Falseness in guitar strings

by Brian Capleton     

Inharmonicity is a well known (in acoustics) feature of musical string behaviour. It has an effect on the tone of the string, and on the perceived pitch of the note produced.

Inharmonicity is cause by string stiffness, and by wear and tear on the string. We do not need to know technical details about inharmonicity, but we do need to be aware that the inharmonicity of a string depends on the length of string sounding. This means that each stopped note played on a string, can have different inharmonicity. The shorter the stopped length of a string, the greater the inharmonicity.

Inharmonicity will usually (but not always) make a stopped note sound as though it were sharper than it would otherwise have been. This will be true in terms of the pitch, and in terms of any beating you are listening to.

Bearing this in mind, we can now look at how the need of temperament combines with inharmonicity, to demand a tuning strategy on the guitar.  How to tune the guitar.