Tuners and whoo-hoos

[catsittingstill]

Yesterday I finally broke down and bought another tuner. I had a perfectly good one, but the microphone attachment (which lets the tuner listen just to a particular instrument rather than every little noise in the area) went dead a few months ago (during recording, as it happens, but a studio is a nice quiet place to tune anyway). So when I tried to tune anywhere that wasn't nice and quiet (the bluegrass jam, the dulcimer workshop) it didn't work very well. Some of the people at the bluegrass jam had a little tuner that clips right to the instrument--no wires or anything; the whole tuner just gets clipped onto the headstock and sticks out to one side; you can even leave it on the instrument while you play. Well, I'm a complete sucker for gadgets, so yesterday I went to look and see if Lloyds (our local--well, this side of Morristown, so only about 12 miles away--music store) had one.

Not only did they have one, but there was also a guy there named Roy (different guy from the one who gave me all the tomatoes) who gives mandolin lessons. For 12$ each. I sat down to show him what I can do and what I want to learn, and in ten minutes he gave me some very helpful pointers and taught me to play what they call "a closed scale" which means you never play an open string. This is tougher as you never get to take all your fingers off the fretboard and rest them, but is good because you can play in any key simply by moving your starting fingers to the right fret--the pattern is exactly the same. Since some of the rackin'brackin'frickin guitar players at the jam get weird with the capo and start playing in rackin'brackin'grackle keys like B, or Bb, or F-sharp-minor-diminished-folded-spindled-stapled-and-mutilated--which I wouldn't mind except they're not doing the work for it--but I'm not bitter, I figure this will be a survival skill. And he didn't even charge--that was just to show he could be helpful! Whoo-hoo!

So I'm all set up for a lesson on Monday. And I'm practicing that closed scale. :-) And Shannon (who loaned me the dulcimer for the workshop and who is one of the people who was at Ernest and June's house Sunday) is coming over to play music for an hour tomorrow afternoon. Double Whoo-hoo!

Comments

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Sounds like great fun.

Now, I mind me a stroboscopic tuner that Gary Anderson built; a gadget with an LED which he placed behind the string he wanted to tune. He set the tuner for the note and then tuned the string until he could see the string standing still.

But he never could find a way to mass-manufacture them...

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

The stroboscopic tuner is a clever idea. It might be quite easy to use, too--I'd have to try it out to be sure, but the gradual slowing of the string might be a better visual cue than the lights and arrows of standard tuners.

But I think it's less convenient to set up than this clip-on tuner, which you can use without unslinging the guitar (or mandolin or whatever) and which you can leave on indefinitely if you like (though you do have to turn it off if you do that; it won't turn off by itself as long as it's sensing notes, and the batteries will wear down).

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

The closed scale is parallel to the movable scale idea (and three-note chord shapes) with a guitar. I'm not that fast with figuring out which high fret on which string is which note, but that's okay.

And, fortunately, it also transfers to bowed instruments. Now, why in heck didn't my childhood viola teacher tell me that?