| Author |
Topic: Keyboard onboard |
Michael Robertson
From:
Ventura, California. USA
|
Posted 3 Nov 2010 7:17 am |
|
What, if any, tuning considerations for steel are there when playing with a keyboard in the band.
I have read here somewhere that steel guitars may need some tweaking when playing alongside a keyboard.
True or False? If so what are the recommendations?
If there is a thread regarding this please direct me to it.
Thanks |
|
|
|
Joe Rogers
From:
Lake Charles, LA USA
|
Posted 3 Nov 2010 6:32 pm
|
|
Michael, I have a better idea. Get rid of the keyboard player AND the guitar player!!! 
Seriously, both Buddy Emmons and Paul Franklin have very good tuning courses. Well worth the money to check out both! I will also add one more on top of that. Check out Peterson tuners. The Stobo-flip is great, but the rack mounted Stroborack is the absolute bomb!!!
Joe Rogers |
|
|
|
Ben Jones
From:
Seattle, Washington, USA
|
Posted 3 Nov 2010 7:17 pm Re: Keyboard onboard
|
|
| Michael Robertson wrote: |
What, if any, tuning considerations for steel are there when playing with a keyboard in the band.
I have read here somewhere that steel guitars may need some tweaking when playing alongside a keyboard.
True or False? If so what are the recommendations?
If there is a thread regarding this please direct me to it.
Thanks |
My experiences have been with a real piano and a Hammond B3 and their simulators. With the real piano , I and the rest of the band had to tune the to the piano which was a few cents flat or something. |
|
|
|
Barry Hyman
From:
upstate New York, USA
|
Posted 4 Nov 2010 4:58 am
|
|
Make sure the keyboard is tuned to A-440. Tune the pedal steel to A-440. Nothing could be simpler. Ignore everything you read on the Forum about complex methods of tuning and expensive tuners, and just tune like it was a normal musical instrument, because it is.
_________________
I give music lessons on several different instruments in Cambridge, NY (between Bennington, VT and Albany, NY). But my true love is pedal steel. I've been obsessed with steel since 1972; don't know anything I'd rather talk about... www.barryhyman.com |
|
|
|
Jack Stoner
From:
Kansas City, MO
|
Posted 4 Nov 2010 5:42 am
|
|
| Paul Franklin has some very good info on what he does to be in tune with the piano in several threads. Can't argue with how Paul sounds. |
|
|
|
Jim Palenscar
From:
Oceanside, Calif, USA
|
Posted 4 Nov 2010 6:30 am
|
|
| If I am going to be playing by myself I will usually "sweeten" it a bit- or more-or-less tune the beats out. However if I am going to be playing with a piano than I'll just tune it "straight up" as, even though to my ear it doesn't sound as good by itself, it blends much better with the rest of the band- especially the piano. |
|
|
|
Michael Robertson
From:
Ventura, California. USA
|
Posted 4 Nov 2010 7:14 am Straight Up
|
|
Thanks to all for advice. I appreciate it.
Good morning Jim, are you going to be in the shop today?
And what do you mean by "Straight Up"?
Email me if you like.........
Michael |
|
|
|
Jim Palenscar
From:
Oceanside, Calif, USA
|
Posted 4 Nov 2010 7:53 am
|
|
| "Straight up" means non-sweetened- let the tuner read the note as programmed- nothing sharpened or flattened at all. |
|
|
|
Michael Robertson
From:
Ventura, California. USA
|
Posted 4 Nov 2010 8:29 am
|
|
| Jim Palenscar wrote: |
| "Straight up" means non-sweetened- let the tuner read the note as programmed- nothing sharpened or flattened at all. |
Thanks Jim
That helps |
|
|
|
Barry Hyman
From:
upstate New York, USA
|
Posted 4 Nov 2010 4:10 pm
|
|
Jim Palenscar brings us something that points out exactly what I find so weird about the tuning discussions on The Forum. He says he would tune "straight up" when playing with a keyboard, which is exactly what I recommended earlier in this thread.
The reason is that keyboards are tuned ET, straight up, A=440. So Jim and I both recommend tuning the steel ET, staight up, A=440, so it doesn't clash with the ET keyboard.
(I know that the highest and lowest notes on a piano often get tweaked a little by piano tuners -- not to tune the piano to JI -- pianos have been tuned ET for hundreds of years -- but for other technical reasons having to do with the history of piano tuning. But the bulk of the notes on keyboards are tuned ET.)
Now here's the weird part. All fretted instruments are tuned ET -- all the guitars and basses and mandolins and banjos in the world are all ET by definition. (Thats what frets do -- they divide the octave into 12 mathematically equal parts, which is what ET, or equal tempered tuning, means.)
So why tune ET when playing with a keyboard, and not all the time? Everybody else in everybody's band is tuned ET -- all the fretted instruments, all the pianos, all the keyboards. Why not tune straight up ET all the time, the way many of us do? If the clash between JI steel and ET keyboard bothers you, then the clash between JI steel and ET guitars should bother you as well, right?
We live in an ET world, guys. It's been that way since the time of J.S. Bach in the 18th century! Even singers and horns are ET nowadays, or if they are not the producer will put them there with Autotune.
What do you say to that?
_________________
I give music lessons on several different instruments in Cambridge, NY (between Bennington, VT and Albany, NY). But my true love is pedal steel. I've been obsessed with steel since 1972; don't know anything I'd rather talk about... www.barryhyman.com |
|
|
|
Georg SΓΈrtun
From:
Mandal, Agder, Norway
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 12:47 pm
|
|
| Barry Hyman wrote: |
| What do you say to that? |
Hmmm, doesn't sound good... |
|
|
|
b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 1:26 pm
|
|
| Barry Hyman wrote: |
We live in an ET world, guys. It's been that way since the time of J.S. Bach in the 18th century! Even singers and horns are ET nowadays, or if they are not the producer will put them there with Autotune.
What do you say to that? |
While he was undoubtedly aware of it, Bach rarely used ET. Sweeter meantone temperaments were the preferred tunings for the harpsichords and organs of Bach's time. This fixation on equal temperament has only arrived recently with the development of electronic keyboards and tuners.
Unless 2 instruments have the same timbre and the same space in the stereo image, differences like JI vs ET are essentially inaudible. When they are noticeable, it's the ET instrument that sounds out of tune.
I have never experienced a tuning problem using meantone or JI steel guitar against an ET keyboard or computer accompaniment. If the steel guitar sounds in tune with itself, it can be played in tune with the ET instruments.
Lastly, the notion that fretted instruments are ET is a myth. They are designed as ET, but in practice the physical factors such as string gauges, variable scale lengths and finger pressure come into play. Tune the open strings of a guitar with a tuner and start measuring various notes on the fretboard, and you'll see what I mean.
_________________
-πππ- (admin) - Robert P. Lee - Recordings - Breathe - D6th - Video |
|
|
|
Earnest Bovine
From:
Los Angeles CA USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 1:49 pm
|
|
| Barry Hyman wrote: |
Even singers and horns are ET nowadays, or if they are not the producer will put them there with Autotune.
|
Vocals, especially Auto-tuned-etc background vocals, tend to be the least Equal-Tempered, and the most Justly-Intonated sounds on popular music recordings.
Your point about guitars being Equal Tempered, however is well taken. A steel player who has been working with a guitarist should not change his temperament when a keyboard joins the group. The rare exception would be a guitarist who tunes to a major chord, and never plays minor chords. I'm pretty sure that young Don Everly tuned to E major, and you can hear the sweet temperament of his guitar on "Problems" for example. But Phil used normal ET tuning and they sounded good together. |
|
|
|
Barry Hyman
From:
upstate New York, USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 1:49 pm
|
|
Georg -- I have played more guitar in my life than pedal steel. I had the sound of an ET tuned guitar in my head for thousands of hours before I ever touched a steel, and the sound of a (properly tuned, properly set up, properly played) guitar sounds perfectly in tune to me. In fact it doesn't just sound in tune, it sounds good.  So maybe that's why I can't understand why people try to tune JI. Maybe you guys don't live in an ET world, but I sure do!
Peace and love, though! I'm not looking for a fight, or to be disrespectful. It is just a mystery to me -- why people think an essentially ET instrument like psg, which is going to be asked to play many different chords in tune at every fret, even could be tuned JI. (Maybe when you guys get done tweaking your tuning by ear, what you must have done unconsciously is recreate ET? Otherwise, half your chords would sound godawful. JI could only work if you only played one chord at each fret. As soon as you add pedals and knee levers, the rationale for the "beatless" approach dissolves. The logic just doesn't hold up for me, and for a couple of years now I have been "challenging" people on the Forum to explain in a logical, scientific fashion how JI could possibly work on pedal steel, but I haven't seen it yet.
Then it is a mystery to me why people would bother to tune JI when all the other instruments in the band are tuned ET.
Then it mystifies me why someone would pay $400 for a tuner when you can get a perfectly good tuner for $25. (Not that I am knocking the Petersons -- I have seen one in action and it is obviously a wonderful and ingenious machine. If someone gave me one I would have fun playing with it for a while. But I am a working musician. Every dollar counts. I am not saying anything is wrong with the expensive tuners -- just that I can not understand why they would be necessary.)
I know Paul Franklin, and many other people who are better psg players than me, have said that most all professional psg players tune JI. I believe that. But I still haven't seen someone explain how it could possibly work. If your no pedals chord sounds exquisite, and all your other chords with pedals or knees engaged sound progressively worse and worse, then why not tune ET? ET was invented hundreds of years ago to solve that very problem!
For example. Let's say you "sweeten" the open G# strings by tuning them a few cents flat of straight up. Fine for the open E chord. But what has happened to your G#m chord when its root has been lowered? What happens to your C#m chord when its fifth is flat? What happens when you press Pedal A in a melodic run and your note rises more than a fret? Everytime I have asked these questions in the past, I have been ignored as if my ignorance was hopeless. But I am still waiting for an intelligent, thoughtful, logical answer, and maybe Georg or bOb or Earnest could help me understand.
_________________
I give music lessons on several different instruments in Cambridge, NY (between Bennington, VT and Albany, NY). But my true love is pedal steel. I've been obsessed with steel since 1972; don't know anything I'd rather talk about... www.barryhyman.com
Last edited by Barry Hyman on 5 Nov 2010 1:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
|
|
Brint Hannay
From:
Maryland, USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 1:53 pm
|
|
| b0b wrote: |
| While he was undoubtedly aware of it, Bach rarely used ET. Sweeter meantone temperaments were the preferred tunings for the harpsichords and organs of Bach's time. This fixation on equal temperament has only arrived recently with the development of electronic keyboards and tuners. |
I assume that when Bach wrote The Well-Tempered Clavier as a series of pieces in all twelve major and all twelve minor keys, he didn't intend the instrument to be retuned for each piece. It's always been my understanding the idea was to demonstrate the value of ET.
| Quote: |
| I have never experienced a tuning problem using meantone or JI steel guitar against an ET keyboard or computer accompaniment. If the steel guitar sounds in tune with itself, it can be played in tune with the ET instruments. |
I agree. That has been my experience.
Last edited by Brint Hannay on 5 Nov 2010 2:28 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|
|
|
Barry Hyman
From:
upstate New York, USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 1:57 pm
|
|
One thing is for sure -- the tuning issues associated with left hand placement are a lot more significant than the minor differences between ET and JI.
_________________
I give music lessons on several different instruments in Cambridge, NY (between Bennington, VT and Albany, NY). But my true love is pedal steel. I've been obsessed with steel since 1972; don't know anything I'd rather talk about... www.barryhyman.com |
|
|
|
b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 2:06 pm
|
|
| b0b wrote: |
| While he was undoubtedly aware of it, Bach rarely used ET. Sweeter meantone temperaments were the preferred tunings for the harpsichords and organs of Bach's time. This fixation on equal temperament has only arrived recently with the development of electronic keyboards and tuners. |
| Brint Hannay wrote: |
| I assume that when Bach wrote The Well-Tempered Clavier as a series of pieces in all twelve major and all twelve minor keys, he didn't intend the instrument to be retuned for each piece. It's always been my understanding the idea was to demonstrate the value of ET. |
I believe that it was meant to demonstrate the different keyboard techniques required, as well as the different emotional flavors that different keys can evoke. A typical meantone tuning works well for several keys, and then only requires the tweaking of one note per octave to work in several more keys. In Bach's world of harpsichord music, it wasn't a big deal to retune a few strings for a piece of music, or to carefully consider the lurking wolf tone in remote key compositions.
_________________
-πππ- (admin) - Robert P. Lee - Recordings - Breathe - D6th - Video |
|
|
|
Michael Robertson
From:
Ventura, California. USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 2:16 pm Thanks
|
|
My original question has been answered thanks.
b0b you can close this anytime. |
|
|
|
b0b
From:
Cloverdale, CA, USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 2:17 pm
|
|
Barry, you seem to be forgetting that a steel guitar doesn't really have frets, and the open strings are rarely played. Here's why it works. Consider the following major chord, with cents offset:
A +4 cents, C# -10 cents, E +6 cents
If that's what your notes are tuned to with the bar somewhere near the painted 5th fret, the average of the 3 offsets is 0 cents. Similarly, the average of the 3 offsets on your ET keyboard is 0 cents.
When the human ear hears several notes at once, it averages them together to get the tonality of a chord. That's why the ET and JI chords can both sound right when they're played together.
_________________
-πππ- (admin) - Robert P. Lee - Recordings - Breathe - D6th - Video |
|
|
|
Brint Hannay
From:
Maryland, USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 2:26 pm
|
|
From The Lives of the Great Composers, by Harold C. Schonberg:
 |
|
|
|
Earnest Bovine
From:
Los Angeles CA USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 2:27 pm
|
|
| Barry Hyman wrote: |
a mystery to me -- why people think an essentially ET instrument like psg, which is going to be asked to play many different chords in tune at every fret, even could be tuned JI. ...half your chords would sound godawful. JI could only work if you only played one chord at each fret. |
You are on the right track. The flaw is the word "many" in your premise that "psg .. is ... asked to play many different chords in tune at every fret". Most intervals cannot be used in JI. Steel players who tune JI avoid using the many wolf intervals. |
|
|
|
Brint Hannay
From:
Maryland, USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 2:29 pm
|
|
Barry Hyman wrote:
I am still waiting for an intelligent, thoughtful, logical answer, and maybe Georg or bOb or Earnest could help me understand.
Barry--Did you ever find time to check out the info about Sixth-Comma Meantone that I sent you a while back? |
|
|
|
Earnest Bovine
From:
Los Angeles CA USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 2:35 pm
|
|
| Barry Hyman wrote: |
| G But what has happened to your G#m chord when its root has been lowered? What happens to your C#m chord when its fifth is flat? What happens when you press Pedal A in a melodic run and your note rises more than a fret? Everytime I have asked these questions in the past, I have been ignored as if my ignorance was hopeless. But I am still waiting for an intelligent, thoughtful, logical answer, and maybe Georg or bOb or Earnest could help me understand. |
In which temperament? What do you mean by "what happens"? Look at the tuning of each note, and you can see how wide the intervals are. |
|
|
|
Brint Hannay
From:
Maryland, USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 2:49 pm
|
|
Here's what I worked out and previously posted on the interval relationships in 1/6th-Comma Meantone:
| Brint Hannay wrote: |
| Tab: |
lower open raise
F# 0 G +12.5
D +10 D# -7.5
G# -5 A +7.5
D# -7.5 E +5 F -12.5 F# 0
A# -10 B +2.5 C# -2.5
G# -5 A +7.5
F# 0
D# -7.5 E +5 F -12.5
C# -2.5 D +10
B +2.5 C# -2.5 |
|
This tuning assumes there is no C note. (True for many--if one wanted to use this and have a tuned split for C, it would be necessary to decide how to tune the C based on how that note is to be used.)
Assuming no C:
All of the fifths are identical: 2.5 cents narrower than ET.
There are 3 major thirds and 2 minor thirds that are way out. But with these exceptions,
all major thirds are 10 cents narrower than ET,
all minor thirds are 7.5 cents wider than ET.
The "out" major thirds are:
Eb->G
Bb->D
F->A
(all 20 cents wider than ET!)
Of these, only F->A seems likely to see much use, primarily in augmented chords.
The "out" minor thirds are:
D->F
G->Bb
(both 22.5 cents narrower than ET!)
Of these, D->F seems more likely to see use, especially for diminished chords.
The consistency of the fifths, major thirds and minor thirds that do get used the great majority of the time, while the thirds are still "sweetened", to a compromise point between ET and JI, make this a tuning that works very nicely for me. I find it sounds in tune with other instruments just fine, apart from "operator error".
YMMV.  [/quote] |
|
|
|
Earnest Bovine
From:
Los Angeles CA USA
|
Posted 5 Nov 2010 3:31 pm
|
|
| Brint Hannay wrote: |
The "out" major thirds are:
Eb->G
Bb->D
F->A
(all 20 cents wider than ET!)
Of these, only F->A seems likely to see much use, primarily in augmented chords.
The "out" minor thirds are:
D->F
G->Bb
|
Britt, there is no Eb nor Bb in your chart. There are however D# and A#. And what you call F should be called E#. Ergo what you call "out major thirds are not thirds at all, but diminished fourths, which you would not use (much). And the intervals D->E# and G->A# are augmented seconds, which you also would not use (much). |
|
|
|
