The Steel Guitar Forum

If you left your state of the art electronic tuner at home,,or it quit on you,,could you still tune your guitar and feel confident about playing the gig with the rest of the muscians..? In other words,,could you tune up by ear with just a reference note to start from...?

do iy all the time. We all have to tune to the leader and depending on his voice that night he is either flat or sharp. cc

no problémo carson
tune to the ref note ( piano, bass, harmonica, guitbox ) & tune by harmonics

That is my standard operating procedure.

Sure!

The first thing Bruce Bouton addresses in his Learn to Play Steel Guitar DVD is tuning from one reference note. This was instrumental (pun intended) to me starting out on E9.

From the E on string 4:
1. Tune the low E on 8 to 4.
2. Then tune your fifths to B on 5 and 10 with 4 and 8.
3. Then tune your thirds to G# on 6 and 3 so your E major triad sounds sweet with 8/4 and 5/10.
(this is usually where debates on JI and ET start)
Either way, 60% of the strings are tuned at this point.
4. Now tune 1 and 7 with 10, 5 and 2 so your B major triad sounds good.
Now 9 out of 10 are tuned.
5. Bruce recommends tuning 9 to D with string 6 raised to A with the B pedal.
This assumes your B pedal is properly tuned.
You can also tune it to 7 and 5 for a minor triad by ear, or assuming your D lever is tuned to D or C# you can match it with string 2.
Done!

Clete

Yep Carson,
Did it everyday at the Shobud factory. I used an E tuning fork for reference and then used similiar technique as Bruce Bouton reference. Even did this when I played.

You shouldn't be playing gigs if you can't.
Just MHO

Wouldn't that be a great excuse to the band leader for playing out of tune all night?

A very useful skill! Tuning by ear contributed to the dissolution of my first marriage. In fact, it may have been the defining factor. I recommend it highly if you need to scare away a witch.

Yup. Done it a bunch of times.

Matter of fact, a lot of times I think I could purposely tune JI with one of those fancy fake programmed strobe tuners and nobody would know the diff.

If you don't have confidence in your tuning, you won't last long on "The Bandstand", big or otherwise.

I keep my bar straight too..



EJL

bob thats funny as H#$L.

I can tune by ear just fine; did it for about 35 years. I used an E tuning fork; still have it.

But I love the fact that with electronic tuners, the audience doesn't hear me play a note until it is completely tuned. I consider electronic tuners a courtesy to the audience.

Would you tune equal temprament out of courtesy to those in your audience that preferred it? In other words looked to be dressed better and more attentive?

Can you tell if your thirds are minorized by ear, or do you know what a major third is supposed to sound like?




EJL

Just a side note, I don`t think you can tune to ET by ear, can you ?

Just a side note, I don`t think you can tune to ET by ear, can you ?

I've tried it a couple of times, just for kicks, and I got PRETTY CLOSE. I got the Ma third perfect.

I start with ET, with E's at 441. When I'm done the G#s are about 439 and C#s 438. D#s at 439 and F ends up at 437 -- waaay closer to ET than the Newman or Emmons charts. That's what my ear has come to expect. For me, it optimizes how well many different chord voicings and pedal/lever combinations sound. Most other tones are 440.

If I have to tune by ear, those pitches are what I hear in my head. It has become the sound I naturally tune to. To get to ET from there, I just reversed the logic above -- sharp the G#'s and D#'s a little, the C# a little more, and the F a bit more still. Some of those ET offsets make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

Besides, tuning a well maintained guitar on a gig is a piece of cake. I rarely touch a pedal or lever adjustment on the bandstand. Often, my guitar will arrive at the gig completely in tune. Many players make waaaay too big a deal over tuning. Learn to hear what in tune sounds like. You'll never play in tune if you don't.

THE BOTTOM LINE HERE is that we all hear tones, consonances, and dissonances differently. There is only one desired result -- sounding good ( = in tune) with whatever group you are making music with. We have evidence that many players who SOUND in tune actually tune their guitars differently (e.g., LGreen tunes by ear -- pretty close to just intonation / harmonics -- and Emmons tunes 'nearly' straight up on the tuner -- close to equal temperament).
The take home message: the goal is to PLAY IN TUNE, whatever that means, tuning-wise. The most important piece of equipment in the tuning process is YOUR EARS.

By the way . . .
. . . somebody give me an E

Olli Haavisto wrote:Just a side note, I don`t think you can tune to ET by ear, can you ?

Absolutely!

Once your ear has been trained for interval beats, its relatively easy to tune to ET.
The same goes for other stringed instruments besides PSG.
After playing piano for years and having it professionally tuned twice a year, I could hear the stretching of octaves and the equal temperament beats much better. This applied to alternate guitar tuning and especially PSG where beats are a prime difference in the JI and ET major triad.
Larry Bell describes it perfectly above.

Clete

I am a bit confused with this thread. A while back a thread appeared that asked whether or not the better name steels needed tuning at each gig or set; most regulars in here stated the brand of their steel then added that it rarely needed tuning.

I seldom have to re-tune between gigs, except when temperature changes require it. Generally, I tweak the tuning about once every two weeks or each week if I have spent lots of hours on the steel.

I use an electronic tuner but, I can tune by ear if needed; thanks to endless hours of doing nothing but scales.

So how often do you guys actually need to retune?

Can tune by ear but prefer tuner. I tune after every set while the strings are warm. Then after the break I warm them up by running my palm back and forth 4 5 times. If the temperature is up and down then I check the tunning before the set.

Very smart, Ray. Or else we're both wrong, 'cause I do that too.

Les, are you referring to tuning the open strings or the pedal/lever stops? Strings are strings, regardless of the brand. Metal expands when you heat it (and the string becomes longer and lower in pitch) and contracts (going sharp) when it gets cold. There is no guitar that can correct for that. A good stable pedal steel rarely needs pedal/lever stops changed between string changes, in my experience.

I check my tuning before each set. Your mileage may vary.

I would just whip the phone out of my pocket, call one of these guys here that tune by ear, hold phone up to the steel and pick each string while he tells me if the string is in tune or not.
I would just call him back on the first break to thank him and get a quick little tweak again on the tuning.
Oh! please! you don't have to thank me.

Hey Bo,,,I like that one......

I'd just whip out my phone, call up the Peterson Stobe app. ....

Absolutely!

Once your ear has been trained for interval beats, its relatively easy to tune to ET.

The same goes for other stringed instruments besides PSG.

After playing piano for years and having it professionally tuned twice a year, I could hear the stretching of octaves and the equal temperament beats much better.

This applied to alternate guitar tuning and especially PSG where beats are a prime difference in the JI and ET major triad.

Clete

Clete. I could kiss you.


I know I repeated several of your points, several hundred times, and mostly to occupy my time.....

But somehow you innocently have provided a ray of the light of truth on the ignorant alchemy of "tuning" that has seemed to pervade this place for far too long..

Had you come forward with it before my birthday 6 years ago, It'd have saved me a few hundred posts, the reciept of countless insults and denigrations... (though I never had a question I couldn't answer, never had a deviation in the way I tuned, and never, no thanks to the peanut gallery ran out of gigs...)

However you'd have deprived me of learning that there are even some real important people that just really don't know what they're talking about and take any disagreement as a mortal insult...... and some of them are downright jerks about it....

Anyhow.

Thanks.

I'm tired.



EJL

I can rarely hear well enough on a gig to tune by ear. Noisy rooms with unfamiliar acoustics are the norm, and my on stage amp settings are louder than what I prefer for tuning. If one or two strings are out I can touch them up by ear quickly, but it's not my favorite thing to do. Besides, it annoys the audience.

On the plus side, if you need to scare away a witch...

Les Anderson wrote:...So how often do you guys actually need to retune?

Les,

The frequency of retuning depends on a lot of things, so there's no set answer to this. Some folk will retune/check tuning between each song, others may only retune once a month when replacing strings.

Obviously a broken string being replaced needs tuning, and whenever strings are changed as well. Depending on how the strings are put on and stretched out will affect this interval as well. New strings often need to be retuned more frequently at first until they are settled in, then maybe not again until they are ready to break. The more the strings are played and raised or lowered, the closer they are to breaking eventually, so there's a sweet spot between the two (let's call it middle age ) where stability is at its acme.

The temperature of the strings affects the pitch, and, as was mentioned by Larry and Ray, warming up the strings before tuning is a good idea. Sometimes my guitar sounds a little sharp when I first sit down, and after a minute of playing its right back in tune to the last time I tuned it without touching the tuners.

Some guitars hold their tune better than others, and again this has many different reasons why. Machine heads can slip, rollers can get sticky, mechanisms under the hood can bind, adjustment screws can rattle loose, etc.

Sometimes I can go a relatively long time without retuning, and other days, well, it just never sounds right

Bottom line I guess is simply: people retune (or, should) whenever they hear that they are out of tune.

Clete

yep, this is another tuning thread, alas

Hey guys, I understand the concept of what changing temperatures will do to guitar strings along with string fatigue, pedal and rod expansion and contraction and all that. I am a retired welding engineer so I do know how metal works. It was my bag for many years. On the other side of the coin, I have also been a musician for more than 50 years.

I lived in northern Canada for many years and now here in the more southern portion where outdoor gigs play absolute havoc with the tuning of any instrument. I even tried gigging a wedding when it went from + 16C down to -8C, (that’s about 26F in American terms. It wasn’t possible for two reason and I think you guys can pin point them both with out having to guess.

What I was referring to was a thread that appeared on this forum some months ago about which steel guitar was better than the other. Many regular posters stated outright that they rarely have to retune or tamper with their tuning, any of the pedals and/or rod adjustments to get the machine tuned properly before a gig. In fact, one poster stated that he had not had to retune his Sho-Bud for more than two months and that he played almost everyday. Maybe it was just a case of bragging up their choice of steels or just plain and simple, good old fashion musicianship BS. One thread suggested no tuning required while this one suggests it is a constant prerequisite of playing in tune. (I agree with the later by the way)

Personally, I run through the scales several times every time I sit in front of my steels and tweak whatever string needs to be hauled back into tune.