Everytime it goes out of tune.
Dave H
Every time I pick up my Mandolin
Only when I hear it is off-tune
When it is seriously off-tune
Never
I can't tell
Everytime it goes out of tune.
Dave H
Eastman 615 mandola
2011 Weber Bitteroot A5
2012 Weber Bitteroot F5
Eastman MD 915V
Gibson F9
2016 Capek ' Bob ' standard scale tenor banjo
Ibanez Artist 5 string
2001 Paul Shippey oval hole
I tune every time I play, but I don't do it first thing. I'll run through a few phrases and bits of tunes, and when the instrument wakes up a bit, I'll tune. If I tune it and then go about playing, it always seems to go back out of tune quickly. Maybe that's just an idiosyncrasy of my own mandolin and not indicative of all mandolins.
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Similar thing here, but ...
I've assumed that it's an idiosyncracy of the mandos' starting point, a coolish music room, + my own metabolism. (Let's just say that I'm more of a skier than a surfer!) Warm hands warm the strings, making them a few cents looser ... Voila: Re-tuning! It seems to happen consistently across several mandolins in the same place, but not across the same mandolins in other places that are 5 to 10 degree warmer.
When playing out, I leave the instrument in our living space for a few hours or even overnight; no need to bother others w/ a half-hour of retuning.
And, remember that arch-tops (most of our mandolins) tend to react more to environmental changes than flat-tops (most of our guitars) do.
- Ed
"Then one day we weren't as young as before
Our mistakes weren't quite so easy to undo
But by all those roads, my friend, we've travelled down
I'm a better man for just the knowin' of you."
- Ian Tyson
The problem is, when the pitch of a string is raised it lowers the tension on the other strings. Lowering the tension on a string raises the tension on the others. It is only possible to get in tune by accident.
I start by tuning the A course (I think violinists do this) and go down to the wound strings and end on the E course. Then I retune the A course, tune the E, and then the wound strings, and sometime then retune the A. This usually works well for me.
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I found this video to be very interesting and I think it can be applied to the mandolin as well:
But I agree with you about the effects the tuning of one string has on the other. Hardly possible to get everything to the perfect pitch. Then again: what is the perfect pitch? I'm sure every tuner works slightly different as well, even if you had the same model there would probably be a noteable difference.
Therefor I found the "trust your ears" tip from Martin here worth mentioning.
Also @Caleb: Violinists or other classical musicians do this because the "A" is the "Kammerton" or "Concert Pitch".
Meaning the whole ensemble can take this as their basis for tuning. It has 440Hz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch
My mandos stay in tune, if I’m playing by myself I just play, when I hear it’s off I might check it but I’m generally working on right hand stuff so to me the tune doesn’t matter, when I’m jamming and such I tune before and between tunes sometimes.
Northfield F5M #268, AT02 #7
Old Dog Dave: Do the best you can, as long as you can, and all the rest is gravy.
1918 Gibson A Oval hole
2004 Gibson F9
2004 Gibson A9
Weber Gallatin A
Bruhn double-point
The Epiphone MM-30
Dillion Electric (Rickenbacker style)
well, every time it goes out of tune. So it depends. Are the strings new? needs tuning until they stretch. Warm and then cold in the room? needs tuning. Playing with others? can't abide being out of tune with people. Sitting around and someone opens a door? probably needs tuning. Been sitting in its case for 6 months? needs tuning. I won't tune when I'm practicing by myself in a closed room unless it isn't in tune with itself ... I'm actually not sure what the big deal is. If my mandolins need tuning, I just tune them.
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1920 Lyon & Healy bowlback
1923 Gibson A-1 snakehead
1952 Strad-o-lin
1983 Giannini ABSM1 bandolim
2009 Giannini GBSM3 bandolim
2011 Eastman MD305
If my mandolin is in tune when I pick it up, I am thrilled. It happens. It sometimes happens.
I voted A, but the reality is that I usually tune more often, especially if I'm playing live. I just can't stand to play an out of tune instrument, and I have a habit of telling our choir director that his guitar is out of tune. Of course, he usually doesn't like it when I tell him that, but I just don't think out of tune instruments sound good.
A quarter tone flat and a half a beat behind.
Quite a lot of my playing is with other people. Going back to my earliest days in grade school orchestra the first thing we did every day before playing was tune our instruments (by ear to an A played by the instructor and later, concertmaster).
It's even more important when playing with an informal group of people that everyone is tuned to the same reference.
Tuning, cleaning, changing strings, playing, etc. is all part of enjoying music for me. None of it feels like a chore.
too many strings
YMMV, but I’d rather not play than play an instrument that’s out of tune.
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I tune every time I pick it up. Rarely have to tune after that, which is surprising considering it's just a lowly MK Legacy.
An even mildly out-of-tune guitar or bass is like nails on a chalkboard. But for some reason it doesn't bother as much on mandolin. They sound out of tune all the time.
Every time I pick it up.
I saw the Punch Brothers live in Paducah, and they tuned for EVERY SONG.
1933 Gibson A-00 (was Scotty Stoneman's)
2003 Gibson J-45RW (ebony)
2017 Gibson J-15
The Murph Channel
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkomGsMJXH9qn-xLKCv4WOg
…like in Hot Rize where Wernick, Sawtelle, and O’Brien were string twiddling between nearly every number, creating the opportunity for the fella with the rock-solid-in-tune Fender bass, Nick Forster, to develop an on-stage personality. He said he couldn’t abide the dead air between songs and started yammering at the audience, becoming the de facto band emcee.
too many strings
Well, there is a story, perhaps apocryphal, about an old blues man who was asked the difference between black and white musicians. "Well," he said, "Black musicians really like to play music a lot and white musicians really like to tune up a lot." I often think of that story while listening to some band still tuning up twenty minutes after they were scheduled to play.
Robert Johnson's mother, describing blues musicians:
"I never did have no trouble with him until he got big enough to be round with bigger boys and off from home. Then he used to follow all these harp blowers, mandoleen (sic) and guitar players."
Lomax, Alan, The Land where The Blues Began, NY: Pantheon, 1993, p.14.
Sometimes you just gotta tune it whether you want to or not. I think the more you play the more painful out of tune strings are.
There's a popular old false statement - "practice makes perfect." It is incomplete and has led many astray. Practice makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect.
So if you practice playing out of tune...
I tune or at least tweak the tuning regularly, even when playing for my own enjoyment. It's more about training my ears to recognized a well-tuned instrument than anything else. If I don't play in tune, how will my ears know what 'in tune' is when I really need it (gigs)?
Purr more, hiss less. Barn Cat Mandolins Photo Album
If we are going to play the same things as last week, I leave it tuned like last week.
But since that isn't a choice, I tune several times an evening when in public. And just when I notice it's out when playing at alone home.
Tom
I tune after every song. The better your ears get at hearing pitches, the more you will want to tune.
and.....experienced players can tell you're a hacker if you're not in tune.
Last edited by Eric L; Jan-12-2023 at 10:10pm.
Whenever I pick it up. When it actually starts to stay in tune from one session to the next it is time to replace the strings. R/
I love hanging out with mandolin nerds . . . . . Thanks peeps ...
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