Tuning 440?

[Earnest Bovine]

but I think a lot of people understood what I meant.

I understand too of course. "Tune my thirds flat" means something like tune E B A to straight up on the meter, tune G# and C# to about -10 or -14 cents on the meter. The problem occurs on your 2nd or 3rd day of playing pedal steel, when you notice that there are more strings besides G# E B, and that the 2 pedals are not welded together but can in fact be operated independently.

At least I didn't say "I tune my thirds to 439 Hz".

It's amazing how many players tune all their strings to A.

[Wayne Ledbetter]

Can somebody help me out? There is so data here. Do not all the notes have unique frequency? When we sat we are tuning to A 440, we are saying what? G# is approximately 415.3? I wish I understood better.

[Earnest Bovine]

Can somebody help me out? There is so data here. Do not all the notes have unique frequency? When we sat we are tuning to A 440, we are saying what? G# is approximately 415.3? I wish I understood better.

Yes, you are right; each note has its own frequency and your G# is OK. When we describe our tunings we almost never use the exact frequency, except for the starting point A 440 or 441 or whatever.
The other notes we describe by how many cents they are from Equal Temperament. That's what we read on the tuning meters.

[Bob Snelgrove]

OK, I just took out the Emmons PP guitar and will attmpt to get it in tune.

Good luck with that, Doug

[Earnest Bovine]

I can't get this darn thing in tune and the plain 6th string is not helping so I am going to take a break. It's a nice warm day and the pool is up to 67 so I will do some laps and try to burn off some fat before the chill sets in.

[Dan Fullmer]

I like the term used earlier in this topic, "micro slant". Due to the angle of the forearm and action of the wrist joint (or lack thereof), if not corrected, means higher up the neck = positive bar angle and lower on the neck = negative bar angle, again if not corrected. It can't always be seen but sure can be heard. No matter how well my steel is tuned, it doesn't take much micro slant to destroy that perfect intonation. It takes three things to solve this problem... Ears Ears and Ears.

[Dan Fullmer]

Oh, I forgot vibrato. Four things.

[Bob Snelgrove]

I can't get this darn thing in tune and the plain 6th string is not helping so I am going to take a break. It's a nice warm day and the pool is up to 67 so I will do some laps and try to burn off some fat before the chill sets in.

Doug,

There's plenty of help here for you newbies. Just keep asking!

bob

[Lane Gray]

Can somebody help me out? There is so data here. Do not all the notes have unique frequency? When we sat we are tuning to A 440, we are saying what? G# is approximately 415.3? I wish I understood better.

Wayne, ONE MODEL of tuner many years ago had two scopes the needle moved across, both cents and in "Hertz deviation from A=440."
So you tuned yourG# to where it sounds good, and the sensible scale read -8 cents, but a scale with gibberish in the reasoning behind it said" 438."
Unfortunately, the most influential pedal steel teacher EVER, and a damn fine player too, preferred the utterly nonsensical scale. Despite the fact that most other tuners didn't have that scale. And more than a decade after his death, people still use his chart (which makes sense) and its terms (which don't).

[Les Cargill]

There are calculators online for doing conversions at least from two frequencies to cents.

440 to 441.5 works out to 5.891896948567587 cents according to one ( my that's a lot of digits... ) . If you have a chart, it wouldn't take too long to calculate all the offsets and write them in.

http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-centsratio.htm

c = 1200 × log2 (f2 / f1)

There's a lot of stuff on that page.

[Dale Rottacker]

Maybe it’s just me, and maybe cause I’m a little thick...But I’ve never liked the tuning method of 435.5/438/440/442...And which tuner’s will actually show you these number’s while you’re turning the tuning peg...wouldn’t it be simpler and to me it’s more visual, to use 440 as the base for everything and then cents +/- of that?...I’ve always thought of 440 as the universal standard...so 434 is how many cents south of that and 442.5 is how many north?...Just a ramble.

[Les Cargill]

Dale, you can answer those questions directly at the link.

There is a simple ( to me, anyway ) formula.

[Lane Gray]

Dale, I discard all Hertz-based charts as nonsense. Since each step in the vicinity of 440 is close to 4 cents, 442.5 is about ten cents sharp and 434 is around 24 cents flat.
Every tuner with a Hertz scale has a cents scale; the reverse is not true. If someone talks to me in Hertz deviation from A 440, I will reply in cents if I'm feeling normal: if I'm in a wicked mood, I'll answer in actual frequency now that I have a tuner that displays those.

[Dale Rottacker]

Dale, you can answer those questions directly at the link.

There is a simple ( to me, anyway ) formula.

Thanks Les...there is a lot of information there to digest...but the Table of Cents Difference near the bottom of the page is kind of what I was referring to in my poor communicative way...that to me is more useful than knowing all the Hz...For tuning simplicity I want to know the offsets from “A” standard.

Dale, I discard all Hertz-based charts as nonsense. Since each step in the vicinity of 440 is close to 4 cents, 442.5 is about ten cents sharp and 434 is around 24 cents flat.
Every tuner with a Hertz scale has a cents scale; the reverse is not true. If someone talks to me in Hertz deviation from A 440, I will reply in cents if I'm feeling normal: if I'm in a wicked mood, I'll answer in actual frequency now that I have a tuner that displays those.

Lane you said much more eloquently than I what I was trying to say...Last night I retuned my steel to Jeff Newman’s setting in with the StroboPlus HD...Up until last week I never had a tuner this fancy or high tech, so all I had was a needle showing cents., (almost sounds like “A Needle Sewing Thread”... ) so back in the day when Jeff came out with his tuning with Hz everywhere in the chart, it was very difficult for me to make sense of it...when I found Buddy’s tuning, which I since have learned was really not, it was done in cents and I was able to tune with a tuner...I don’t mind tuning by ear and ultimately I guess even the fancy StroboPlus HD is just something to confirm visually what your ear is perceiving...But as I stated earlier, the cents “offset” from 440, to me is the easiest way to tune.

[Les Cargill]

Dale, there's also a calculator pretty close to the top. Enter 440 and 441.5 and you get 5.8.... cents.

You're not constrained to only using the table at the bottom.

[Lane Gray]

Dale, there are at least two or three factors at work in every tuning chart:
1: Not everyone prefers the sound of JI chords (Buddy Emmons says JI thirds sound nasty flat to him. I will pass on correcting him)
2: Each guitar has a different amount of cabinet drop.
3: Once you get past 1, 3, 5 you start having to make choices; do I want the F# to be 5 of B, 4 of C#, 3 of D?

Because of these, I recommend everyone: tune their Es to a tuner; tune the guitar by ear to what pleases them; and with the tuner set to ET, write down the deviation for each note, and; since it is nice to have the ability to tune in silence, program those values into your tuner. Or just make a chart and tune notes to the right deviation.

[Dale Rottacker]

I agree Lane....I will say that tuning my new guitar to Jeff's as programmed into the Stroboplus seems to sound good in every combination.

[Bill Moore]

I will say that tuning my new guitar to Jeff's as programmed into the Stroboplus seems to sound good in every combination.

And that's really all anyone needs to know. It's silly to argue about the actual frequencies of notes, when all you are trying to do is tune your guitar. The display on any given tuner is irrelevant, as long as the person reading it understands how it relates to getting the guitar in tune. Make it simple, use the Newman tuning chart.

[Bob Snelgrove]

Did anyone answer my question regarding actually playing straight up live with a band. We can do math all day long but the real world ???


bob

[b0b]

My marimba is tuned to A=442. When we record with it, the guitar players recalibrate their tuners to A=442. Imagine what happens to your steel guitar charts then, if you don't use the "cents off" method.

The purpose of the 440 scale is calibration. It's not intended to be used for tuning. The early electronic tuners didn't have a cents scale, which is why Jeff Newman, Tom Bradshaw and others used the 440-based numbers in the early charts.

Folks, that was in 1977! Today, virtually all electronic tuners have the cents scale on them. Cents are measurements of 1/100th of an equally tempered semitone. It's the standard measurement of differences in musical pitch. Using the A note calibration numbers to fine tune your guitar makes no sense.

Lastly, to answer Bob Snelgrove's question, why would I torture myself trying to play an equally tempered pedal steel with a band? The tempering of the other stringed instruments (guitars, bass, fiddle, mandolin) is virtually random. They say they're tuned to ET, but check half a dozen notes and you'll find at least 10 cents of variation. The electronic keyboard is the only instrument that is actually ET, and if he's playing a realistic piano or Hammond sound, even that doesn't hold true.

The best approach is to get your instrument reasonably in tune with itself, and then use your ears to play in tune with the band.

[Lane Gray]

Bob, it really comes down, like all the other tuning threads, to being able to play in tune.
You can find people who play with others sweetened and sound in tune, straight up ET and play with others in tune (Buddy), and you can find people who tune straight up and can't play with others and you can find people who tune sweetened and can't play in tune with others.
You have to align your ears and your hands.

[Bob Snelgrove]

Bob, it really comes down, like all the other tuning threads, to being able to play in tune.
You can find people who play with others sweetened and sound in tune, straight up ET and play with others in tune (Buddy), and you can find people who tune straight up and can't play with others and you can find people who tune sweetened and can't play in tune with others.
You have to align your ears and your hands.

I'd love to try it but it's a pain to tune it back and forth.

Lazy me

[Tom Gorr]

The electronic keyboard is the only instrument that is actually ET, and if he's playing a realistic piano or Hammond sound, even that doesn't hold true.

Having played a piano since I was a kid, playing a keyboard set to a piano patch sounds sterile and flat by comparison. A stretched tuning on a piano does magic for it.

As for tuning steel, I haven't spent a lot of time trying every tuning out there, but with some basic learning over the years, I believe there's a sweet spot where the guitar seems to come alive, and it ain't ET.

If you want a tuning that sounds right to the ear, tune it by ear. I mostly do that and live with the results happily enough, although there is a lingering desire to analyze the crap out of it.

[Bob Snelgrove]

Lastly, to answer Bob Snelgrove's question, why would I torture myself trying to play an equally tempered pedal steel with a band? The tempering of the other stringed instruments (guitars, bass, fiddle, mandolin) is virtually random. They say they're tuned to ET, but check half a dozen notes and you'll find at least 10 cents of variation. The electronic keyboard is the only instrument that is actually ET, and if he's playing a realistic piano or Hammond sound, even that doesn't hold true.

Funny; everyone say's how horrible it PROBABLY would be but no one says they tried it and hated it! I'm sure I would hate it too but playing straight up with band in the box felt (sounded) right. Maybe the computer is totally different?

bob

[Jim Bates]

I'm glad we have settled that!

Just avoid when possible open strings,and move your bar until it sounds in tune. (Which is easy to say, but difficult to do.)

Thanx,
Jim