One more method for guitar-tuning
I guess you already have read my article about flageolets in Hugi 23 and article by Bonz in this issue. There he explains a technical use of flageolets (apart from their musical value) - in the task of guitar tuning.
Yes, he is right, the traditional method isn't always perfect, i.e. it gives bad tuning on upper frets, even if you think that you've caught unison on the 5th frets. But hey, tuning with flageolets also has its own disadvantages, he didn't write about them.
Look, he gives us the variant for tuning of the bass guitar. Well, I haven't played bass but I suppose that flageolets there are much more distinct than on acoustic guitar. And therefore, yes, we could easily tune bass with flageolets, and it will give perfect results.
But there are some bottlenecks while applying this to acoustic guitar:
1) On an acoustic guitar flageolets are much quieter than on a bass guitar, because the strings on bass are somewhat bigger and wider, noticed?
Therefore a problem - it is quite inconvenient to determine if the strings sound in unison, because flageolets on V and VII frets are quite attenuated on an ac. guitar.
2) Flageolets on acoustic guitar have quite a short decay time, i.e. they sound during a very limited amount of time. Therefore, it would be impossible to tune an ac. guitar by flageolets without many trials. I mean that in any case you will have to pluck your flageolets several times, while turning pegs of your guitar, unless you turn them with the speed of the light.
So, you see, two problems make this method hard for using on an acoustic guitar, and therefore it isn't used much in acoustic guitar tuning.
And therefore I have never used this method in five years of guitar playing.
I want to tell another method. I found it by myself for my needs, but I'm sure that this is quite a widespread method. In basic, it's simply a variation of standard tuning method, if you don't know it then read it in the article by Bonz.
But to make tuning more perfect we add more "control points" to our tuning.
We know that, for example, the second string on 5th fret gives the same sound as the open first string.
However, this unison could be deceptive. We should check unison on other frets, because these two strings also have other groups of equal sounding frets. For example, the second string on the XII fret and the first string on the VII fret. Pluck them together, you should hear strong unison. If not, then make the tuning of the second string the way unison is heard. Then you will by some magical coincidence find that the note on 5th fret also has been tuned perfectly automatically.
And the same is true for other points on other strings, look below for them.
So, the table of additional control points:
1) First string is tuned using diapason, on V fret.
2) Second string on XII fret and first string on VII fret, for tuning of second string.
3) Third string, IV fret and first string, VII fret, for tuning of third string.
4) Fourth string, V fret with first string, III fret AND fourth string, V fret with second string, VIII fret, for tuning of fourth string.
5) Fifth string, V fret with third string, VII fret AND fifth string, V fret with second string, III fret, for tuning of fifth string.
6) Sixth string, V fret with fourth string, VII fret AND sixth string, V fret with third string, II fret, for tuning of sixth string.
Don't know, for me this works very fine and fast.
And gives very good results.
P.S. Wait for a guitar playing tutorial from me!