Listen (3:26)
October 13, 2025
In what now feels like a different life, a quarter century ago, I was utterly obsessed with tuning my guitar using an E tuning fork. I only relied on a tuner, specifically a strobe tuner, when necessary. The duality of this obsession was that the act itself was both sacrificial and meditative, depending on which procedures I used to get those six strings in tune. The sacrifice lies in achieving a perfect purity of intervals, which in older systems was mathematically possible, but it made specific keys impossible to navigate without some form of temperament.
Equal temperament tuning is a musical system where the octave is divided into twelve equal parts called semitones or half steps. In this system, the ratio of the frequencies of any two adjacent notes remains constant; specifically, each semitone's frequency is multiplied by the twelfth root of 2 (about 1.05946) to determine the next semitone's frequency. This results in intervals that sound evenly spaced to the ear on a logarithmic scale and has been the standard tuning system in Western music since the 18th century.
The meditative component of my tuning sessions, which resurfaced over the last few weeks, reconnecting me to the guitar after a period of disengagement, has had me fully present in a task akin to a painter cleaning his brushes or a chef sharpening her knives. The tuner, a clip-on thing these days, asked a true or false question, and a perfunctory turn of the tuning machine toward or away ticked the box, rinsed, and repeated. Yes, that particular string sounded the correct pitch, but did it hold up when part of a chord? Was it in tune if matched with another instrument, the piano, especially, as it also would be equally tempered and not as easily retuned as my six-string?
In equal temperament, the octave is perfectly pure, but all other intervals (fifths, major thirds, and minor thirds) are slightly tweaked from their pure, just intonation counterparts. The perfect fifth in equal temperament is a bit narrower, or flatter, than a pure fifth, and a major third is slightly sharper than a just major third. This means the intervals are approximations rather than exact mathematical ratios of whole numbers that define pure consonance. Meditating on concepts like purity and, dare I say it, justice in a traditional sense is well outside my skill set at the moment. However, I learned, or better yet, re-remembered how to do it musically.
In that different life, after my E tuning fork was tapped and then placed directly on the bridge, it rang out a perfect tone whose octave had to match precisely, without wobble or wavering. My meditation focused on all the other notes in the octave that needed to agree in 12 keys across six strings. I tune in fourths and fifths, and in my preferred order, I start with fifths, trying to get the narrowness and flatness just right. Another preferred interval is the ninth, which requires greater concentration and attention to both intonation and tone, especially when applied to full chords.
Although some find it useful, I’m not ready to add affirmations, aromatherapy, slow breathing, or anything really to deepen the meditative effect at the moment. That could certainly change in the future, and I plan on keeping an open mind. For now, there is enough variety and spontaneity in my approach to getting six strings to agree with each other for the length of our time together to hone in mindfully, complete the task at hand, and keep an increasingly clamorous world at bay.