Tuned it by ear. Back in spring!
Thirty-eight cents flat. Since spring.
1Cents, and why the ear gives in
Between two neighbouring notes, say E and F, lies a semitone, and a semitone is divided into 100 cents. A string that is 38 cents flat has gone more than a third of the way to the note below. Strings rarely slide that far in a day; they drift a few cents at a time, and the ear quietly drifts along with them. Play alone and everything sounds fine. Play along with a recording or a friend, and suddenly it doesn’t.
A tuner doesn’t get used to anything. TuneBench counts a string as in tune when it stays within ±3 cents, and shows it in green. Up to 15 cents off is amber, more is red, and beyond 50 cents it tells you how many semitones away you are.
2Tuning in five steps
- Open TuneBench and choose the Instrument and the Tuning. Standard is a fine start.
- Press Start tuning and allow the microphone. The sound is analysed on the device: nothing is recorded or sent.
- Pluck one open string and let it ring. TuneBench works out which string it is and gives a hint: Too low: tune up ↑ or Too high: tune down ↓.
- Turn the peg slowly until the needle is in the green, and hold it there for 0.6 seconds: a short chime, a buzz, a tick on the string, and TuneBench suggests the next one.
- When every string has its tick, play them all once more. Tightening one string pulls on the neck, and the others shift a little.
One rule from the guide is worth remembering: always tune up to the note. If a string is sharp, go a little below it and come back up; the slack in the peg is taken up and the string stays put. If the tuner insists on the wrong string (new strings, or one that is far off), tap that string’s button to choose it by hand, and Auto to go back.
From below, up to the note. Never from above.
3Not only a guitar
The Instrument list: guitar (Standard, Drop D, D Standard, DADGAD, Open G, Open D, Half step down), 7- and 8-string guitars, 4- and 5-string bass, ukulele with a high or a low G, violin, viola, cello, mandolin, 5-string banjo, and Any instrument (chromatic), which simply names the nearest note: for a flute, a voice or that harmonica in the drawer.
Concert pitch A4 is 440 Hz by default, and every other note is counted from it. Orchestras often tune to 442–443, some musicians prefer 432, baroque ensembles play at 415. TuneBench takes any value from 415 to 466 Hz, and the string targets and the reference tones follow it. If you’d rather tune by ear after all, Reference tone plays the note for four seconds.
An honest word about basses. Most phone microphones hear very little below 80–100 Hz, and the open strings of a bass sit at 31–55 Hz. TuneBench copes by looking for the period of the whole wave, which the overtones repeat too, so it finds the note even when the phone can’t hear the fundamental. A cable into an audio interface still gives a steadier reading.
- One string at a time, mute the others: a chord has no single pitch.
- Read the needle a moment after the pluck. Every string starts slightly sharp, and TuneBench doesn’t count the first moments.
- Hold the phone 10–30 cm from the sound hole or the amp. A quiet room helps more than playing louder.
4A metronome on the same page
Once the strings are in tune, the next thing to drift is the tempo. The Metronome moved to TuneBench from TimeBench: tempo in BPM, Tap tempo, beats per bar, Subdivision into eighths, triplets or sixteenths, and every beat can be an accent, a normal click or silent. The clicks are scheduled ahead on the audio clock, so they don’t stumble when the page is busy.
Tick. Tock. You’re rushing.
The tuning you used can go into the Tuning log or out as a link with Share the tuning: whoever opens it gets a Use this tuning button, handy for a band in Drop D at A4 = 442. After the first visit the page works offline, and the sound never leaves your device.