tuning C6th "straight up" (440)

[Dale Rottacker]

Okay... More combinations... 6th pedal A's lowered, Perfect... 6th pedal A's raised, Perfect... 5th pedal top C lowered, Perfect... 5th/6th pedal A's raised, Perfect... 5th/6th pedal A's lowered, Perfect... 7th pedal split with both 3rd string lowered and 4th string lowered, Perfect... and adding the 8th pedal to that and, still Perfect... 6th/7th pedal 3rd lowered, Perfect. Oh yeah, and G lowered to F in the middle with anything I threw at it, Perfect.

I'm sure there are combinations I haven't tested, and some I'll probably never use, but so far pretty happy with this NEW to me discovery. Thanks to all who contributed to this new enlightenment. My ear is happy.

[Roger Rettig]

The only issue I have (and it was there before my recent tune-up) is with pedal six and raising the 4th (RKR: A to A#) to give me the F7/sus 4 (or, with all the strings, F13th/sus4).

That 'sus 4' note sounds a touch sharp to my ear yet, when I play with no pedals (8-2) and engage the RKR for a straight C7th, then it's perfect.

That's my only trouble spot (so far, anyway).

[b0b]

I tune meantone, which works pretty well for classic jazz and swing. The thirds are all nice and sweet. But with meantone, you have to decide whether you want to lower your 4th string A to Ab or G#. They are 2 very different notes, 30 cents apart.

I go for the Ab, and also split it with P7 to get a Bb. https://b0b.com/wp/articles/a-well-tempered-c6th/

[Roger Rettig]

Quite so, b0b.

I haven’t decided which to tune that A lower to and, as a consequence, I think it's the least used pull on my C6.

I may try that split-tune you have.

[Fred Treece]

On a piano, G# and Ab are on the same key. I believe most pianos are tuned ET? I didn’t realize meantone tuning results in this 30-cent clusterflock for what is essentially the same note. Good reason to avoid that tuning. You only use it on C6, b0b?

[Roger Rettig]

b0b

I'm even happier with it now. I split-tuned the RKL (A lower) with pedal 7. It's prettily in tune and it's going to be useful.

Thanks for the tip.

[Earnest Bovine]

On a piano, G# and Ab are on the same key. I believe most pianos are tuned ET? I didn’t realize meantone tuning results in this 30-cent clusterflock for what is essentially the same note. Good reason to avoid that tuning. You only use it on C6, b0b?

In meantone temperament, G# and Ab are closer together than they in in just intonation.

[Fred Treece]

On a piano, G# and Ab are on the same key. I believe most pianos are tuned ET? I didn’t realize meantone tuning results in this 30-cent clusterflock for what is essentially the same note. Good reason to avoid that tuning. You only use it on C6, b0b?

In meantone temperament, G# and Ab are closer together than they in in just intonation.

Sometimes I hate music.

[b0b]

On a piano, G# and Ab are on the same key. I believe most pianos are tuned ET? I didn’t realize meantone tuning results in this 30-cent clusterflock for what is essentially the same note. Good reason to avoid that tuning. You only use it on C6, b0b?

I don't play E9th anymore, Fred.

Pianos are tuned close to ET, but they "stretch" it. Guitars pretend to be tuned ET. They're usually out, in the real world. Most people don't notice. I think that the only true ET instrument is the electronic keyboard/synthesizer. Maybe some pipe organs and concert harps.

[Bob Hoffnar]

At this point I'm in the improve your ears club. John Hughey played in tune all the time but his open tuning sounded pretty weird to me. I didn't get the chance to investigate. Buddy Charleton had bat ears and always sounded perfect. He tuned by tuning his E string on his C6 neck to the E on the E9 neck. I could never figure out how that worked. I've met several players from his generation that did the same thing. I've tried all sorts of tuning systems and I'm pretty sure all bets are off once you put the bar on the strings. It really is about your ears. All this discussion about tuning systems can be interesting but if you can't play a single note major scale really in tune on one string it doesn't matter how you tune. And likewise if you are able to play an in tune major scale on one string you can probably make an tuning system work.

[Roger Rettig]

I'm in Bob's club.

As he says, much of this discussion is academic (although interesting).

I find my guitar will drift a bit sharp here with, I suppose, the constant off/on of the A/C. I can hear when it's time to get back to 'concert', so I'll use either the tuning-fork or (if the battery's still good!), my TU-12.

I tune the Es and transfer that pitch to the C6th 2nd string. Some days, I need the tuner's help to get the 9th and 10th C6 strings in tune. That depends on the day.

As for the dratted G# strings on E9, I will always B-pedal them and get that A in tune with the E and B (pedals up and down). The degree of flatness without the B pedal? I tune it so my ear likes it. I don't really know how many cents flat it might be.

In the end, I suppose I don't have a system except to make my ears happy.

[Susan Alcorn]

For what it's worth, I tune my C6/9 straight up to 440.

If 3rds (E) and 6ths (A) are tuned flat, and the fifth (G) is slightly sharp, it will sound great if you're playing an open C chord, but if you're playing, for example an A, then the (flatted) A is the 1, the C (way sharp) is the 3, and the E is the 5.

But I also trust my ears, so at times I will tune the top E string down just a tiny bit until it sounds a little less harsh. I do this if I have to play open C triads in a piece. If not, I just slant my bar a little bit.

For E9th, which, sadly, I don't play that often anymore, I tune out the beats.

I hope this is helpful.

[J D Sauser]

I am amazed to see how state to have left E9th for C6th... I thought I was an exception.

This would have seemed unimaginable to hear only 20 years ago.

I still tune ET on C6th. I have too many changes which I want to be able to combine without "conflicts".

... J-D.

[Ian Rae]

I can't believe this thread is a year old! It seems like only last week that I was offering conjectures to the effect that if I still played a D10 I would tune the E9 in JI and the C6 in ET, and Susan is the latest of several to endorse that.

Because I play a B6/E9 uni I just assumed none of this applied, but this very afternoon I was touching up the tuning on my Williams (we've been having extreme hot weather) and having tuned all the open strings beatless as usual, just on a whim I tuned all the B6 changes using nothing more than the free tuner app on my phone.

The result is glittering! And the simple E9 chords remain simple and sonorous. Wish I'd thought to do it before
Thanks to JD for kicking this off, and to all who have pointed out what should have been obvious, that the complex chords that the C6 is designed to furnish cannot be constructed from natural intervals but found their way there from the (equally tempered) piano.

[Garry Vanderlinde]

On a piano, G# and Ab are on the same key. I believe most pianos are tuned ET? I didn’t realize meantone tuning results in this 30-cent clusterflock for what is essentially the same note. Good reason to avoid that tuning. You only use it on C6, b0b?

In meantone temperament, G# and Ab are closer together than they in in just intonation.

Sometimes I hate music.

[Ian Rae]

All of this stuff depends on the player holding the bar straight in the right place, and everyone else being able to tell.

Still love music

[J D Sauser]

I dabbled in piano as a teenager as I was a Jerry Lee Lewis and Ray Charles fan... I still am.
Anyways... it was the early 80's and digital (sampling) pianos had just come out and my mother suggested to get one of these (because one can turn down the volume, Ha!). The piano store also had a Wurlitzer 200 series standing around. I immediately gravitated to that thing.
I was then told that, while pianos are tuned basically "ET"... they would be somewhat "stretched"... meaning that the lowest and highest registers would be a tad sharpened, so they would stand out clearer. There are btw, MANY piano tuning schools, ideologies and styles and a long history of tuning development. I was then and there also told that electric pianos like a Wurlitzer or Rhodes were tune "straight" 440 reference ET. No "bend".
The sales person claimed one could hear that. I just felt that Wurly sounded much cooler and claimed that I could hear the "fakeness" out of that Clavinova (which I really believe I can). So, I waltzed out'a there schlepping that Wurly. I regret ever having sold it, but now I got a mid 50's one with the tube amp and it just plays "What'd I Say" by itself... almost.

I discovered "JI" long before I even knew what it was or really understood that there were different ways to tune and how or why.
When I got my first non-pedal steel, I tuned to an electronic needle tuner.
Somehow, I felt that I could tune the steel "better" without it... but the tuner would then read me "bad" tuning. So, without knowing I was tuning "JI" very early on. I must still today say, it's one of the "OMG" charms of steel guitar.
It took even many of us here on the forum many years, debates, insults and even death threats to finally learn WHAT was going on in JI and in ET and why PHYSICS an NOT "our ears" create the need for JI... but math the need for ET.
Imagine a JI fretboard (which key would you fancy to play in today? )!

When around 2001 I pretty much left "steel guitar" in my rear view mirror and then went to guitar, I could for quite some time hear that "stress" from the ET harmonies. Playing mostly antique French acoustic steel string guitars from the 30's thru the 70's... most made by Italian violin luthiers, I used a tuning technique I used to use on steel... tuning intervals at the 9th fret... so, that I'd get a tuning that was pretty much constant within my playing range (I still tune that way on the PSG now again).

I got several pianos in my houses and I really got used to the sound of ET... but it needs to be in tune!

So, coming back to PSG now just over 2 years ago... it was initially tuned E9/B6 universal. I immediately fell back into tuning JI. JI is sooo addictive, I think even someone who never dealt with it will get hooked on it on first trial!

But I could NOT get used to the "conflicts" and "mushy" chords from stacked changes. It makes me gag... physically! I can't stand it.
As I decided that my E9th times were over, I just tried to stick to ET.
I tried B0b's application of the Meantone tuning, and at first, I felt "oh, cool!", but as warned by B0b, I hit a huge conflict here and there. And evidently, on an instrument that modulates by the simple nudge of a metal bar to one or the other side, it's not just G#/Ab... it's EVERYONE of the 12 available degrees which can be a off by a 3rd of a semi-tone. Some pedal/lever combinations will just not work.

What I did was, to "study" a LOT on the piano. My then 9 year old kid was just starting, so I need to learn and experiment with things so I could show him and get started. And I used the piano to get my ears "in-tune" to the sound of ET.
I now feel "in-tune" playing my C6th ET. It's MUCH easier playing to rhythm tracks which are often in "absolute" tunes as most are now electronically generated.

Evidently, one still has to play in tune, and it's NOT all about playing with ones bar "straight"... actually, just like BE and LG often were quoted to have suggested, you need to know your "spots" and intervals you need to adjust for strings reacting differently to bar pressure (string/scale intonation)... one more reason why I tune at the 9th fret.

But playing in tune goes further than that. You may find bands with single-note instruments (winds) which will as a group form chords.... SOME tune amongst each others differently than others, and that depends much of what other instruments they are playing against. The steel player HAS to compensate to fit in (only the keys player cannot). Bass players, are a constant "issue" and often face the wrath of everybody for allegedly not playing in tune. And it IS painful when it indeed is the bass which is out of tune... EVERYBODY "fludders" until the bass player is being taken into the back alley.

JI players have to find a "golden medium" to fit in against a majority ET environment too.

and now I am not sure anymore what I was trying to say... J-D.

[Dale Rottacker]

and now I am not sure anymore what I was trying to say... J-D.

Maybe so, but so much of what you say resinates with me... I was doing that JI thing on E9th, because tuning to a piano or "straight up" just sounded horrible to me. I didn't know what JI was or what sweetened tuning was, but I was doing it none the less.

Someone here said something to the effect that on E9th tuning the "Country" stuff JI, and the C6thy stuff to ET. Thats something I'm going to try as large % of my E9th playing is Big 4 note 6thy type chords. That was something I hadn't considered before, but then I hadn't read JD's post on tuning C6th 440. I'll be curious how this mix and match method will work.

BTW, I normally avoid discussions on Tuning or Theory cause its mostly over my head anyhow, but this one, I keep coming back to and always pick up a nugget along the way.

[Henry Matthews]

I believe C6th can get away with 440 tuning somewhat but E9th will not work to my ears. I thought if it was good enough for Big E, was good enough for me but just will not work to my ears even with a band. I use tempered tuning with Es at 442 and tune every to Es with no wobbles.if I don’t do that, I fight tuning all night pianos aren’t straight 440 so why should a steel me. I guess bar technique could cover it some but 440 stinks, lol. If it works fot you, go for it. We all hear different.

[Ian Rae]

I agree. I did once tune my E9 to ET just to see what it was like and the answer was - unplayable! There was no right place to put the bar.

I'm a trombone player originally, and what attracted me to the pedal steel in the first place was the prospect of playing beatless chords unassisted by two or more pals.

I see now why we should favour different systems for the two necks (or in the case of a universal, the two sets of changes). The changes on the E9 neck move within the scale, and they produce simple diatonic chords all of which can be in tune if you lower the 7th string slightly when the A or C pedals are engaged. (That's an ageless mathematical thing - a law of physics, not a limitation of the instrument.)

The C6 changes, on the other hand, take us out of the scale to produce the kind of chords that have been developed by tinkering at the keyboard and ET is the only way to replicate that. Once you get out of simple 7ths and 9ths into any kind of altered chords, they can't be built from natural intervals.

[J D Sauser]

I think that what I was trying to say... WAS... ehm...

That it is ear/brain training. Just like most of us manage to go thru live without crack cocaine, ET is the pitch environment most grow into... util a snake salesman drops a steel guitar on your door step and one day one discovers the sweetness of JI... which is unique to very very few instruments and on the spot as addictive as crack... and difficult to get away from.

BUT... let's say a "Jerry Byrd"-style player would tune ET... when playing alone WHAT would he tune his slants to? Ha!

BE and so many who claimed to have tuned "straight" up (while often admitting to then have just "tuned" down "ever so slightly"), made a living of playing in ET-band environments and/or against tracks. Tuning ET would SEEM to have made sense because if they'd play beat-free JI-harmonies, against an ET environment they WOULD generate beats (sounding out of tune) unless one would slant or bar pressure these harmonies OUT of JI into the surrounding ET. And then, the ET folks like guitars, basses, strings in general and even winds tend NOT to be exactly in tune. That's why 20 violins playing in unison sound different than 1.

Now, I've never sat at one of BE's guitars. But I have sat at a few other name players' guitars and some felt "out of tune" to ME. But THEY l play them and sound awesome. I've strummed over guitars and shuddered, and they could play out of it to make your hair stand up like my neighborhood's woodpecker's crest while he admires his mirrored reflection off my bathroom window.

Maurice Anderson who told me that he would NOT believe the claim that BE was tuning "straight up", tuned JI like I did... but the few times I played his non-pedal Boen or MSA PSG's, I felt like tuning some. but I evidently abstained .

I was criticized for saying that I perceive much of Curly Chalker's C6th playing, while interesting and often mind boggling, as not in tune ("how dare you say CC played out of tune.... that's NOT what I said). But I find his E9th playing some of the "sweetest". I do NOT know how CC tuned. I only know that he had a very complex C6th setup which gave him access to many stacked pedal-lever combinations.

I remember that when I tuned my back then "basic" C6th tuning JI, I could NOT stand the P5&P6 diminished (and mind you, minor thirds are less altered than major thirds (augmented chords are a JI NIGHTMARE!)).
Now, I can... and to backup they sound GOOD and even "sweet".

Maybe it's all the woodpecker's fault. I don't even know how he came into this... but I tell you, sometimes it's like he's EVERYWHERE!

'nough of that!... J-D.

[Detlef Webert]

Gentlemen,
perhaps I missed something.
What are those abbreviations MT, ET, Ji .. ?

Regards,

[J D Sauser]

Gentlemen,
perhaps I missed something.
What are those abbreviations MT, ET, Ji .. ?

Regards,

JI = Just Intonation. “Sweet” thirds. Minor thirds are tuned slightly sharp, Major thirds noticeably flat to meet the naturally occurring JI harmonics from the underlining root. Physics creates JI because overtones/harmonics occur by FRACTIONS of string lengths as opposed to an even increment algorhythm. JI is the absence of temperament, but it can create issues, like a stack of slightly sharpened thirds (four to a diminished chord) or noticeably flattened Major thirds (three to an augmented chord) will result in a summed up mismatch at the octave (the octave will be sharp or respectively flat) . Issues also occur with b7ths which are a minor third over the natural 5th and natural 9ths which are a Major third over the b7th... and as chord become more complicated it get’s even more problematic and defying the purpose of JI.
On a PEDAL steel, some pulls like E9th’s “A”-Pedal will be tuned noticeably flat to create the Major third of the A&B-down A6th chord. BUT alone it can create the root to the C#-minor chord and with the with the E-to-F raise lever (which raises C# minor third degree to a Major third). But that C# root will be flat by 12 cents... so, the F, which NOW is the Major third needs to be another 12cents flatter relative to that flattened root... certifiably “out of tune”. Now you may raise that combination back near “real world” with your bar. BUT what if you want to use the E-to-F lever to create a dom.7th... or want to use it on top of A&B down to create an "Augmented"? That pull now IS standing out uncomfortably flat in relation to the rest of the chord.

ET = Equal Temperament (a fretboard is ET, most tuners are ET. It’s a mathematical compromise). Natural fifths/fourts are ALMOST (*) pure because the scale fractions which make them occur naturally ALMOST(*) match a mathematical even algorhythm increment (like your fretboard is calculated). Minor thirds will have some “beating” and Major thirds will sound noticeably harsh/sharp.
(*) our landlord B0b just pointed out to me that in ET 4ths/5ths are NOT really pure but off by 2 cents! So, I corrected my wording from "are pure" to "ALMOST pure".

MT = Mean Tone (Temperament). While in ET, natural fifths/fourths are still “pure”. MT “detunes” THESE sligthly to render adjusting thirds closer to agradable less “out of tune”. However, that method too can lead to a compounded mismatch.
B0b may correct me here as he has a much deeper understanding of MT (and he did). Again, B0b worked out an MT concept he feels works for him, and he has shared insight about it this thread and in earlier discussions as well as this page: https://b0b.com/wp/articles/a-well-tempered-c6th/

edited for corrections suggested and typos.
I just tried to answer a simple question with too many words, as usual ... JD