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Thread: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

  1. #26
    Lurkist dhergert's Avatar
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Quote Originally Posted by MikeEdgerton View Post
    Bb is the natural tuning note for most orchestral wind instruments. Apparently nobody cared that the stringed instruments were generally A.
    That's interesting. I have and play a C flute and a C trumpet, both made for orchestra, where A is usually the note tuned to. Whether it's A-440 or ~A-439 depends on the venue's piano or organ tuning. I know most horns and woodwind instruments used in jazz are Bb instruments, but all are available as C instruments for orchestra. Many players of these instruments have both at hand to use for the genre they're dealing with.
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Not certain, but think harpsichords needed a lot of tuning until the first one with an iron frame was requested. My relative, the tuner for a serious venue, though, has to tune the big Steinways for each artist. All made possible by the laptop as not only the tuner, but a way to store preferences. What also led to job security is that all the grands are rented for each show, so they are trucked in from NY, and can’t survive the trip tuned that well!
    The same guy gifted me his ancient electronic tuning aid, as a curiosity, but I don’t remember if it was more than an accurate oscillator, not a tuner as we know them today; that is, it doesn’t listen. Wonder where I put it?

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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Quote Originally Posted by Whimpsta View Post
    I'm new to mandolin. All I'm familiar with is my banjo and I hardly ever need to retune it.
    It seems my mandolin needs to be retuned almost every time I pick it up to play. Not much but it goes just a little flat. Is that normal for mandolin? Is it just something I need to get used to? I should mention that it has waverly tuners.
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    Registered User Bren's Avatar
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    At the amazing Chris Thile concert in Glasgow last night, he tuned a few times.

    "Bill Monroe said, 'No A-strings went to heaven'" he claimed at one point.

    A lot of times even with an electronic tuner, you adjust by ear to get a course sounding sweet.

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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Quote Originally Posted by Whimpsta View Post
    Is it just something I need to get used to?
    Absolutely. Humidity changes, if not by the weather then certainly by the player, and thus the instrument moves.
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    Registered User John Soper's Avatar
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    However, if you don't tune your mandolin, it sounds like there are more of you! Just not louder.

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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    If you've been using your fingers to type this message, you're way behind. Just start tuning now and keep going until you have to play a song. Repeat after, until the next song.
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    I believe electric guitarists sometimes spend good money on devices designed to make their instruments sound out of tune. All things considered, I suspect that the average audience would never notice.

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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Seems to me a lot of people are missing the point. The question isn't how often should the OP's mandolin be tuned, but how often should it need to be tuned. The answer to that is, not that often, or not as often as he says. Sounds like something is wrong here. What make and model is the instrument in question?

    For comparison, my 1917 Gibson plain A holds tune really well. I got to the gig late yesterday - stuck in traffic at a standstill for 25 minutes - so I had ten minutes to set up and tune up before showtime. But though I was a bit stressed and rushed, I was relieved to find only one string had to be adjusted, and only just a bit. And I hadn't played much during the week since the last gig. That's a well-behaved mandolin. Yes, I know this flies in the face of convention, especially conventional humor, but there it is.

    BTW, I first heard that old saw about tuning from Kate Wolf's accompanist, Nina Gerber, who put it thus: "Mandolinists spend half the time tuning, the other half playing, thinking that they're out of tune." I like how that incorporates the insecurity involved.
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bren View Post
    A lot of times even with an electronic tuner, you adjust by ear to get a course sounding sweet.
    I always tune the string closer to me with the electronic tuner then tune the other string to the first by ear - when the oscillations in the pitch smooth out and eventually dissappear is what I listen for. Seems to work OK, except sometimes the A strings sound good open but bad fretted and need some adjustment.

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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Quote Originally Posted by milli857 View Post
    I always tune the string closer to me with the electronic tuner then tune the other string to the first by ear - when the oscillations in the pitch smooth out and eventually dissappear is what I listen for. Seems to work OK, except sometimes the A strings sound good open but bad fretted and need some adjustment.
    That's my method, too. And some of my instruments need tuning more often. The newest Strad-O-Lin has needed a lot, but it's a combination of the strings need to settle down and possible binding issues at the bridge and/or nut. The Gibson A Jr. is really good at keeping tune. It can sit in the case for a while and only need a little adjustment. Depending on the time of year. Right now as we move into winter up north, everything seems to go out of whack as soon as you look at it.
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    I know plenty of half deaf old geezers that never tune their mandolin. That's probably why they rarely are invited to play with anyone else and spend all of their time plinking at home or on the world wide waste of time.

    All of the folks I play with expect our instruments to be in tune on every song, so we check it every song and make necessary adjustments.
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    The mandolin isn't half as bad as the Irish Bouzouki!
    Regarding tuning in general, my observation is that it seems to make more sense to tune the mandolin to itself, once you know that the instrument is basically in tune as a whole. As someone mentioned, the open strings might be in tune...., but that may not be the best? I find it is worth tuning the low G string down a fraction, since when playing tunes I rarely play an open low G; notes on that string are nearly always fretted, so tend to go a little sharp. But I play Irish music, where maybe absolute precision of tone is not everthing....?
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  17. #39

    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Quote Originally Posted by Tim N View Post
    The mandolin isn't half as bad as the Irish Bouzouki!
    Regarding tuning in general, my observation is that it seems to make more sense to tune the mandolin to itself, once you know that the instrument is basically in tune as a whole. As someone mentioned, the open strings might be in tune...., but that may not be the best? I find it is worth tuning the low G string down a fraction, since when playing tunes I rarely play an open low G; notes on that string are nearly always fretted, so tend to go a little sharp. But I play Irish music, where maybe absolute precision of tone is not everthing....?
    If fretting a note always puts you out of tune, you should check your intonation. Your bridge position is likely slightly off.

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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    My experience is that the instrument absorbs moisture and goes erratically sharp on some strings. For example, at a folk dance my 10-string was pretty much perfectly in tune for the first half, but started going out in the second half. Even my solid body electric will go sharp as it absorbs moisture from being held and played.

    If you live in Florida the humidity may be such that your instrument doesn't absorb any more from playing than it already has. But in drier settings I find mandolins go sharp, and that is not even across the strings. I remember Tim O'Brien complaining about his Nugget going sharp when playing solo at the Mandolin Symposium.

    New strings of course stretch, but one would expect them to go slightly flat as you play, from being warmed by handling. But it seems the opposite happens, strings go sharp after some playing time. Only an expanding instrument explains that.

    I play a bit hard and that tends to knock strings out of tune with each other. Going a full set with minor tweaks is a triumph. Common to have to adjust multiple times during a show.
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Well, one must take into account that any time there are only 3 mandolins in the world that are in tune and David Grisman owns two of them. Good luck folks!
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    If you suspect it might need tuning, it does.
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Quote Originally Posted by journeybear View Post
    Seems to me a lot of people are missing the point. The question isn't how often should the OP's mandolin be tuned, but how often should it need to be tuned. The answer to that is, not that often, or not as often as he says. Sounds like something is wrong here. What make and model is the instrument in question?
    Great catch but there are more reasons why it might need to be tuned. If I tune in the morning and play all day, I stay mostly in tune all day. If I really dig in and whale on it, I might need to retune (especially the A course). If I take her out to a gig thereby subjecting her to temperature changes or worse yet to the practice space where the opening and closing of the big bay door compounds those temperature changes with constant additional fluctuations in temp and humidity (while I am playing my heart out), I'll need to tune constantly.

    If I just changed my strings that day, all bets are off.
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Yes, indeedy. All that and more. Not as simple a question as one might think, as evidenced by the wide-ranging input here. As all too often happens, we haven't heard from the OP, so we don't know if anything we've said has been helpful. Some response from the OP would help us direct our well-intentioned attention.
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    I feel like all this discussion has lead me to believe that if I can't tune by ear (yet), then I should have my e-tuner pretty much permanently mounted on my mandolin. Though I appreciate the value of staying in tune, aesthetically, I don't want a little plastic wart always on my headstock. I guess I need to double down on training my ears and brain.
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  27. #47
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Let's hit a couple of ugly truths (that I will NOT write a book to substantiate, as those books go back centuries):

    - Twelve TRULY "in tune" notes are not found in an octave sub-divided into 12 equal parts, therefore...
    - Fretted instruments cannot be "truly" in tune in all keys at the same time.

    Close, yes, but truly in tune is a matter of endless debate. "Close enough" for roots music is what most of us are talking about, and gladly accept. And "close enough" obviously works for pianos, usually, and for the viol family where the lack of frets means they can tune on the fly. (And where, in my silly opinion, finger-induced vibrato means that they just need to get close, anyway!)

    Before you call me an idiot (hey, not the first time), and/or want to be mystified for the next few years, try looking into the various tuning "temperaments", such as "equal", "just", "well", and probably others that I've long-since supressed.

    It's not for nothing that Bach called it "The Well-Tempered Clavier"; there's a true meaning to that one (way beyond "in tune"), in that well-tempered keys have distinctly different "flavors" from one another, from having corraled the known errors into specific locations. That's very unlike our transposing that can be as simple as moving up the neck by a few frets.

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  29. #48

    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Quote Originally Posted by Sue Rieter View Post
    I feel like all this discussion has lead me to believe that if I can't tune by ear (yet), then I should have my e-tuner pretty much permanently mounted on my mandolin. Though I appreciate the value of staying in tune, aesthetically, I don't want a little plastic wart always on my headstock. I guess I need to double down on training my ears and brain.
    You could get one of the Daddario micro tuners that attach to a screw on one of the tuning machines, then it doesn't show at all on the front of the instrument:

    https://www.daddario.com/products/ac...ip-free-tuner/

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  31. #49
    Lurkist dhergert's Avatar
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    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Quote Originally Posted by Sue Rieter View Post
    I feel like all this discussion has lead me to believe that if I can't tune by ear (yet), then I should have my e-tuner pretty much permanently mounted on my mandolin. Though I appreciate the value of staying in tune, aesthetically, I don't want a little plastic wart always on my headstock. I guess I need to double down on training my ears and brain.
    Coming from the old days when everyone tuned by ear, often assisted by a device like a tuning fork or pitch pipe, I'd say tuning by ear is not all it's cracked up to be...

    In contrast, playing by ear is important, and actually is essential for many of us for improvisation, for quickly learning new songs in jams and for making our own arrangements of songs. But that's a different skill.

    It's been mentioned before, but if you're in a jam and tune by ear instead of to a digital/electronic tuner, you'll very likely be more out of tune than everyone else. Tuners have made a huge positive change in jams and jam etiquette.

    Some people do have perfect pitch and may have the confidence to use it for tuning. But tuning with perfect pitch is dependent on hearing, and hearing is subjective and very often becomes less acute and less accurate with age. Personally, having tinnitus from careless noise absorption and decades of playing banjos -- and playing next to banjos -- my money is on having a tuner always attached to my mandolin headstock. I also have one attached to each of my banjos (on the rims), to my dobro (on the headstock), and to my double bass (on the bridge).

    One easy alternative to having a tuner mounted on your instrument is to have a tuner application running on your phone. Many pros do this with their extremely valuable vintage instruments, and some of the tuner applications are very advanced. Using a tuner app on a phone usually requires an extra hand to operate and isn't as handy as having one mounted on an instrument, but having it available at all is a big plus.

    Just an aside, but pertinent to tuning, last week my wife and I did some session work at a studio adding some tracks to some in-progress song recordings. Two of the recorded songs were accidentally tuned down about a quarter step for the whole song. We had the tech tune these songs to concert pitch so we wouldn't have to de-tune our instruments. He did it in just a couple of minutes and then we added our tracks. These songs can be re-tuned low for anyone else who might want them to still be that way, but I really don't think anyone will notice.
    Last edited by dhergert; Nov-15-2022 at 3:48pm.
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  33. #50

    Default Re: How often should my mandolin need to be tuned?

    Thank you for all the helpful information. It can be a little intimidating to put your question out to a group of strangers and wonder how it will be received. Sometimes it is difficult to use the right wording to ask what you are hoping to find an answer for. I appreciate the help and insight. I have some musical background so I recognize the importance of being "in tune". I do not have a great ear, but I can usually tell when something is out of tune. My mandolin has Waverly tuners so I felt that it would hold a tuning more so than it seems to. It does not go out of tune to a great extent but I was curious that it needed to be tuned so often. I use an electronic tuner and it doesn't take much to get it back in tune. Thank you for helping me see that what I am experiencing just seems to be normal. When you are new to an instrument it is a journey of new and different experiences. I am grateful that this forum seems very accepting and willing to help those of us who are new.

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