The Steel Guitar Forum

Hmmmm,

Let me put up one of the cuts I've recorded....

just a minute...


Am I in tune?

Yes!
no...
Yes!
no...
Yes!
no.....
Yes!
no...

Darn, I knew I shouldn't have used vibrato...

------------------
www.tyack.com

Here is a very simple way for any one who does not understand what temper tuning is to learn it.Not to bog it down in theory,if you have a good ear and or the ones who have perfect pitch ear try this if you can make simple chords on a standard guitar.Tune to a simple open A,E or what ever.Do this by ear.Now play an open chord C.You will notice the 3rd string sounds flat in the key of C.Bring it up in c so it sounds in tune.Now made an open D.You will notice the 3rd string now sounds sharp.So you tune the 3rd string some where in the middle so it doesn't sound too far out in C or D. .You just learn to live with never being in perfect tune.Thats temper tuning.Thought i would throw this in.Now any one is welcome to throw it back out.Only trying to help.Tracy

<SMALL>Is it possible to train oneself to ET playing along with thousands of times of playing...</SMALL>

What's Ernest Tubb got to do with it ??!

Terry

Well Jim, as one hijacker to another, it would have to sense whether the chord was major or minor, and/or out of the harmonized scale, as a Major 2 3 6 or other accidental, and then use the proper beatless chord. Already, it is claimed, a bar does this without such education.

Compensation, tempered adjustments, or elimination of "problematic" points has not been shown to work completely at this time however. Nor does it change the pitches of the instruments that play with them in today's ensembles.

The machine would also have to have an aparatus to keep other instruments from playing notes that were not in the beatless scale being used unless they were beatless instruments too. Maybe with electric shocks delivered to the other musicians that played them.

THEN the machine would have to automatically intone all single notes as to their substitution value within the chord usage in the "song". And in scales up and down the neck.

I'd think that a better bet would be a machine that kept all notes within 5 cents of their ET value, on all strings, changes, and with fretboards that were layed out strictly logarithmically. (sp)


I have one.


It would take a few years' time to learn to play them that way, or learn to expect to hear them that way, but less time than trying to match a 30cent deficit in a "tuning scheme", learning the omission patterns in linear scales or substitutions, or building a machine that would do all the above mentioned.

They can make a machine for just about anything though..



EJL

Those are all good points Eric, but that's assuming we want the device to make the steel sound "right", with no beats, right? Suppose it cranked out all the notes with the same pitches as you'd find on an average midi keyboard, (if the player is right over the fret) with none of the adjustments commonly made for pedal steel?

I'm not suggesting someone should build one and that it would cure the tuning issue, just curious about the hypothetical question of if it were possible, what notes would it be tuned to, and how it would sound.<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Jim Phelps on 26 April 2005 at 09:14 PM.]</p></FONT>

Hmm.. If by notes commonly played on "Midi" I'm pretty sure they are on twelve equal tones unless qualified as "beatless" in two or more. Then, I don't know how the do it. I know you'd have to program "usage". I know I've seen a computer program for electronic keyboards that were limited in this manner on single notes.

Otherwise, as a common "midi" twelve note system being 'straight up' you'd have a pretty strange machine with beats..

Then you'd have a guitar that was tuned straight up, with all the changes tuned straight up, with minimal cabinet drop, played by a person that was used to hearing and playing it that way, "guided" if you will, by a fretboard that was layed out in a true mathematical logrithmically correct manner.

Wait a minute!

There's one three feet away from me!

Time to turn it on.


EJL <font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Eric West on 26 April 2005 at 09:29 PM.]</p></FONT>

Eric:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:</font><HR><SMALL>
train your ear; and that is by working long and hard with a fixed constant TONE.
</SMALL><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
....and you asked

<SMALL>Does a person train their ears by playing along thousands of times with people or instruments that don't flat their thirds 15 cents and learn to instinctively flat them?</SMALL>

See my above quote.
Then you asked>
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:</font><HR><SMALL>Is it possible to train oneself to ET playing along with thousands of times of playing with instruments that tune that way?
</SMALL><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
See my above quote again.
Yes Tuning your own steel does help in training ones ear; but not to ones playing ear> Only helps in training the ear to tune. But to play in tune; one has to progress in hearing intonation; and that starts with hearing a fixed tone and playing your tone with it and then you progress from there. If you want to know the progression(eventhough you said you already know the answers for your own self); I will and can teach you if you want to learn. But I get 50 dollars for formal one on one steel guitar lesson(which I don't teach steel guitar privately anymore so that's out)or I get 85 dollars an hours for Teaching Golf lessons(which I currently do and would rather teach; and will give a steel playing brother a 50% discount..ha).
So Eric; were you asking me those questions, so I would answer for other folks to read and learn from; or were you asking because you would really like to know??(eventhough you do know the answers for yourself).
Ricky

No, and I appreciate the offer, but I know them for myself.

I do fine, though the first twenty years was sometimes a struggle.

I was thinking as others' might have that you're confusing "tone" for "frequency".

Quality, too has it's manifold explanations.



EJL

Oh I see; yes that could be disceptive when I say Tone. When I say Tone in this discussion; I am talking about a certain frequency pitch; like an "A" note here>
A Tone Drone
Ricky<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Ricky Davis on 26 April 2005 at 10:00 PM.]</p></FONT>

Well it's gettin late and the day thing is happening early, but I think over time, in a multi-instrument band a person forms the "tone" or "tone center" in their heads, as probably an "average" as mentioned, and is able to deliver what it in their heart, or absent a lot of inspiration, their mind, to their guitars, tuned whatever way they have learned to best deliver it.

Of course there are some that find ways to continue doing it, and adding to their ability. Some of course fall apart, or retire to their other pursuits.

Our minds, for better or worse, are more complex than most of us know.

Thank or beseech God I guess.,



Nite.

EJL

Well, I'll go ahead and enter us into an overtly philosophical (and religious?) zone by posting the following novel tidbits regarding the possible ramifications of figuring out the Pythagorean Comma.
http://www.natashamostert.com/novel2e.html

A fun quote from that website. "It is impossible to tune any modern musical instrument to acoustic perfection."

It's simply math versus nature. If you tune straight up, the overtone series don't line up. If you tune so they do, the fundamental frequencies find themselves a little bit off, but you have no beats in your harmonics.

I gave my love a chicken, that had no bones.

I venture the question, Why bother clinging to an antiquated, centuries-ago-disproven, "perfect" system when none of the instruments on the country bandstand agree with yours, except for the computerized MIDI keyboard, if there even is one in your band?

-Michael "No Bones about it"

I have seen a few comments that I would say lump the Peterson programable tuner into the catagory with a straight up 440 is top dead center tuner.


As I undseerstand it these tuners can be programmed to duplicate,in a silent tuning way
~YOUR personal choice of tuning your steel.

i.e. you can decide how much temporing to use, and then it will allow you to retune even mid song if needed, and not put anyone in the room out of sorts.

Now I appreciate tuning by ear and getting the "SOUND" I am looking for, but sometimes that can't be done.

So I think the Peterson is a great allternative tool.

If you change band and the new one is tuned a bit differently,
you can reprogram a cent here or there and adjust for the new playing situation.


So I would't just write them off as below your ear tuning method,
but as a way to recreate your prefered method in a noisy situation,
or where you CAN'T make noise.

I would have to go with Tracy's explanation.
Just tempering was abandoned long ago because it limits the keys one can play in.
Thus an instrument must be 'well-tempered' to be flexible. Thus there will always be beats where different harmonics of two notes come into close proximity. The even temperament is a way to spread the notes of the scale out evenly over an octave.

The nature of the steel guitar accentuates the upper harmonics, and thus the frequency of the beating becomes super-sonic. Eventually, one establishes one's own temperament, and that involves compromises in order to play ensemble.

MG..

Don't forget those antiquated "Fretted Instruments".

Why indeed...

DLD. It is now thereby, such that, as I said: "C can become C# or indeed 'B'".

Huzzah!

Still, choosing it to be "C" remains easy enough to defend.


EJL<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Eric West on 27 April 2005 at 06:17 AM.]</p></FONT>

This is getting WAY over my head!!!! I need to go stick my head in the oven so I can calm down a bit....bob

Just to set the record straight, neither Just Intonation (JI, beatless, by ear) nor Equal Temper (ET, straight up 440 by the meter for every note) were ever discarded. Fixed pitch instruments (keyboards, harmonicas, harps) are tuned ET (with "stretch"), so that they can play in multiple keys. Fretless strings, horns and vocalists mostly use JI, because it is what the ears guide you to.

Whether ET or JI is the true "in tune" is a strictly semantic issue that depends on your definition of "in tune." JI is generally considered the "natural" method of tuning, because it derives from the overtones that occur when vibrating strings or air columns are broken up into equal subdivisions by nodes. However, this method does not produce 12 equal intervals in the diatonic scale. This creates problems for fixed pitch instruments in playing different keys. ET artificially lops the diatonic scale into 12 equal intervals. This is a compromise. All notes are slightly out of tune (compared to JI) in all keys, but they are equally out of tune in all keys, and acceptably so. ET is perfect in the sense that all the intervals are equal. But ET is imperfect in the sense that it strays from JI. It's like looking at your fingers and saying "Oh, they are not all equal length. I'll take this meat cleaver and cut them all to the same length. Ouch. Now they are perfect." Nevertheless, ET is a necessary and essential evil for keyboards and other fixed pitch instruments.

Variable pitch instruments don't play pure JI, but rather a mixture of ET and JI. The entire chromatic scale is pegged to ET by the A=440 criterion. The fretless strings are tuned in fifths (violins) or fourths (basses). Their strings are tuned straight up ET. But they are free to fret by ear according to JI when they are not playing open strings. If an open string happens to be the third of the key, that third will be ET when played open, but might also be played JI by fretting an adjacent string by ear. Orchestral strings tend to prefer fretting rather than open strings, partly to avoid the JI/ET conflict, but also to apply vibrato. So although the open ET strings may be incorporated in passing in runs, string players prefer to land on fretted notes for sustained tones. Horns have their finger holes, keys and valves manufactured to play ET, so they are pegged to the ET scale. However, the final pitch is set by the mouth, so any note can be played JI in any key.

Guitars are a special case. Although the frets are laid out to play an ET scale, it is possible to tune the individual strings to play the basic chords of a single key JI. Guitarists commonly strike the tonic chord for the upcoming song and tweak the tuning by ear to sound good, which will be close to JI. You can play keys with related chords without much tweaking (e.g., the keys of G and C). But any good guitarist knows that if you have tweaked for G, you will have to tweak again for a song in E or A. Of course you can tune all strings straight up and have passable intonation in any key, and some guitarists do this. But my observation is that very few guitarists leave their tuning straight up. Even those who use a meter staight up on every string will then hit a chord and tweak. If they change keys, they will tweak again. Obviously this does not work for modulations within a song; nevertheless, it is what I see most guitarists do. Because of this constant tweaking between songs, many guitar bands play close to JI.

What happens when ET and JI instruments play together? Well, somehow they muddle through. It is enough of a problem that symphony orchestras, with all the main instruments playing JI, do not routinely play with keyboards. However, when they roll out a grand piano for a piano concerto, it is not a disaster - somehow the orchestra adapts. Likewise, the JI tuned instruments manage to sound okay when playing along with the ET tuned harps.

In the same way, you can play a JI tuned pedal steel along with keyboards and ET-tuned guitars. I'm not sure exactly how it happens. Bob Lee suggested that the JI chord is centered over the ET pitch, so the JI third is not quite as flat as it should be (for JI), and the tonic and fifth are a little sharp of ET. Every thing is a little off, but nothing is glaringly off, the same way the whole ET scale is a compromise. Whether individual players actually carry this off well is another question. Certainly the majority of pro session players have always tuned their steels by ear (JI) rather than everything straight up, and have produced countless acceptable recordings along with pianos, harmonicas, and ET-tuned basses and guitars. JI-playing strings and horns also somehow make it work. Thus, there is no obvious necessity to tune everything and play everything exactly ET just because there is a keyboard in the group.

When everyone plays together at the same time, good ears will smooth over the JI/ET conflicts. When tracks are recorded at different times, and the variable pitch instruments cannot hear the fixed-pitch ET instruments, problems can occur. The “centering” of the chords that Bob postulates cannot occur. Also, if you play your steel or fiddle by ear to a guitar or bass track (or God-forbid a vocal track) that gets redone later to a slightly different pitch, there will be problems. Ideally steel and fiddle should play to the final mix, not scratch tracks. This is common sense, and any recording engineer or producer who doesn't understand this should have it explained.

Having a pedal steel play in tune with itself is a whole other subject. If you tune a pedal steel JI to the basic chords of one key, the straight bar will carry that tuning faithfully to any other key. Therefore, key modulations are not the problem. The problem is when a string that was tuned as a JI-flat 3rd for one chord needs to be used as another interval for another chord. For many of the basic chords it turns out that most of these potential conflicts are solved by the tunable stops of the pedals and levers. For example, on 10-string E9, the 6th string is played open and is the third of the open E chord. For JI it is about 14 cents flat of ET If you activate the A and B pedals to make an A chord, the 6th string is now the tonic. If it were played open, it would be flat. But in the A chord it is raised by the B pedal to the independently tunable pedal stop, so it does not have to be flat. Likewise, the 5th string, which was the 5th of the E chord but the 3rd of the A chord, can be tuned JI flat by the A pedal tunable stop for the A chord. If you go through the whole standard E9 copedant like this, it is amazing that all of the basic chords (I, IV, V7, VIm, IIm) at the main positions (open, AB pedals, A and F, A pedal alone, BC pedals) can be made to play JI with no conflicts. That is no accident. Changes that were tried along the way that did not sound good did not become part of the standard copedant. So, if you play simple songs with simple chords (which takes care of most country, rock and blues), you can tune JI by ear with no conflicts.

But if you keep adding pedals and levers to get lots of chords and inversions beyond the basic ones (for modern jazz, for example), you may eventually run into problems. That is why the tuning you use may depend on your style of playing, and why some players get by with JI and others believe it is necessary for them to tune everything straight up ET. There is no single correct tuning method for everyone.

Finally, someone above mentioned the problem of tuning open at the nut, and finding that the intonation does not stay the same up the neck with the bar. As was pointed out, bar and hand pressure stretches the strings slightly. The different gauges of strings stretch to different degrees. For really precise tuning, once you have tuned open at the nut, you need to go up the neck to about the 8th fret and tweak things a little.

IMOP i believe many try to make it more complicated that it really is.The simple truth is a person either has an ear for music or they don't.It is someting one is born with.You take what you were born with and train it.I speak from experience.No ego meant by any means but i was born with perfect pitch ear.Even before i started first grade i was learning music and wondered why something always sounded a little out of tune.(i had no idea what perfect pitch was back then.)I started on piano and later took up violin.Move years ahead,when i started playing fiddle in bands the other pickers wondered why i made such a face at times.I didn't realize i was doig that but but later realized i did that when i played a note slightly off key that the others didn't notice.As i have said before perfect pitch can be a pain in the neck.(I raised that up some.)And one other thing.The human ear is very fickle.Some nights you can't seem to get in tune when you are,and other times you may sound in tune to your self when you are not.Nothig is ever in perfect tune so learn to live with it and have fun.I talked to Reece years ago about having to tune some strings on the C6h a little flat to be in tune with the E9th.He said of course you do.I thought it
was the steel.Never too old to learn.LOL.Tracy

David, that is by far the most lucid, comprehensive explanation of JI and ET for pedal steel that I have ever read. I even understood it! (At least I think I did). Thank you for taking the time to document this. Someone should quick put this on the growing list of FAQs about pedal steel for future generations to read.

DD. My accolades as well.

I have a couple of questions:

Is there, or could there be a scale or musical system that would or could incorporate only notes which when combined together would have no overtones or "beats"?

How many notes would there be in it?

Round off to 5 figures if you wish.

A couple of over-reaching premises jump right out.

One is that "the ears (of violinists) lead them to JI".

All of them?

Do they tune in "beatless fifths"?

I liked the Meat Cleaver analogy.

*If an open string happens to be the third of the key, that third will be ET when played open, but might also be played JI by fretting an adjacent string by ear. Orchestral strings tend to prefer fretting rather than open strings, partly to avoid the JI/ET conflict, but also to apply vibrato.*

Do they? Do Vassar or Buddy S avoid thirds on open strings?

OK. I must ask..

A famous player has stated that he tunes STRICTLY ET as he has for the last twenty years,(now nearly twenty one) in the most black and white terms possible.

Does he play in "J.I." because that's where his ears must lead him?

Is it impossible for a person's ears to be trained to strict ET?

How long would it take in deacdes?

Are all men obliged to live communally because the least of them cannot survive otherwise?

( I just threw that one in..)

Mr C, I agree that this as well as other dominant tuning threads be accessable in the FAQ or other topics eternally available.

Mr Doggett, you've done it again.

You have a good way with words.

I see your points, I agree with what you are saying.

I just look at it, or rather "hear it" a little differently..

C is still C to me, whether it is the root, third or fifth. Simpleminded as it may seem.

Beats occur in the Planetary Music.



EJL

Here's a PS:

Absolutists abide Incrementalism in increments.

The reverse is not true.

<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Eric West on 27 April 2005 at 09:14 PM.]</p></FONT>

Thanks, Jim. The more times I go through all this, the better my understanding and explanation gets. Guitar and steel players are the only ones who really worry much about this JI/ET thing anymore. Keyboards and other fixed-pitch instruments automatically go with ET, because it is their only viable option. Fretless strings and horns learn to play by ear from the start. It is mostly JI, but they don't necessarily know that unless they go to college and take an advanced musical theory/history course.

Unlike keyboards and harps, guitars can actually tweak to JI between songs of different keys, and this is very commonly done, even though many guitarists might not realize they are moving from the ET of their meter to the JI of the ear. On a six-string you only have to tweak one or two strings to get by. I have begun surveying all the guitarists I play with. They all do this tweaking. Few of them know anything about ET and JI. They just think they didn't get tuned to the meter perfectly, and when they play the tonic chord, they can hear how to "fix" that. They learn from experience that if they go to another key, they have to retune, but usually only the 2nd string.

The standard E9 and C6 copedants really achieve JI quite nicely for the basic chords (and I have charted this all out to prove it to myself). None of the basic chord positions give a full 12-tone chromatic scale (which is why we are forever trying to add pedals and levers to get those extra notes); however, the few extra notes beyond the basic triads also seem to work out close to JI, mainly because they are drawn from other JI chords in the same key. For example, to play the whole eight note scale at a single fret on E9, you can use the open E chord strings, the A and B pedals, and the "chromatic strings" 1,2 and 7 of E9 . All those notes come from the I (open), IV (AB pedals) or V (open strings 1,2 and 5) of the same key and scale. These JI chords within a single key are all compatible with each other and the whole JI scale. The VIm and IIm chords are likewise compatible. Other chords, such as the II major and VI major are not (they cannot get the proper JI intervals by using the notes of the JI scale). But we typically get those by moving one of the above good JI chords up a couple of frets, which maintains the good JI intervals within the chord. Similar stuff works out okay on C6.

But if you keep adding pedals and levers and trying to get three or more chords at the same fret, using some open strings or pedal stops in different chords, and using different strings as the root, you run into problems. People who try to do that typically decide they need ET. People who stick with the simple basic chords typically don't feel the need for ET and like the sweet sound of the JI chords. So far, I have found that I like to keep the basic commonly used major and minor chords sweet JI. The more complicated chords that tend to not be JI tunable are mostly dissonant chords where the departure from JI is not so noticeable. So "fixing" these with ET is not as important to me as keeping my main simple chords sweet JI. But I completely respect players who have more complicated setups and use more chords than me and decide they need to tune ET.

What I don't agree with is when those who tune ET say we all have to tune everything ET, or our guitars will be unacceptably out of tune with themselves and with all the others in the band who tune straight up. For tons of basic stuff, that simply is not true. And the less commonly used stuff where there is a potential problem are more tolerable to me than what happens to my main basic stuff if I tune everything ET. If some people play a bunch of non-basic stuff that doesn't work for them unless they tune ET, so be it. Those of us who don't play such stuff, or find it tolerable without ET, should be free to enjoy the sweetness of JI for our main stuff.

It all depends on where you want to make your compromises. I prefer to compromise on stuff I don't use a lot, rather than envoke the ET compromise on everything I use all the time. The vast majority of steelers over the years have done the same. We are not all insane or tone-deaf for prefering JI and sticking with it wherever possible. This is precisely what classical music conductors and musicians have been doing for centuries. They have figured out where they have to compromise with ET, and where they don't, and steelers should feel free to do the same. <font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by David Doggett on 27 April 2005 at 10:35 PM.]</p></FONT>

thanks David, that was so good a set of explanations as we will ever be likely to read. My compliments. I wish we could just stop this discussion now (as if).

Now I will break my own wish....

There's nothing magical or spiritual about 12 notes to a scale. Anybody who has studied Indian music knows this. As well as anybody who knows blues. When I play blues in E there are an infinite number of notes between G and G# (Jimmy Day knew this).

As David pointed out ET hasn't ruled western music since Back. A friend of mine wrote her PhD thesis in musicology from Stanford in the mid 70s on why singers in the mid 19th century couldn't have used operatic style vibrato. Why? because there's a ton of writen evidence that singers in those days would sing a G# note flatter in the key of E than in the key of F# (for example). This was an integral part of singing technique (to sing what we would call JI).

I have no idea how a fiddle player tunes now.But a concert violinst tunes the second string A to 440 as this is the accepted concert pitch and the rest by ear.No put down intended but a vioin player could not play in an orchestra if he or she could not tune by ear.We used to get the A off the piano or a 440 A tuning fork.Remember this was before all the tuning devices came out.Jashcha Heifetz playing one of his concerts stoped the orchestra and had the cello player retune.Thats perfect pitch.Wonder how many would hear that? Were they all playing in perfect tune.No.But close enough.But is is eaiser playing a violin to play a little sharp or flat on some notes to be in tune with the rest.The problem with violins are tuning the fifths or having the fifths in tune when playing double stops.So every instrument has it's quirks.Tracy
Oh yeah.Now playing the steel it is best to lay off the fifths.even the pints and quarts. <font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Tracy Sheehan on 27 April 2005 at 10:39 PM.]</p></FONT>

A note on the concept of MIDI notes vs pitch. and temporing

Midi is ONLY worried about note name / duration / volume level.

Yes there IS pitch bend, and vibrato, but that's a different issue.

The basic A above middle C is always one of two possible note messages depending on the system.
( Some are an octave lower A2 rather than A3...)

Where you get the issue of a synth or digital piano sound being tempored or equal is in the programing and design of the actual SOUND modual.

Depending on the designers choices, a digital piano can be more or less tempored,
so when the midi notes are saying A below middle C,
this is played a 1/2 cent different on a Roland than a Korg for example.

Or more diversly on an acoustic piano with midi control,
the hammers are sent a MIDI mesasge ;
play this note, this hard...
but the actual intonation is is up to the piano tuners style...
And pitch bend and vibrato messages are just ignored.

Also some synths are totally reprogamable for totally different tempering,

Even to the point of 3 notes per semitone the whole range of the neck,

or experimental tunings like Wendy Carlos works with.

So if one band plays a Kaiwa and the other a Waldorf synth,
you might likely need a different tuning schema on your steel to match the differnt bands identity.

Guys... Hmmm this is interesting... I pose this question. I tune my steel JI.. I tune the E's to a meter,everthing else is "get the beats out", and then "sweeten"..

HOWEVER, my fretted 6 string electric guitars always sound best to my ear when I tune them EXACTLY to a meter @440.. I certainly am capable of tuning properly by ear and often do, but I get my best over all across the neck intonation when using a meter on every open string, and setting the 12th fret octaves to 440 on the meter.
Acoustic 6 strings tend to sound better to me when setting the E's on a meter, and then adjusting the rest by ear.

NOW to add another monkey wrench to the cogs..My 12 string acoustics and solid body electrics behave best with a combination .. I tune the 6 "standard"
strings to a meter... sraight up. NOW, ALL the octave strings have to be ear tuned!!. Usually until all the beats are gone, BUT I always seem to have to sharpen the High G a bit,and depending on the guitar, may have to flatten certain strings a bit,.It would tend to be the low E or A,WHEN needed, It depends on the guitar.

This has been my tuning procedure on 12 strings for over 30 years. I have owned DOZENS of the very best and worst acoustic and electric 12's over the years [BIG Byrd's fan!}, and brand makes no difference.. this is the way I must do it if I want to sound in tune,weather the guitar cost $1500 [my Rics]or $150[the chinese piece of crap I play now that plays Better and sounds as good as the $1500 Rics!!]... anyway, am I screwed up here or is there some logic to how I tune my various instruments that I am unaware of/?? bob<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Bob Carlucci on 28 April 2005 at 06:29 AM.]</p></FONT><font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Bob Carlucci on 28 April 2005 at 06:31 AM.]</p></FONT>