Roll a multi octave chord (entire belly resonating).octave, octave 5th, double 8ve, double 8ve 5th, triple 8ve, triple 8ve5th, etc. Tune monochords with the sustain pedal engaged.all dampers up. Tune bichords to the best compromise where, when held with the sostenuto all octaves, octave fifths double octaves double octave fifth and triple octaves sound similar and reasonably quiet. On the second pass, tune the bass last after all tenor and treble unisons have been tuned and checked. They really were never meant to sound good.Ģ pass tuning. One note: when tuning bass notes melodically vs harmonically, often they don't agree.įinally, don't sweat it too much. Make an aural judgement on how close it sounds melodically. Make a judgement as to the closeness of the scale produced to a good sounding chromatic scale.Īlso, play each note melodically within a descending major scale, for example.
Try to induce the same partial in each chromatic note. You can try this too: Gently touch each bass string near the hammer strike point while playing. Maybe when they are all cancelling as close as possible, the fundamental beat is reduced. The theory might be explained using difference tones each neighbouring partial produces a difference tone equal to the fundamental. Listen to the lower note and try to eliminate any rolling there. Initially, the theory doesn't seem to support that there could be a beat at the fundamental of a bass octave, but that's the way I tune them. He described this as a beating at the fundamental. Virgil Smith advocated listening to the Natural Beat when tuning bass notes.