"Tuning Tips & Tuners" A new Paper

[Tom Bradshaw]

I have completed another FREE paper. Check it out at www.songwriter.com/bradshaw/chord_construction.php

I encourage all to read it, thus allowing me to show you what "perpetual boredom" feels like! I'm working on other papers to extend that boredom to insanity. ...Tom

[Dan Kelly]

Well, I got to page 24 before my brain broke.

Anybody do any better?

[Tom Bradshaw]

Why did you read that many pages before taking a break? You were just getting to the good part. Pages 25 thru 50 are "the best yet to come." Take a break at the next great tune provided and chill a bit! It will act as a "brain-repairer." ...Tom

[Dan Kelly]

Hey Tom!

Seriously, I'm lovin your write up. So far, your document is laying a great foundation for the topic and I can't wait to get through it.

Man, thanks for putting all of the time and effort into this. It is a major contribution to the PSG community!

[Lary Marshall]

Tom
Thanks for a fun paper. Not only did I make it through to the end, I veered off onto a few side tracks on equal temperament tuning. I’m currently working my way through your chord construction paper now. Another well thought out paper.
Thanks for your work on this.

[Lary Marshall]

Tom
Thanks for a fun paper. Not only did I make it through to the end, I veered off onto a few side tracks on equal temperament tuning. I’m currently working my way through your chord construction paper now. Another well thought out paper.
Thanks for your work on this.

[Phil Kennelty]

Not entirely through the article but it makes good sense. I'm new to Steel but have played 12-string guitar for decades. The problems of tempered tuning exist on the 12-string too because of the octave strings and the overtones. I generally fine tune to the key I am playing in. Better to have the One chord truly in tune. Of course it means fine-tuning before each song.

[Ron Pruter]

Tom, thanks for the hard work. One issue I found. Re:chimes
The harmonic found on the 4th fret is a 3rd not a fifth as stated.

[John McClung]

Not entirely through the article but it makes good sense. I'm new to Steel but have played 12-string guitar for decades. The problems of tempered tuning exist on the 12-string too because of the octave strings and the overtones. I generally fine tune to the key I am playing in. Better to have the One chord truly in tune. Of course it means fine-tuning before each song.

A hidden benefit of the pedal steel guitar is that you get the open strings in tune for the key of E, with slightly flatter thirds which match the 9th fret harmonic on string 8 (and sound better in major triads), the low E, and when you move that tempered chord to other frets and keys, those flattened thirds are still "sweetened" major 3rds everywhere on the neck. Fretted instruments are at a disadvantage in this regards, thus Equal Temperament tuning!

[John McClung]

Not entirely through the article but it makes good sense. I'm new to Steel but have played 12-string guitar for decades. The problems of tempered tuning exist on the 12-string too because of the octave strings and the overtones. I generally fine tune to the key I am playing in. Better to have the One chord truly in tune. Of course it means fine-tuning before each song.

A hidden benefit of the pedal steel guitar is that you get the open strings in tune for the key of E, with slightly flatter thirds which match the 9th string harmonic on string 8 and sound better in major triads), the low E, and when you move that tempered chord to other frets and keys, those flattened thirds are still major 3rds everywhere on the neck. Fretted instruments are at a disadvantage in this regards, thus Equal Temperament tuning!

[Darrell Criswell]

My question for Tom and anyone else. I read (but didn't fully understand) the section on piano tuning which I assume is for a mechanical piano. What about a keyboard whose sounds are generated electronically, is it just temperament? And what about an electronic steel guitar that you can do whatever you want to with. Seems the person whose music is cited as an example of just temperament is Wendy Carlos (formerly Walter Carlos) who did the album Switched on Bach.

[Tom Bradshaw]

Darrell. Standard pianos are tuned to a Tempered tuning. I don't know how electronic keyboards are tuned. Maybe others here on the Forum will have the answer. A Google search surely has the answer, but dadburn it, I'm too busy to look up the answer.

[Darrell Criswell]

My question for Tom and anyone else. I read (but didn't fully understand) the section on piano tuning which I assume is for a mechanical piano. What about a keyboard whose sounds are generated electronically, is it just temperament? And what about an electronic steel guitar that you can do whatever you want to with. Seems the person whose music is cited as an example of just temperament is Wendy Carlos (formerly Walter Carlos) who did the album Switched on Bach.

When I said "just" I meant "equal"

[Ricky Davis]

WOW Tom; you continue to be a huge GIFT to Steel Players in this world. YOU'DA MAN!!!
Ricky

[Earnest Bovine]

I don't know how electronic keyboards are tuned.

They all default to equal temperament. But since about the time you last saw Halley's comet, most of them offer a choice of historical temperaments. For example my Roland has Equal, Just Major, Just Minor, Pythagorean, Kirnberger I, Kirnberger II, Kirnberger III, Meantone, Werckmeister, Arabic). And many of them allow you to tune each note to whatever you want.

[Tom Bradshaw]

I took the time and found a few explanations that might add some clarity to the various posts here. These quotations were taken from Wikipedia (not the ultimate authority on anything, but close to it). Each quote is an opening paragraph of topics mentioned by the Forum posters. To paraphrase what I said in my paper, you could spend the rest of your miserable musical life reading about tuning.

Wikipedia says that in Western musical practice (not speaking of “country” music), bowed instruments such as violins, violas, cellos, and double basses are tuned using pure fifths or fourths (whoever wrote this apparently didn’t hear about a pedal steel!). In contrast, keyboard instruments are rarely tuned using only pure intervals. The desire to play in different keys and have identical intervals makes this impractical. Some instruments with fixed pitches, including electric pianos, are commonly tuned using equal temperament, in which all intervals other than octaves consist of irrational frequency ratios. Acoustic pianos are usually tuned with the octaves slightly widened, and thus with no pure intervals at all.

Just Intonation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just Intonation): In music, just intonation or pure intonation is the tuning of musical intervals as whole number ratios (such as 3:2 or 4:3) of frequencies. An interval tuned in this way is said to be pure, and is called a just interval. Just intervals (and chords created by combining them) consist of tones from a single harmonic series of an implied fundamental. For example, in the diagram, if the notes G3 and C4 (labeled 3 and 4) are tuned as members of the harmonic series of the lowest C, their frequencies will be 3 and 4 times the fundamental frequency. The interval ratio between C4 and G3 is therefore 4:3, a just fourth.

Equal Temperament Tuning (from Wikipedia): An equal temperament is a musical temperament or tuning system, which approximates just intervals by dividing an octave (or other interval) into equal steps. This means the ratio of the frequencies of any adjacent pair of notes is the same, which gives an equal perceived step size as pitch is perceived roughly as the logarithm of frequency. [The following is of interest when comparing piano’s tuning to a pedal steel’s.]

The Railsback Curve (from Wikipedia): This “curve” was first measured by O.L. Railsback, and expresses the difference between normal piano tuning and an equal-tempered scale (one in which the frequencies of successive notes are related by a constant ratio, equal to the twelfth root of two). For any given note on the piano, the deviation between the normal pitch of that note and its equal-tempered pitch is given in cents (hundredths of a semitone).
As the Railsback curve shows, octaves are normally stretched on a well-tuned piano. That is, the high notes are higher, and the low notes lower, than they are in an equal-tempered scale. Railsback discovered that pianos were typically tuned in this manner not because of a lack of precision, but because of inharmonicity in the strings. Ideally, the overtone series of a note consists of frequencies that are integer multiples of the note's fundamental frequency. Inharmonicity as present in piano strings makes successive overtones higher than they "should" be.
If Forum readers thoroughly understand all of this, you’re ahead of me. ...Tom

[Ben Lawson]

Thank you Tom.