warble. There probably will be warble, so you can either listen to the two pitches or check the tuner, but you have to make a decision whether the 4 is flat or sharp. Tune a little in that direction, check the octave again. You will need to play a sustained note for at least 10 seconds if you don't hear warbling, here's why:
When two pitches are relatively close to each other, say within a semitone, they warble. At say 40 cents difference, they warble really fast, like a machine gun. The closer they get in pitch, the more the warble slows. When they are really close, but still off, that warble is delayed. It can be delayed as much as five or six seconds.
Repeat process with tuning the 5 blow to the 2 blow, 6 blow to the 3 blow, all the way up to the end. As you go higher in pitch, they warble faster with less difference and it gets noticeably harder to get it exact around hole 8 and 9, especially hole 10.
Now the draw. Tune the 1 draw to the reference pitch. But this is NOT your reference pitch for the draw plate. After you've tuned 1 draw, tune 2 draw to the 3 draw on the blow plate (they are the same note). Once two draw is the same as hole 3, leave two draw alone. Now repeat the process you had with the 1-2-3- blow chord with the 1-2-3 draw chord, only the 2 draw is the one you do not change.
After that chord is good, tune the 1 and 4 draw octave.
Now, on to the five. You can use the tuner primarily on that one if you want to start. Now tongue block and play the two and five draw together. Your five draw can be tuned any number of ways. 2 cents sharp, 20 cents flat, whatever, those are all viable ways to tune a five draw. What you are looking for in the two and five draw together is a degree of fighting. A flat five draw will make it roar together, which is good when you hit the 2 and 5 draw for a 7th.
Once you've got your 5 draw tuned, play the 4-5-6 draw chord. Again you are looking for an interaction of notes. Is it what you want? Put the six somewhere around plus two or three. Play the six blow, then the six draw? Does that sound OK? Now play a scale starting at 4 blow going up to six draw. Does that sound OK? Now go back to the 4-6 draw chord. How does that sound to you? If you want to change how that chord sounds, concentrate on the 5 draw.
Now when you get up to 7, tune the draw plate to whatever the pitches should be according to the layout you are using. You can put some tape over the 6-8 holes, if you can't tongue block three holes at a time, but you need to tune the 5 and 9 holes to the octave, just like all the other octaves. Run some scales on the high end. Does it sound OK? The end result is the 8-10 draw chord will sound the same as the 4-6 draw chord.
Lower notes flatten more under increased pressure. SO, if you blow harder and the warble speeds up, the lower note is flatter than the higher note.
If you blow harder and the warble slows, it's the other way around.
Again, very little of this has been listening for pitch. You do not have to have a trained ear to do it.
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jodanchudan
156 posts
Dec 07, 2010
2:39 PM
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"That little blue arrow thingy" - that's the right tone! I get this. I can do it! (Straps self into seat and switches off autopilot.) Thanks - I really have no idea about this stuff and answers like this genuinely help a lot.
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tookatooka
1916 posts
Dec 07, 2010
2:41 PM
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The tuner has a blue band that runs back and forth depending on whether the note is sharp or flat. When the band is stable (not very often) read off the note and note how many points it is flat or sharp and tune accordingly. Do it a number of times to get a good average reading. Blow and draw very carefully so as not to introduce bending etc.
Oh! You may need to have a 2 lb (pound) hammer handy :)
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Last Edited by on Dec 07, 2010 3:53 PM
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nacoran
3368 posts
Dec 07, 2010
3:44 PM
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Here is an old thread I found in my Thread Organizer (I've added this one to it now too.) Tooka, is that a £2 hammer or a 2 lb. hammer?
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Nate
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jackson
27 posts
Dec 07, 2010
3:51 PM
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Land the plane?
Surely you can't be serious?
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jodanchudan
157 posts
Dec 07, 2010
4:26 PM
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Okay - I've had a go at this and I'm abandoning it till tomorrow. It seems a deeply frustrating process. I played 1 blow and it registered +8 cents. Played again: +2 cents. Scraped a bit off: -10 cents. Checked that by blowing again: +15 cents! I'm trying to be as consistent as I can in the way I play the note, but the meter seems all over the place - or at least wild enough to make me very uncertain about hitting the right pitch. Had the same deal with 4 blow: +3 cents, -10 cents, etc., etc. What the hell!
Is it me? Is it the tuner? Is it turbulence? Have we lost an engine and somehow dumped all of our remaining fuel too?
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oldwailer
1434 posts
Dec 07, 2010
9:52 PM
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@Jordan--
1) calmly put the harp away if it is still of any value to you at all.
2) Now, go out to a farm supply store and buy about 5 of those cheap little cowboy Honers they sell at the counter.
3) Buy the Strobosoft Tuning software. It can be programmed to tune in any intonation you want and it ain't really rocket science--just a little tedious. Send me an email asking for this information if you want it. My email is in my user profile.
4) Get some tools together for the task--there are a lot of YT vids on how to do it and what you need--plus all the sources above--it will be more information than any sane person would want. For me, the best idea would be to buy the book "How to Turbocharge Your Harp" from Richard Sleigh--he lays it out and gives you a great set of charts to use. He also sells a good set of tools for this work.
5) Now rip into the 5 door stopper harps and have a great time. Just remember that you can't blow or draw lightly enough to tune properly, but you have to try. And keep the plates warm so condensation doesn't screw you up--and remember that each time one of those cowboy harps hits the trash can the Oldwailer just saved you another $30.
6) You'll probably be ready to tackle a good harp as soon as you make one of those crappy ones sound good. If not--go get some more crappy ones and swing away. . .
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MP
1086 posts
Dec 08, 2010
10:07 AM
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very good post isaaculla!
@jodanchudan,
tuning can be a bitch. most guys i know refuse to do it. they let someone else bother with it. it takes a lot of patience to learn, and frankly, most of us don't like dicking around with tiny tools and watching the tuner go sharp, go flat, appear to be telling lies etc.
if you were just doing one reed, i'd say persevere. but appox. 6 or more reeds is a lot to tackle unless you have tuned quite a lot of reeds in the past.
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MP
hibachi cook for the yakuza
doctor of semiotics
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jodanchudan
158 posts
Dec 08, 2010
2:50 PM
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Great posts, guys - a lot of very helpful advice. Thanks for all that. I'll have a go with an old harp and see what happens.
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mlefree
32 posts
Dec 08, 2010
2:56 PM
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A few practical tuning tips...
One is to set up a numerical table with the cents high or low as a function of hole number and draw or bend breath direction. Then methodically tune all the reeds for a given breath direction, hole-by-hole, marking the final cents value in your table. It's important to set up a methodical workflow because it is ~unbelievably~ easy to get mixed up! You can end up filing the wrong reed or the wrong direction (sharp or flat), doing more harm than good and creating more work for yourself than you started with.
Another tip is to develop a "tuning" mode for your playing. Play very softly, especially on draw notes as you don't want to confuse the process by tuning to a bent note. Also as some have found any variation in the amount of air playing a reed will cause a big variation in pitch. Try to find a sweet-spot quickly before you run out of breath and avoid tuning to any leading or following effects as the read actuates and then dampens out. A smooth, slow, easy breath is best.
I don't understand why people like to use files to tune so much. One thing is, get some good files from a jeweler's supply house, not the cheapies you find at the corner hardware store. I think the fascination with files is in their abiity to remove a lot of material quickly. But, that can easily lead to an endless retuning cycle when you overshoot first in one direction and then another. And that leads to a markedly weakened reed.
I prefer sanding wands. They remove less material and allow a quicker convergence on the right pitch rather than overshooting and having to tune in the other direction. Plus, used correctly, they leave small scratches along the axis of the reed, not deep ones diagonal to it, especially if you use the finer grits to finish your work. Finally, you can sand in one direction away from the rivet. Richard Sleigh recommends filing the tip of the reed toward the rivet. When an inexperienced hand tries that, a crimped and ruined reed is often the result.
It's tempting to try to tune with the reeds attached to the comb. Best to walk before you run on that one and tune detached reedplates first. I suggest using one of those inexpensive spring-clamp piezoelectric mic's that plug into your tuner. You can clamp one end of the (loose) reedplates-comb assembly with that and pinch the other with your free hand as you play the reed(s) in question.
Patience is a virtue when tuning. Rush your job and you will only create more work for yourself to the point of risking damaging a reed beyond repair. [But you need to learn to replace reeds anyway if you don't already, right?] When it's done right it can be very satisfying.
Michelle
Last Edited by on Dec 08, 2010 3:08 PM
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