Guitar

Other Hardware LEDs and Multiplexing
1

Hi,

Newbie.
I know arduino can be used to give the frequency of a sound.
Does anyone know if it's possible to get the frequency of 6 strings of a guitar at the same time please?

The project would be to track what's being played in real time.

TIA
Lisa

2

Trying to sort out the individual notes from the messy combined signal of a 6 note chord in real time is one of the most difficult tricks in audio. There are very few PC programs that can get anywhere near it without running out of processing power so I don't think there's any chance of doing it with an Arduino.

BTW what does this have to do with LEDs and Multiplexing?

Steve

3

"Multiplexing"?

4

I would suggest using a fast fourier transform (FFT). fourier transforms are used all over audio for getting frequencies. Here is a good explanation of them, and here is an arduino application. I haven't personally used FFT with arduino, but I did build a guitar tuner using a pocket beagle, Bela caplet, and an FFT library.

5

Ever tried to unscramble an egg? This is just the same.

If you are taking in an audio signal not only do you get the individual string sound but all the results of the sounds interacting with each other. Whenever you have two audio sounds you get harmonics formed by sum and difference of each frequency. So the number of interactions with six strings make a whole load of frequencies that were not produced by the individual strings.

6

Grumpy_Mike:
Ever tried to unscramble an egg? This is just the same.

If you are taking in an audio signal not only do you get the individual string sound but all the results of the sounds interacting with each other. Whenever you have two audio sounds you get harmonics formed by sum and difference of each frequency.

Not quite correct. :roll_eyes:

This is only the case if you experience distortion of the signal.

7

This is only the case if you experience distortion of the signal.

One way of tuning a guitar is by the fith fret method. Tuning guitar using 5th Fret Method

This is where you use the fifth fret of a lower note to make the same note as the string higher up. If the frequencies of the notes are not the same then you can here the beating ( changes in amplitude ) of the notes as you get cycles of constructive and destructive interference. The slower the beats are the closer the two notes are together.