The Steel Guitar Forum

Bob Snelgrove wrote:

Lane Gray wrote: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

HUH? What I tried to say was, in its shortest form, was:
It doesn't matter which. Great players have used any method you can think of and sound good. Mediocre players have managed to sound mediocre in every single tuning scheme. Find a tuning that sounds good to you, and let your ears guide your hands as you play. With ears and judgment, you can make nearly anything work (so long as you don't sharp the thirds, that just sounds evil)

Lane Gray wrote:

Bob Snelgrove wrote:

Lane Gray wrote: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

HUH? What I tried to say was, in its shortest form, was:
It doesn't matter which. Great players have used any method you can think of and sound good. Mediocre players have managed to sound mediocre in every single tuning scheme. Find a tuning that sounds good to you, and let your ears guide your hands as you play. With ears and judgment, you can make nearly anything work (so long as you don't sharp the thirds, that just sounds evil)

This is funny. You still didn't answer the question: Have you tried it live with a full band?

Bob Snelgrove wrote: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

Actually, I've tried it and failed to get the instrument in tune. Cabinet drop always gets the best of me. If I tune the A and C# to 0 on the meter, the E will be at -5 or worse when I press the pedals. What's your secret?

I think that on most pedal steels, it's simply impossible to tune them to equal temperament. The physical properties of the instrument don't allow it.

b0b wrote:

Bob Snelgrove wrote: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

Actually, I've tried it and failed to get the instrument in tune. Cabinet drop always gets the best of me. If I tune the A and C# to 0 on the meter, the E will be at -5 or worse when I press the pedals. What's your secret?

I think that on most pedal steels, it's simply impossible to tune them to equal temperament. The physical properties of the instrument don't allow it.

No secret, bob. I suffer from severe cab drop, too ( Day setup)

Do you use compensators? I don't see how you could get a steel with significant cab drop to play in ET without them.

It seems to me that most of these tuning threads lump two different issues into one discussion. They need to be dealt with separately IMO.

Issue 1) cabinet drop. I think most who tune straight up without compensators adjust for the cabinet drop when pedals are depressed. This attempts (imperfectly) to keep all the strings in equal temprament to each other, but slightly flat to the no-pedal position - so a slight adjust to the bar corrects it. As Buddy E said: "I tempered my tuning until 1985. Since then I've been using equal tempered tuning, or as equal as the physics of the guitar will allow." http://www.buddyemmons.com/ABArchive3.htm#temptune

Issue 2) the problems faced by any instrument that plays in multiple keys - I find that with sweetened tunings, "sweetening" them for one frequently-used position makes them sound even worse in a different pedal/fret combination. Most often, the major chord using the A pedal and E-raise lever becomes gratingly harsh. The whole point of ET is to try to even things out so everything is close, no matter what key and what position or pedal combination is used. How successful it is certainly can be debated.

b0b wrote:Folks, that was in 1977! Today...

... it's 1777. A bunch of piano players are sitting around trying to figure it out. 'They always have,' said the Tralfamadorian observing them, 'we've always let them,' quoth Kurt Vonnegut Jr. in Slaughterhouse Five.

They have no electricity; they count beats, deviations from 'justly' intoned notes in cycles per second, and eventually achieve a standard they consider equal for everybody.
Piano players no longer have to tune their own pianos and an entire profession is created.

So naturally, I tuned my first steel in equal temperament, and it was quickly apparent that I didn't have to since it wasn't a piano. A piano has eighty-eight keys; this guitar only had ten! and they all could be turned by hand and endlessly corrected without fear of wearing out the holes in the soundboard.

Tuning a pedal steel uses deviations away from that standard to achieve a different sound. It makes sense to express that in cents, a finer scale than Hz. You can talk about it in cents, and you can't in Hz deviation from 440 as an 'offset'--it's not a true or real picture of sound. The picture that gets painted is like looking at the Big Dipper and thinking that all the stars are equidistant from me; the picture is only a plan, how it looks from one dimension.

You can narrow a third from standard or widen a fifth, rounding or sweetening the sound as you like it, and it's done by ear.

if he's playing a realistic piano...

I played in a band that used a Realistic piano. The band had more beats than a fifties' coffee house. So does a symphony, yet still we hear the notes.

A piano tuner lives by tuning in what he'd tune out, whatever noise interferes. So do all ears; it's an individual thing.

Douglas Schuch, I disagree with you on #2. If your A and C#m chords are tuned justly, adjusting the F lever to get a sweet C# major chord is not difficult at all. I have tuned to many different temperaments, and the A+F position is always usable, never grating.

You don't have to play in all keys at every fret, either. In most steel guitar tuning schemes, It's hard to play an in-tune G major chord at the 7th fret, even though all of the notes are technically there. But there are G major chords at 6th and 8th fret that sound just fine. Yes, the tuning method may have ruined the G chord at the 7th fret, but did you really need that option?

Typically, a non-ET tuning method will give you 8 or 9 in-tune frets for each key signature. There will be 3 frets that you generally avoid for the 7 basic chords in any diatonic scale. It's easier to move to an adjacent fret for a more common and better sounding chord position.

I'm not Buddy Emmons. At my level of playing, I don't need to have every chord under the sun at every fret. That's why a sweetened tuning works well for me.

Oh man. Leon I’m going to have to get some more info here. 🤔