The Steel Guitar Forum

I need some help with this one guys. I'm a stickler for playing in tune (30 years now)and my steel pulls and lowers precisely. I can hear a clunkler from anywhere in the room and it makes me cringe. I make sure there are no non-fretted string instruments in my monitor mix so I'm not playing off someone else's "lapse of focus". Here is the problem, upon playback sometimes it sounds like the steel is a tad flat (never sharp).
I don't understand that. Can anyone offer a serious explaination to this?

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Sierra Session 12
Walker Stereo Steel<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Bob Barone on 24 October 2005 at 04:06 AM.]</p></FONT>

Bob,

Post a clip. It'll make it easier to figure out,

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Jeff's Jazz

Are you allowing for cabinet drop when you tune up?
It's essential to minimise the effect of cabinet drop, as much as is possible, by tuning technique.
I'm not talking JI, ET, that's another issue.
R B

And don't forget that if you temper your 3rds (which you probably do if you tune by ear as well) then they ARE flat to the rest of the band. . it's just that you're the only one who's in tune (there are many threads you can dig up here on the subject - but you've been playing much longer than I so I doubt it's news to you.)

Or did you mean you've been playing IN TUNE for 30 years?!. . .

Thanks for the reply Paul. I would like to think I have been playing in tune for that long! I do temper my 3rds. They end up being about 4-5 cent flat on the tuner display.

BB

Better start tuning to 442, then that will stop in a heartbeat.

Larry Behm

Am I missing something? If he is playing flat now and he tunes sharper, then the net result would be that he would be playing even flatter than before. The result sharpening his tuning even further from his present bar positions. Just play sharper to your fret markers.

Bob, if you've been playing 30 years, I'm sure you're aware of the issue of parallax, right?

The optical illusion of viewing the neck from a certain angle will cause you to play progressively flatter as you work your way up into the upper part of neck. From where you sit, it looks like the bar is directly over the fret marker, but... no.

It's a newbie-kind-of-a mistake, so I seriously doubt this is your problem, but it never hurts to ask.

Okay, even though I know some players who've been playing even longer, and still play out of tune, we'll assume you play in tune, since you've been playing for 30 years and claim to be a "stickler" for such things.

Now, playing in tune with other musicians is a compromise. You have to match (as best you can) what you're doing to what the others are doing. If everyone else is playing a little sharp, and you're "dead-on", guess what? You're flat! It makes no difference whether the other instruments are fretted or not, everything has to blend! And, to blend with everything, you have to hear everything.

Evidently, you're clashing with something you're not hearing on the stage, but with something you <u>are</u> hearing on a playback. I'd suggest you not eliminate other instruments from your monitor if you can't hear them properly on the stage, and well...it sounds like that's the case.

I think even Bobbe Seymore also said on some occasion, that never mind that your steel is in tune with itself, you still have to play in tune with the band. I often find that occasionally I have to flatten or sharpen a note at some point while playing with a live band. The best guitars occasionally have suspect pitch on some spot on the neck, and if you are somewhere in that same register you have to adjust slightly to compensate. No big worry. Just deal with it.

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I agree with Donny. I never understood the point of having a monitor that sounded like anything but what is coming out of the mains. Otherwise, how can you adjust your volume to the mix, let alone your intonation? From time to time people have mentioned that strings tend to play sharp. If they are coming out strong like that in the mains and the playback, you will sound flat, even if you are spot on to a tuner. The crowd ain't listening to no tuner, they're hearing those strings and guitars.

Great answers everyone. Thanks!

Wow!, looks like I have a bit more research to do. This wasn't about fretboard position or tuning sharp or flat. It was about what I'm "hearing" and then as a result, playing to. We'll keep working on it.

Bob

Bob,
This is how I think it works for me, perhaps your experience is similar. My "middle of pitch" range is wider when playing live, as compared to listening to a playback of a performance. To use a bowling analogy term, I have more "area" when performing live of what is acceptable intonation. For reasons I'm not even going to attempt to explain right now, when listening to a playback, it seems appropriate to get more critical, and that decreases that area of acceptability. Sometimes I'm very pleased with my performance on the playback and other times I'm less than satisfied. I can't even guess how it will sound later, based on how I thought it sounded at the moment, because the times I couldn't wait to hear what I thought would be good, was only so-so, while things I was sort of dreading to have to hear, I was pleasantly surprised and happy with. I'm not sure this explanation works in your situation because you only hear it flat, and only some of the time. I'm going to stop now, because I don't about you, but I'm feeling more confused now, than before I started to try to explain it. -- Marc

Oh yeah, Marc's right too. It always sounds better when I'm playing it than when I play it back. I think that's just human nature. And I always think I'm young and good looking, until I look in the mirror. <font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by David Doggett on 24 October 2005 at 10:14 PM.]</p></FONT>