This is really cool.<p>If your main focus is to teach people how to tune a guitar, you should consider mentioning that you always want to tune a sharp guitar string to slightly below the correct pitch and then tune it up.<p>Any slack present in the string winding can cause the string to go out of tune easily if you loosen the string to the correct tension. Tightening to the correct tension doesn't have that problem.<p>If your guitar has locking tuners, this isn't necessary because there is no string winding and therefore no slack. For anyone who doesn't know, a locking tuner clamps down onto the string to hold it in place instead of having the string wound around it.<p>This picture is of a locking set of tuners. The person is about to press down the locking mechanism for the low E string to hold it in place. Note that the other strings have no winding around the peg.<p><a href="http://www.prsguitars.com/csc/tuners/lock_4.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.prsguitars.com/csc/tuners/lock_4.jpg</a><p>Most guitars don't come with locking tuners but I would recommend that everyone use them because they make changing strings so much easier.<p>Anyways, I really like your web page. Cool stuff.
Hi HN - I'm one of the authors of this post and I lead an open source software project called Idyll that tries to make it easier to write interactive posts like this for the web. This is part of a research project I'm doing while completing a phd at the university of washington.<p>If you like this one, check out other examples that have been made with the tool here: <a href="https://idyll-lang.org/gallery" rel="nofollow">https://idyll-lang.org/gallery</a>
I suggest turning off the distortion by default for the 1st stage of tuning with the electric tuner. The distortion can mask being slightly (+/- 5 cents) out of tune, making it hard to hear even though the tuner says it's still wrong. Additionally, in all my years of playing, I have never fed a tuner with a distorted signal from the amplifier, but a clean one; the tuner pedal is the very first item in my effects chain before the amplifier. I suspect it is easier for a tuner to pick out a(n) (in)correctly tuned note from a clean tone, as there's simply less frequencies in the FFT to sort through. It may also make it easier for users to pick out the fundamental and it's natural harmonics in the FFT.<p>Another suggestion is to model how the tone will go slightly sharp on the attack. How much depends on how much tension the strings are under, and thus all the things that effect that (tuned note, string tension & scale length).
Seems like a neat idea, but controlling the tuners with the mouse is really fussy and annoying. There seems to be some kind of delayed reaction and I frequently overshot the frequency I was targeting (a problem I don't have when tuning my actual guitars).
Doesn't work on Chrome 66 due to recent policy changes with regard to autoplay<p><a href="https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-policy-changes#webaudio" rel="nofollow">https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...</a><p>I checked it out in Firefox. Very neat :)
The distortion sounds like it is applied to individual strings, if it were applied after summing, it would not only resemble more a real electric guitar, but also sum- and difference frequencies of detuned strings would be audible much nicer as beating.<p>Furthermore, the intervals E-A/A-D/D-G and B-E are not exactly perfect fourths, they should be equal tempered. Luckily the difference is almost negligible for the fourth, the perfect interval would be 4/3 = 1.3333 versus 2^(5/12) = 1.3348 for equal temperament. The interval G-B however is a major third, here the perfect interval is 5/4 = 1.25 while equal tempered is 2^(4/12) = 1.26 Those minor errors accumulate if one string is tuned based on the preceding one, the interval from lowest to highest strings can be calculated:<p>(4/3)^4 * 5/4 = 3.95 for perfect intervals,
2^(4 * 5/12) * 2^(4/12) = 4 for equal temperament.<p>The highest string should be exactly two octaves (= a factor of 4) above the lowest one, so the equal temperament should be preferred. A practical result is that tuning a guitar using only intervals of adjacent strings will never really converge to the ideal result, so tuning (fretted) octaves and flageolets should be used in addition.
When tuning by making the open strings beatless, it's useful to know that tuning an interval until the beats disappear isn't the same as tuning to the equal tempered standard.<p>A just 4th (4:3 frequency ratio) is about 2 cents flat of an equal tempered 4th, and a just major third (5:4 frequency ratio) is about 14 cents flat of the equal tempered major third.
Nicely done. One correction: the sound(s) that arise from two different notes sounding together are sum and difference tones, not overtones. Each individual tone has a collection of overtones (i.e. the harmonic series), and those and the fundamentals can interact to produce an audible beat when they aren't in tune, which can be the sum or difference of two frequencies that are almost but not quite in sync with each other.
If you don't have perfect pitch and want to get a better understanding for what your guitar is doing, try using a spectrum analyzer app to visualize how the sound changes as you pluck a string.<p>The el-cheapo guitar I bought once just didn't hold the note very accurately over time (i.e. pluck string, then it would vibrate at the correct-ish frequency for ~0.5s, then quickly veer off).<p>Had to use a spectrum analyzer since the guitar was so out of tune that the electric tuner couldn't even pick up which string it was...<p>(wasn't my idea to use the spectrum analyzer, back in college a friend of mine tuned his dorm piano - which are much harder to tune - using that technique, worked quite well)
This is really neat and well crafted!<p>Constructive feedback:<p>After you tune the guitar and hit the 'play a lick', the notes ring on too long. I'm not sure how you've configured your sound generators, but you'll need to configure an envelope on the sound that cuts it off before the next note rings. This would come down to simply adjusting the 'release' parameter to be very small (though not zero) so that the sound decays quickly before the next note begins.<p>Also, after that, in the paragraph under "How does it work", the statement "Guitars generate noise through the vibration of their strings" is a little bothersome. While this is true, it would be more correct to say <i>sound</i> (or even pitches) instead of noise. The technical meaning of noise is a random distribution of frequencies across the sound spectrum, and actually sounds like the static you hear when you're radio is not tuned into a station. It's somewhat true because a guitar string <i>will</i> generate a quick burst of noise after being plucked, but after that the string settles into a resonating cycle that follows the harmonic series, which is definitely not noise.<p>Third nitpick... oh man, I'll try to be brief, but I would just take out the section on beats and 'overtones'. As elihu mentioned, its actually 'difference tones'. Overtones are a part of a single sound. I would take the part out because it's actually bad practice to eliminate beats when tuning a guitar using open strings (in other words, tuning by perfect fourths) because the frets of a guitar are tuned to 12 Tone Equal temperament. If you eliminate the beats in a perfect fourth it will be a Justly tuned perfect fourth, which is 498 cents. An equally tempered perfect fourth is 500 cents even. The result would be the A string will be 2 cents flat, and then the D string will be 4 cents flat, and the G string 6 cents.. etc. If you want to keep the part about beats and tune by ear, its better to play the A on the E string and tune using a unison. <i>Then</i> you can use the beats trick!<p>Disclosure: BA in Music with emphasis on Guitar and Sound Design. (See, BA's aren't completely useless!)
not sure if I miss something, but I haven't figured out how to use the tuning knobs :( I tried mouseover, click, click+drag, in vertical and also in horizontal direction, but the tone didn't moved in any direction.
Slightly off topic, I love how I am seeing tone.js pop up in projects everywhere. MIDI and VST's have created an extraordinary universe of musical devices but I think a wave of little web-based generators and effects will allow some truly novel approaches to music and audio arts.
Very nice. In the spirit of constructive feedback: if you want to properly simulate a guitar that is out of tune because it has been stored for a long time (to better match your initial storyline) the high end should drop more than the low end.
I've been a guitarist (off and on) for 30+ years, and I'm oddly fascinated by tuning methods and practices.<p>The best educated guitarist I've ever known (he was an LA studio guy who moved back to my home town to raise his family and was teaching at the high school for fine arts I attended...literally everyone here has heard songs he played on, and probably a few musicians he's taught) used a technique I haven't seen very often, but it's been my favorite method. It's based on chords and the naturally occurring "beating" when intervals in chords are "right". Basically, you're switching back and forth between perfect fourths and fifths across all the strings and finding the best balance between them; when the beating is minimized, your guitar's first position is about as well-tuned as it can possibly be, given the limitations and oddities of intonation on a fretted equal-tempered instrument and the different sizes of strings. This is how I tune, unless I'm going to be playing way up the neck, in which case I tune with an alternate further up the neck to accommodate that position better.<p>The interesting thing about this, and the thing that always confused people who see me tuning is that overdrive/distortion makes this method work <i>better</i>, not worse. It exacerbates the beating and makes it more clear when you're tuning it right.<p>James Taylor devised a system that accommodated the way lower strings tend to rise in pitch when strummed aggressively; he'd tune a tiny bit flat on the low strings, getting close to on-the-nose as you went up the strings until the high E was exactly right. You would adjust this method slightly based on gauge of strings and whether the G string is wound or not. In this way strumming hard wouldn't end up sounding sharp on the bottom and out of tune across the instrument. This seems like a pain in the ass, to me, since you need a tuner and to memorize the settings across the neck to get it exactly right, so I have only done it as an experiment. I couldn't hear a positive difference compared to my usual method of tuning with chords (which already accommodates the sharpening of low strings because we're tuning to chord shapes).<p>A common method I've seen maybe most often, especially among metal guitarists who tune down and bass players is the harmonics method (5th and 7th frets of strings next to each other). This has the benefit of bringing the tuning notes up into a higher register where our hearing is more accurate. Distortion doesn't hinder this method either, so rock guys can do it without changing their amp settings or whatever. But...and this is a big but. This isn't actually a great method for getting good tuning, because it will be the natural harmonics of the strings, which <i>aren't</i> exactly the same as the notes on an equal-tempered instrument. This was the method I used when I was a kid. The traditional fifth fret (and fourth fret) method, that is the first method most guitarists are taught, is still better than this one, because it accounts for equal temperament.
Knowing how to tune a guitar (bass, etc) is one of the first thing any player should learn, but next to it are recognizing that your guitar is out of tune and how to make sure you don't have to retune it every 5 minutes. The first comes with practice and musical training and the second requires a good knowledge on how to mount strings. A string fixed the wrong way will force the player to tune at every song or more often, so learning how to put strings in place is vital. There is a self-locking technique well explained in youtube videos; look for it because it will come very handy.
The "Play notes with a 5.00 Hz difference" section seems like a massive leap from the section before, without the same level of explanation that preceded it. I can't perceive/work out what they are talking about - I'm not sure what I'm listening for. Could be because of my freaky Asperger's brain wiring tho.<p>I learning to play electric guitar, and have wanted to learn to tune by ear for ages. It's frustrating that I was able to follow along with ease up to this point, but now feel I've been pushed in at the deep end. It's just so <i>close</i> but not quite there.
I still have a tuning fork for tuning by ear. When I started playing, electric tuners were somewhat new and relatively expensive. At this point I've used the fork enough I almost don't need it.
This is fun and educational. Good work. I think you should take 5m to line up the tops of the strings and fix the string spacing in the zoomed-in headstock image. It looks sloppy at the moment.
Very cool indeed!
Doesn't work in Chrome 66 anymore, due to blocked audio:
<a href="https://www.dailydot.com/debug/chrome-autoplay-block-games/" rel="nofollow">https://www.dailydot.com/debug/chrome-autoplay-block-games/</a>
I get errors on Safari (latest public version as of a few days ago):<p>First an alert: "It looks like Chrome audio autoplay is giving us troubles. Close this and tap the loading bar to continue loading audio."<p>Then "undefined is not an object (evaluating 'new Tone.FFT')" where I'm guessing some kind of media is supposed to go.
fun page. i tune my guitar differently, but same principle. i put ON distortion, and then pluck harmonics on different strings. if they are out of tune its really obvious due to the phasing, and you can adjust it untill it sounds like a clean note. same principe but much much easier / clearer to hear if it's exactly in tune with another string.<p>also if you tune, always tighten last. if you release tension then it might shift a little and be in shitty tuning again. if you tighten the last then it;s less chance of this de tuning suddenly while playing.<p>you can tune all strings using harmonics on the 5th/7th frets, where g/b set will need 4th / 5th fret or so. al the notes you need across the strings are around those frets anyway and it;s really easy to hear if you have the right ones.
well.
while using some dsp to get the frequencies right makes sense from an analytical point of view,
from a more mood oriented standpoint
which seems more aligned with the nature of music
and its associations with mood
it makes more sense to tune a guitar without any measurements using instruments other than your ears
in other words tuning by ear
while this is an inexact science
and in theory, each tume you tune your guitar it will by definition be alightly out of tune
the true test would be whether you like the sound or not
given this as a goal,
how you tune your guitar, would depend on what you were planning to play.
you would probably tune your chord progressions
Reminded me of my high school physics project on tuning a guitar using beats on harmonics: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(acoustics)" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_(acoustics)</a>
Somehow this isn‘t working properly for me on my iPhone. It‘s not always clear what parts are touchable, and hitting the right spot is sometimes difficult (eg hitting strings is difficult with my fat fingers)<p>I like the idea, but the UX on mobile is a bit frustrating.
very cool /aol<p>add: i'm using seamonkey 2.49.2 and the zooming of the guitar in and out doesn't quite work once in awhile obscuring the text. don't take it as your fault, i'm actually impressed this worked at all.
pretty good, nice execution, and im sure this is not targeted at people like me. but i figure i would add, just for those that are curious: there is more to tuning than just this. how hard you play the strings, where on the neck you play, the relative gauges, what the weathers going to do, the sound you like- all things that make it more complicated. there is also what your bandmates are doing. there are also mechanical factors that make for difficulty in getting the string to make the pitch you want, as other posters noted. i say all this to celebrate the wonderful endless complexity that "simple" things have when they exist in the real, corporeal world. its something i think can be forgotten by people who hang out on a computer mostly.