May 16 2008
Tuning Your Tapping Guitar – Tight Strings? Loose Strings?
A new player called our office the other way, and wanted us to help him over the phone to tune his instrument. Well, we’re generally reachable during the day, but as regarding tuning the instrument, of course we probably won’t be able to hear the strings very well over the telephone, and we always tune with a meter which we will be unable to see over the telephone, so this didn’t seem very workable.
However, the gist of the question seemed to be that some strings felt too tight and some too loose. And I’m betting that this fellow is not the only one to ever have this question. So here are some guidelines when tuning up your new two-handed tapping guitar …
TIGHT STRINGS
Some strings are tighter than other strings. That’s a fact. If you mean *way* too tight, then that usually comes from accidentally tuning one of the strings an octave too high.
But if you are not really very familiar with tuning a guitar at all, and if you have a buddy who’s a guitar player and tunes up all the time, you might have him to help you of course. It’s pretty simple, but that doesn’t mean that it will seem familiar *to you* necessarily if you’re not familiar with guitar or bass tuning.
When you get the instrument tuned correctly, the strings will be playable.
So I would suggest rough-tuning by this method –
(a) Get the lowest bass (or melody) string tuned AT FRET TWO (double dots) by the meter. If you have it an octave too low, the string will be very floppy and will probably buzz. If you have it an octave too high, it will probably be really tight and stiff and hard to play. If you’ve got it at the right octave, then it will be comfortably playable — the bass strings will be comfortably playable around frets 2-5 and the melody strings will be comfortably playable around frets 12-15.
TOO FLOPPY? TOO TIGHT?
If you’re not sure what is ‘too floppy’ or ‘too tight’ then you could experiment and make it ‘too floppy’ on the right note and then make it ‘too tight’ on the right note and in between those two you should find the right note where it is neither too floppy nor too tight. If you do this on the *lowest* bass or lowest melody string it will probably not harm anything. Those lower strings have more latitude during tightening.
(b) Now rough tune up from the lowest bass (or melody) string by playing the lowest string AT FRET SEVEN (double dots). This should be the note of the next string at fret two.
(c) Tune by ear this way for the rest of the set of strings. Now they’re approximately correct.
(d) If you make an error of an octave during this process, then again the error-string will be so loose and floppy that it buzzes, or so tight it’s hard to play.
(e) Once you have the instrument approximately tuned this way, then use your tuner to fine-tune the individual strings.
(f) And as always, as when tuning any stringed instrument, always use the tuners to come *up* to the pitch you wish to hit, and do not use the tuners to come down to hit the pitch. It produces more stable setting of the string’s tension when you tune up than when you tune down.
Very helpful article, as ridiculous as it may sound.
I’ve been playing guitar for almost two decades and the relatively low string tension plus the unaccustomed pitches and lack of tunable ‘open’ strings of a tapper (megatar, whatever) made tuning very confusing for me. Not to mention the initially unusual movements of tapping a fret to tune. I think I broke the .009 four times because I tuned it too high and I still flinch every time I tune up more than a half step at once because I’m insecure about the pitch I’m at.
Methinks tap-guitar has been surrounded by this mythology, where you see a lot of accomplished players talking about complex chords and stuff, but the down and dirty beginners issues and insecurities are not talked about. Almost as if everyone is ashamed to admit they were once beginners as well.
I am very grateful for Traktor Topaz, Mobius (for one) and this method’s “no voodoo” approach to these instruments, even if I don’t own one myself.