Tuners

this....is what I was trying to say.........thanks Lindy

 

It's this in a sort of ghetto purple. Essentially a First Act or Starcaster by another name. I'm already planning on more or less completely giving up on the stock electronics and giving it a real fender's guts with some new tone pots and 57/62's... going to "real" pickups from using generic mass-produced pups is probably the single biggest change in tone I could make on this thing. Anything else... new bridge, new neck, would likely just be comfort or convenience, assuming Nato isn't essentially reconstituted wood made of glue and sawdust.

 

Nato is real wood, a kind of mahogany. Not the most desirable neck material, but not crap, either... according to guys that know this stuff.

Pick-ups and hardware is where mid-to-low end guitar makers seem to cut corners. If you are happy with the playability, you could really hot-rod that thing without breaking the bank

 

How can you tell when a bagpipe is in tune?

 

That's the plan Grumpy. It's good to know that Nato isn't entirely worthless but a neck is still on my list since a good nut and tuning machines makes it much easier to stay in tune.

 

That's a rhetorical question, right?

 

I thought you only had to tune those things when you stuffed a fresh cat into the bag. Training them to screech in correct pitch has got to be a real pain.

 

It's possible, the bagpipe pretty much is the troll of musical instruments... it was invented for the express purpose of fucking with whoever your army of naked screaming blue men was charging at the time.

 

As a drummer I've been missing a good tuning tool as my ears are far from good at recognizing tones.
Finally there is a product that MIGHT end up in my bag (depending on price)
http://tune-bot.com/

 

lemme know how that works Freeload........would love to find something like that for my kit.......

 

Drummer Connection has done an early review of them.... Would love to get my hands on one.
Killer features:
- Show frequency or tone/note/pitch/whatever
- 80 presets
- Difference mode (let you know how much you need to tune that lug up or down to match the reference pitch)

 

it seems pretty obvious to me that perfect pitch is both not perfect (it's relative) and is a function of training. solfege may be easier for some folk than others, tho. but the tuning system itself is an early 19th century feat and was geared around synching instruments to the piano (which can, btw, be tuned out of equal temperment with interesting results) and emphasizing attack (at the expense of timbral complexity, which is a function of decay). for example, if you prepare piano tuned to just intonation (mathematically consistent intervals radiating outward in both directions on the keyboard from a central point) is a different planet than one in equal temperment. because prepared piano is largely a timbral thing (there's a lot more complexity in the pitches once you start subdividing the strings and add to that the characteristics of the materials that you use to do the subdividing) much of the interesting stuff involves decay/sustain and overtones. just systems produce far more complex networks of overtones than does equal temperment even when you're splitting pitches by placing materials between the wires over a soundboard.

the tuners who do microtonal re-tunings of piano that i know all use digital tuning devices, in part because they're fighting their own training to hear in terms of equal temperment and in part because, depending on the system you're using, the intervals are mathematical first and only sonic by degrees (you can't necessarily hear them, you have to work your way into the space of relations that is a tuning)....but that's a particular relation. most "microtonal" systems arose because of different conceptions of the relation between instruments and the human voice---among the most artificial imaginable of these relations is 19th century euro-classical music, btw, which is the origin and sole justification for equal temperment, really.

except that folk hear in terms of equal temperment and play in terms of what they hear. you can't really use alternate tunings in an equal temperment ensemble unless you jimmy around the compositional approach. which you'd think would be easy to do, except that folk are sometimes bizarrely rigid about the forms they choose to work in. go figure.

but you can use microtonal materials (processed field recordings anyone?) but i digress.

 

roachboy........you mind if I score this and print it out?

that was fucking awesome........

you just made me "start" to think in a whole different manner.

thank you

 

'splain it to me in English, Fly?

HBD, BTW!

 

pianists dont think like guitarists about tuning. we have this giant instrument that is a pain in the ass to deal with, to tune and retune. if you retune a piano, you have to plan it out---it's hard to experiment. i got to do some stuff with prepared piano and a couple different just systems and it's been really interesting---but it's hard to take out because people are strange about retuning because they think you'll fuck up the piano. so i've found that you have to make arguments about tuning as a whole to con people in performance venues with instruments into letting me tamper with them. they panic more about retuning than they do about putting bolts and glass and other stuff between the wires. go figure.

 

roachboy........you had some cool stuff you did with the piano.....from back ago,did you utilize this strategy when those pics and music were put out?..........earlier TFP I'm talkin'.

I remember a pic of you and a vase or something inside a piano,with it on the strings.....maybe a globe type thing.

and grump.........I'm just tryin' to absorb and learn myself man.......