The ``T''-handle style wrench looks like it would be easier to use, but in fact, for autoharp and hammered dulcimer tuning, it is harder on the hand than either of the gooseneck wrenches. It is easier to use than the gooseneck wrenches on smaller instruments where you do not really have enough instrument to rest your arm on while controlling the wrench.
It should also be noted that when raising the pitch of the strings you will generally want to tweak the pitch just past the point you are looking for and then just nudge it back down. This helps to compensate for differences in stretch of the string across the bridge pins or rail and for the settling of the wood fibers in the tuning pin holes. With a little practice you will be able to feel these changes as they occur and have a good idea of what to expect as you tune.
The main limitations to keep in mind when using an electronic tuner are:
By being aware of the limitations of your tuner, you can use it to zero in the majority of the strings and augment it with a little by-ear tuning to finish off the extreme high and low end pitches.
Correcting just a few out-of-tune strings when
needed
To find the off-pitch strings, slowly strum through the series of
chord bars, adjusting the out-of-tune strings as you come to them. Usually the
``sour'' notes will be strings in the higher octaves. Depress a chord bar and
strum s-l-o-w-l-y across the strings. Listen carefully, and you'll hear that
most of the notes in a chord are in tune with each other. Leave those strings
alone, and concentrate on the ``sour'' notes. Turn the tuning pin on the
out-of-tune string a little bit clockwise or counterclockwise (this raises or
lowers the pitch) until the string sounds in tune with the others of the chord
when you strum across the entire instrument. Then repeat the process with the
remaining chord bars until all the chords have been adjusted.
TOUCH-UP HINT: Once you've gone through all the chords, check over your tuning once again by playing through the chord bars, strumming slowly as before. You will probably still find a string or two out of tune within the chord. An interesting, but frustrating, discovery you will make is that certain strings are members of more than one chord, and if you put the string perfectly in tune with one of the chords, it will sound out of tune with all the others. This is because the musical scale we use in our Western culture is imperfect -- all the notes of our scale aren't exactly the same ``distance'' apart. Certain chords -- D and G , for example -- cannot be perfectly in tune and be in tune with each other. If you tune the D chord perfectly and then strum the G chord, the G chord will sound slightly out of tune. The solution is to experiment with the common string until both chords sound OK. (This is called TEMPERING.)
OK, so you need to totally retune your Autoharp -- all 36 strings. You'll be glad to know that it's easy. But at first, it takes quite some time and a lot of patience to learn this skill. When you get frustrated, stop trying to tune, and put the instrument away until you're ready to tackle it again. This is the best advice we can give you, except to point out that we mean you should set the Autoharp aside for a few hours or a day, not a year. (You'll never learn to tune it at that rate!) After a while, with practice and patience, you will get to where it will take you only 15 or 20 minutes to retune your instrument. Some folks can do it even faster than that.
Suppose you want to tune your Autoharp to standard pitch, or to a piano or some wind instrument. The first thing you need to get is a pitchpipe or a tuning fork, or find a friend who knows the names and locations of the notes on the instrument you're tuning to. Find the note on your Autoharp that corresponds to a note on the other instrument or pitch pipe/tuning fork. We recommend Middle C as a good note to start on -- lots of folks know where it is on the piano, it's clearly marked on most Autoharps, and pitchpipes and tuning forks are made with Middle C pitches.
Once you have this reference pitch, you're ready to go. Keep in mind that it
takes a long time to tune an Autoharp if you've never done it before -- maybe
a half hour, maybe an hour. You may get frustrated. Be persistent; the skill
will come eventually.
is the easiest for beginners. It requires a chromatic pitchpipe or piano. A chromatic pitchpipe gives you the 12 different pitches of a chromatic scale. These pitches are C , C# , D , D# , E# , F , F# , G , G# , A , A# , B . The notes of the chromatic pitchpipe start at Middle C and work their way up the scale -- which corresponds to the Middle Octave on the Autoharp. Match the tones of the Middle Octave to the notes on the pitchpipe. Then go to the other octaves*, and match those tones (the corresponding octave higher or lower, of course) to the strings you just tuned. Once you've got all the strings tuned, you'll need to check over their tuning by playing through each chord s-l-o-w-l-y just as you were instructed to do when only a few strings need retuning. When you find an out-of-tune string, retune it to match the notes of the chords in which it belongs. Go through all the chords this way, and then temper the chords just as you did earlier.
requires a C tuning fork, chromatic pitchpipe, or piano. This method will teach you to tune by ear, like many piano tuners. It is harder to learn at first, but much faster and more rewarding in the long run. You will use the tuning fork, pitchpipe, or piano to tune all the C strings on the Autoharp. Then you tune the rest of the strings on the Autoharp by ear. It sounds difficult, but it's actually as easy as using the chromatic pitchpipe.
Here's how it works. Instead of considering the strings on the Autoharp as being tuned chromatically ( C , C# , D , D# , E , F , F# , G , G# , A , A# , B , etc.) you think of the strings as being two simple, or diatonic, scales, the C scale and the B scale. (You learned to sing a diatonic scale in grade school: ``Do re mi fa sol la ti do.'') The names of the notes in the C scale are C , D , E , F , G , A , B , C . Their relative pitches are just like the ``do re mi'' scale: C =do, D =re, etc. The C scale is all the white keys on the piano, or all the strings on the Autoharp that don't have the sharp ( # ) sign after them. The B scale is all the notes you skipped when you tuned the C scale, PLUS two notes from the C scale. In other words, the B scale is B , C# , D# , E , F# , G# , A# , B . The notes of this scale are the same distance apart as are the notes of the C scale: B =do, C# =re, D# =mi, and so forth. The difference is that the B scale starts at a lower pitch than the C scale.
If you look at these two scales as the notes are written, you can see that they overlap at two places -- the B and the E notes. This means that you can first tune the C scale, and the use the B and E notes from that scale to give you the correct pitches for the B scale,
C
scale:
C
D
E
F
G
A
B
C
B
scale:
B
C#
D#
E
F#
G#
A#
B
and if you put the two scales together, you get the chromatic scale.
Now that you understand how these two simple scales fit together, you're ready to tune your Autoharp by ear.
First, tune all the C strings to pitch using your reference pitch. Next, tune the C scale. Play the Middle C string (``Do'') and then tune the D string to the proper pitch (``re''). Continue in this fashion until you have tuned all the notes of the C scale on the entire Autoharp. Go back through the scale you just tuned several times to make sure the notes sound right to you. Then play all the C strings in succession, then the D strings, then the E strings, and so on, to make sure everything is in tune.
Now you're ready to tune the B scale. Use the same procedure you used for the C# scale. Play all the B strings to make sure they're in tune with one another. Then gradually work your way up the scale ( C# , D# , E , F# , G# , A# , B ). Don't retune either the B or the E strings. They should already be in tune. Tune the sharped strings to them instead.