Tuning without a tuner

Lol!

 

Sounds weird enough to be true.

 

This reminds me of stories of hippies in the 60s/70s getting free phone calls by whistling the right pitch...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking

 

Yeah, that is a pretty good method. But be careful. In some areas, the Dial Tone is an A.

Also, there's the NBC Method. At the top of every hour, they flash that little Peacock in the corner of the screen. And you hear that little 3 Note "Chime". It's a C Chord Inversion. G E C. (Odd coincidence, how General Electric Company owns NBC).

So, you can tune your guitar with the TV! LOL

e
B
G 0


e 0
B
G

e
B 1
G

 

very cool tip - I've occaisionally had to "find a note" to tune to.. and I usually just try to hear the opening A chord of a tune of mine and go from there - but it's great to know that the telephone is waiting to assist!!! LOL!

John Seth Sherman

 

I think I'm more likely to have a tuner handy when I need to tune up than a land-line phone . . .

 

The dial tone in North America is made up of two tones F and A (350 and 440).

 

I'm sorry, I'm going to go with the DUH here - most new phones (cell phones people have with them, not land lines with the now old-timey dial tone) have recordings you can download called ring tones. You can actually download real songs that you may already know the key to!!!!

My old phone would let you compose your own ring - so if you figured out the pitches, you could easily put an A, an E, or E-A-D-G-B-E on it.

Likewise, Ring Tones are made with MIDI files so I bet someone could create a "Guitar Tuning ring tone" if they haven't already - let me put you on hold a moment.... ok Googled it and didn't find on immediately - but if you can make a .wav file you can apparently make one as well.

No offense to Mr. Gatton or the OP, but, with those new-fangled cell phones, there are some more accurate options.

Now if I could just play like Mr. Gatton!

Steve

 

Zactly! All dialing through North American (and some other countries')voice switches uses DTMF - dual tone multi-frequency.

Ring Tones are triggered by a call terminating at a phone, NOT prompted by a call originating and progressing through the Public Switched Telephone Network.

BTW, the G-E-C / NBC - G.E. Corp, tone dates back to pre-vid radio days and was quite intentional as a station ID. I'd love to know who dreamt that up.

 

Wrong about G.E.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Chimes

 

I just use a guitar tuner App on my Iphone

 

The old school landline phones used to ring an "E" 1....