Simple questions should have simple answers, shouldn't they?

[KTAnarchist]

I'm a recording (though almost completely unknown) guitarist and have been playing for around sixteen years. I can't count the number of times I have seen or heard the term "cents" used when discussing tuning. This is a bit sad, but I have never met anyone who can actually explain to me what this term refers to. HELP! (The wonderful Information Super Parking-Lot didn't....)

[Snarl 12/8]

I always assumed it was 1/100th of a note. A degree of tuning.


http://www.intelliscore.net/webhelp/idh ... _pitch.htm

[Snarl 12/8]

btw - google can often provide simple answers incredibly quickly. They have a whole trust fund of brainiacs thinking this shit up, so you don't have to.

[KTAnarchist]

Okay, I deserved that. Please, anyone who reads all of this, laugh. (I mean it...) I should have been more clear. The problem I'm encountering isn't so much the "definition" of a cent but more it's value when related to tuning an instrument. Example, say I want to experiment with a tuning twelve cents lower than the usual 440 Hz. With regard to the tuner (you know, the thing with the letters and numbers and 180 degree needle radius with the little dots and triangles and stuff...mine even has buttons YAY!) how would I know that I were actually tuning my guitar twelve cents lower than usual? And as for Google, well, that's where I found out the definition of a "cent" but it was largely unhelpful for my following question (thus I turn to people who might actually know these things....).

[Dakota]

Look up the manual for your tuner - see what the needle radius is supposed to represent. It's usually 50 cents down at hard left, 50 cents up at hard right.

If not, get a tuner that has either an analog VU meter or enough fine LED resolution to where you can see where 12 cents down from the middle is. Tune all your strings to that point rather than the middle. Done.

Or fire up a software synth or sampler that has a fine tuning master knob that you can set in cents. Load a simple sound like a sawtooth with no modulation or effects, master tune down 12 cents, tune to that by ear.

Harder way: do the math. A half step change in pitch is that frequency times the 12th root of 2, which is 1.05946309.

A cent is a hundredth of that change, the 1200th root of two, which is 1.00057779.

A440 twelve cents down:

440 divided by ((1200th root of 2) to the 12th power) = 436.960694

Set your tuner to A437, it'll be close to 12 cents down.