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Question on guitar strings sounds

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(@cleverstuff)
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Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 3
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I had a question about the strings and the sound they belong to. I'm not speaking of intervals like a perfect fifth or a minor 3third what I'm refereeing to is that each strong when plucked sounds like a less full chord. so my question is does anyone know what the thing is that I'm talking about I cant remember the name but ive seen it in the past and It seems to slip my mind when I don't touch the instrument for long periods of time. I think its something like its an e 3rd an a 4th d 6th g 7th b 9th and e 11th but I have no clue if anyone can help it would be a greatly appreciated thanks for you time.


   
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(@cleverstuff)
Active Member
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 3
Topic starter  

I was also looking for a better source to clairify what keys hold what sounds pertaining to the e is e 3 and a is a 4. to be more specific I mean like on the a sting I know it wouldn't be a a4 then a a#4 then a b4 all the way up to the 24th fret. I understand or might not that it changes around like there would be a a6 or something to that nature on the a4 string. is this based on the root notes of the chords and what would be the cases for the g b and high e. I hope someone can make sense of this lack of understanding but google hasn't been the best thing to use when in search of concepts and terms I don't know the specific names for.


   
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(@alangreen)
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Joined: 22 years ago
Posts: 5342
 

ok - your first post talks about 3rds, 4ths, 6ths etc., so in that post your are talking about intervals.

In your second post: keys don't hold specific notes ("E3" for example) they hold ranges of notes which happen to include (for example) E natural or E flat. Against that, if E is a 3rd, then you're in C major; if A is a 4th then you're in E something - A natural appears in both E major and E minor.

It would help if you could be a little clearer on what it is you're aiming at as it's not obvious from the way you're wording things. Maybe let's start with the one point you think is most important for you to have answered.

"Be good at what you can do" - Fingerbanger"
I have always felt that it is better to do what is beautiful than what is 'right'" - Eliot Fisk
Wedding music and guitar lessons in Essex. Listen at: http://www.rollmopmusic.co.uk


   
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(@cleverstuff)
Active Member
Joined: 7 years ago
Posts: 3
Topic starter  

thanks for the clarification but now I seem to have someones attention I have another question but this times its about pitches. I was looking online and I was curious as to the correlation between the frequency and the pitch of a note. I'm sure that each range has a set of frequencies to depict what range it is like a 1,2,3,4,5,6,or7 and so on. I was curious as to if you could help me to understand these ranges alittle better. one thing I'm struggling with is I found somewhere (but cant find now) that in the open tuning it rose by a frequency of 44 point somthing in hertz it was something like e0 44hz a3.5 88hz d4.98 152hz g7.1 196hz b9.4 240hz and e11 284hz I'm not sure what the numbers after the letter are really trying to indicate like are they saying that the open string is equivalent to the chord of a 4.98 which isn't a 5 so it would be some sort of variation of a flattened 5 chord. I'm sure it sounds like madness but its a hard thing to understand. also I checked in other places and what I was able to find is the low e2 82.41hz a2 110hz d3 146.8hz g3 196.0hz b3 246hz e4 329.6hz as pertaining to the frequencies and in this scale the frequencies raise something like 27.59 hz and that's going across the frets as opposed to up them. do these two diferent types of tunings have to do with how you tune your guitar based on the machine that tells you the exact frequency of your sting and that you can tune it to different frequencies and still achieve a perfect sound out of the string but in different ranges like how one the ranges are from 0 to 11 and the other is from 2 to 4? if I understand the pitch idea it has to do with you can have a certain range as long as theres a certain ratio that it must stay within so it will sound "correct." if I'm not clear enough to get an answer I understand because its hard to make sense of what it is I'm trying to ask thanks for your time.


   
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(@alangreen)
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Joined: 22 years ago
Posts: 5342
 

You're getting bogged down in stuff you don't need to worry about, but:

A4=440Hz - this is concert pitch. You go listen to an orchestra, they all tune to this.

In guitar terms, it's the A you get on the 5th fret of your 1st string. A3 is 3rd string 2nd fret, A2 is the open 5th string, A1 is the open 3rd string on a bass guitar, A0 is the note at the very left-hand end of a piano keyboard. The number after the letter changes at C, so your piano keyboard has A0, B0, C1, D1 etc.

440Hz - 440 Hertz - 440 vibrations per second. A4=440Hz, A3=220Hz, A2=110Hz, A1=55Hz, A0=(approx.)27.5Hz. If you vibrate the string that many times per second, you'll get that sound.

It's not always been like that. In the Classical Period (1750-1820) A4 was accepted as being 430Hz, and Renaissance music is routinely played with A4=415Hz. All your other note frequencies adjust accordingly - you multiply by (1+ (the 12th root of 2 raised to the power of x)) where x is the number of the note in the chromatic scale (A=1, Bb=2, B=3, C=4 etc.), to arrive at the frequencies for the intermediate notes.

There is a thing called the Pythagorean comma, which I won't go into, and there is the fact that a semitone is not a convenient 100 cents, but 114 point something - so A# and Bb are in reality different notes, we just conveniently lump them together as one.

Your guitar produces a very complex sound. If you play a string, the sound you hear is comprised of (a) the sound produced by that string, (b) the vibration of the soundboard, and (c) the vibration of the body of air in the sound-box. It's different if you're playing electric because of the way pickups work.

"Be good at what you can do" - Fingerbanger"
I have always felt that it is better to do what is beautiful than what is 'right'" - Eliot Fisk
Wedding music and guitar lessons in Essex. Listen at: http://www.rollmopmusic.co.uk


   
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