The Steel Guitar Forum

The only thing I have to offer on this subject is an observation my buddy and I made while sitting on the first row at an Asleep-At-the-Wheel concert. The Bass player had a DRT-1 tuner sitting on top of his amp in plain view. The two things that impressed me was; 1. His 1st and 5th notes on a 4/4 song would consistently flash Green which indicates "in tune". 2. His 3rd tone would consistently flash red just below the green “in tune” light. His bass was an electric, upright fretless. This left me with two conclusions. The young man is a very good bass player and he likes to hear his 3rd tones flat like many of us. We were lucky enough to talk to Cindy Cashdollar while she was tuning up before the show. We asked her how she tuned, ET or JI? She smiled and said, “with four fretless instruments on the band stand, it really doesn’t matter how you tune”.

Dave Birket asked, "Is the crux of this issue the difficulty of playing our quite-capable-of-being-well-tuned steels with almost-impossible-to-tune six-string guitars?"

Dave, I'm afraid playing with six-stringers and keyboards is only part of the problem. As long as on our steels we only play straight major and minor triads from one or two root strings (e.g., the open pedal position and the AB pedals down position), we can fairly easily tune JI. But once you start playing from more root strings, as you do when you use the A pedal and F lever, even our beloved pedal steels run into problems, and some tempering, or at least bar adjustment, is required, as Larry Bell has discussed. The reason is that the string, pedal or knee you tuned to a pleasingly flat JI 3rd is no longer the 3rd, but is now an unpleasingly flat 5th or root, and the whatever you previously tuned to a perfect root or 5th (which means ET A440) is now unpleasingly sharp (for JI) 3rd.

And on C6 and Universal setups there are so many ways to play chords that a good deal of tempering is required, and some people just say to hell with it and tune everything ET. On my E9 and Universal I prefer to tune the basic E9 stuff JI (by ear), but on some of the extra strings (those not part of the open or AB pedal chords), pedals and knees I will make some tempering compromises by ear. ET or close to it works pretty well for C6/B6 copedents, and also on E9 on the parts of the copedent used for dissonant chords like 9ths, augmenteds, diminished, etc. You don't notice the ET dissonance so much when the chord is dissonant to begin with. The more we add to the copedent, the more like piano tuners we have to become.

Ideally one would tune to the compromises one likes while alone, then note where those are on your chromatic meter, so that you can tune to that by the meter on a gig, where you can hardly ever have the time and quietness needed to tune everything by ear.

There's no right way to do all this, it's all in how your own ears (and listners' ears) react to your own particular copedent, and how you use it to get the type of harmonies you usually play with.

Finally, vocalists, string and horn players cover up a lot of these JI vs. ET problems with vibrato, and so do steel players, and even six-stringers.

THE best seminar I have ever attended on JI vs ET training used a big Martin D-45 (I believe it was). The instructor's first thing was to strum that big open E chord. And it was incredibly beautiful to all who heard it.

Then the instructor said, listen to this. He then strummed an open C chord. And oh my, how awful it was. The instructor mimicked what many have said (or heard) over the years with the following statement,

"Sumthuns wrong wid this git' tar!!. They musta putt tha frets on wrong!", Along with a few more "good ole boy" euphamisms.

Then the instructor (wisely) spent the next hour and a half, showing AND proving WHY, the E Chord and the C chord can NEVER be tuned JI symultaneously. He did this by retuning the guitar to make the C chord sound beautiful and of course the E chord sounded horrible. Along with several more very lucid and appropo demonstrations.

Then the instructor went on to show us how to get the best compromise. He said,

"Widen your fifths* and narrow your fourths* just a little". And as he did this, his E chord AND his C chord sounded pleasing symultaneously, albeit neither chord was as pretty (to most of our ears) as it was by doing this widening and narrowing thingy.

This of course just typifies the age old battle of the regular guitarist. It even affected the late and great Chet Atkins, because he was heard many time to blare out the following frustration,

IF I ever get this git' tar in tune, I'm gonna solder it!!"

Course, in 17e zillion years, he, nor anyone else is EVER going to get a guitar "in tune". It is not going to happen. At least it is not going to happen as long as man uses the most inneficient testing device ever created.

The human ear!

* The instructor used widening and narrowing incorrectly in his anaology. Technically he was correct, musically he was incorrect. He should have said "Widen the 4ths, and narrow the 5ths a little bit."

Bless his heart, his error was a result in using the E note in reference to B rather than using the B note in reference to an E. The reason for this is. We were talking about an E chord, NOT a B chord.

The other interesting thing was, what the instructor possibly did not know (although he may have), was narrowing the 5ths (which is the SAME as widening the 4ths) just so happens to be ET!!.

enuff said.

carl