The three tuners
- Guitarrón tuner — A1–D2–G2–C3–E3–A2. The mariachi bass. Its last string drops an octave instead of continuing upward, so the string most people call the 1st is a fifth below the one beside it. Almost everybody tunes it an octave high the first time.
- Mexican vihuela tuner — A3–D4–G4–B3–E4. Five nylon strings with the A, D and G an octave above a guitar, which makes the 3rd string the highest note on the instrument and drops the 2nd below the 4th.
- Requinto tuner — A2–D3–G3–C4–E4–A4. A perfect fourth above a guitar on a 530 mm scale. Tuning EADGBE onto one out of habit leaves it at roughly 56% of its design tension.
- Guitar tuner — E2–A2–D3–G3–B3–E4. The one instrument in the group that is exactly what it looks like.
What is different about each one
| Instrument | Strings | Tuning | Lowest | Highest | The trap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guitarrón | 6 | A1–D2–G2–C3–E3–A2 | A1 · 55.00 Hz | E3 · 164.81 Hz | The last string is A2, not A3 |
| Vihuela | 5 | A3–D4–G4–B3–E4 | A3 · 220.00 Hz | G4 · 392.00 Hz (3rd string) | A, D and G are an octave up |
| Requinto | 6 | A2–D3–G3–C4–E4–A4 | A2 · 110.00 Hz | A4 · 440.00 Hz | It is not tuned like a guitar |
| Guitar | 6 | E2–A2–D3–G3–B3–E4 | E2 · 82.41 Hz | E4 · 329.63 Hz | None — it is the reference |
Two re-entrant tunings, running in opposite directions
The guitarrón and the vihuela are both re-entrant — neither one ascends steadily from string to string — but they break the pattern for opposite reasons, and each makes more sense once you see the other.
The guitarrón brings its top string down an octave, to A2. That puts an A an octave above the low A1 within reach of a single hand position, and the right hand plucks the two together: the bass line is written as single notes and played in octaves. One player, no amplifier, enough weight to anchor a whole ensemble outdoors.
The vihuela sends its bottom three strings upan octave, to A3, D4 and G4. That lifts the entire instrument above the guitar so its strum sits on top of the texture instead of doubling it, and it leaves the vihuela with no bass register at all — its lowest note is roughly a guitar’s 3rd string. Bright, dry, percussive, and impossible to confuse with anything else in the mix.
Between them the vihuela and the guitarrón mark the mánico, the strum-and-bass pattern that tells a son from a ranchera from a bolero, while the guitar fills the middle.
Tuning the group before a job
- Everything goes to A=440. A mariachi has violins and trumpets in it, and a trumpet cannot retune to accommodate a flat rhythm section. The strings come to fixed pitch — not to each other, and not to whoever is loudest.
- Tune where you will play. The guitarrón in particular moves with temperature more than the violins do: long, heavy strings on an enormous body. Tuning in the van and playing in a courtyard is how a set starts flat.
- Then check two octaves by ear.The vihuela’s open A3 is exactly two octaves above the guitarrón’s low A1. Play them together — any beating means one of the two is off, however centred both needles were on their own.
- Re-check after the first number, not before it. New nylon and nylon-wound strings keep stretching for days, and everything settles once the instruments have warmed up in the room they are actually in.
September 16 and December 12
These are the two days of the year mariachis work hardest. The night of 15 September, running into Independence Day on the 16th, is the Grito — plazas, flags, and every group in town booked. 12 December, the feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe, starts before dawn with Las Mañanitas sung to the Virgin, and mariachis play from the small hours onward.
Both are outdoor, overnight, cold-then-warm jobs, which is the hardest possible case for a large-bodied string instrument. Two practical things follow. Restring at least a week ahead, never the day before — nylon-wound guitarrón strings drop for days and you do not want that happening during the third song. And plan to re-tune between sets rather than once at the start: the temperature will move underneath you, and the guitarrón will move first and furthest.
A note on the requinto
The requinto is grouped here because it is a Mexican nylon-string instrument that guitarists mistune for the same reason as the other two — muscle memory — but it is not a mariachi instrument. It belongs to the trío romántico: it was built in 1944 by Alfredo Gil of Los Panchos to play melodic lines above two rhythm guitars, and its home repertoire is the bolero, not the son. A mariachi’s string section is guitarrón, vihuela and guitar.
Related tuners
Elsewhere on the site, three more instruments with the same kind of problem: the charango, whose lowest note is in the middle course; the cavaquinho, with two strings called D an octave apart; and the ukulele, whose re-entrant high G is the same idea as the guitarrón’s A, one instrument-size down.