The Steel Guitar Forum

I have a secret that I'm ready to share. I have been hiding it for a few months now.
The secret is that I no longer tune my steel guitar to 440, I have recently adopted a very simple form of tempered tuning.

When I had some knee levers added to my guitar at Sierra steel guitar works, Tom Baker introduced me to a tuning and explained
why some steel players temper tune.

I had always tuned to 440, and never saw a need to do otherwise, but I tried it, and now I can no longer tune straight up anymore as it sounds very sour to me.

This is a very simple tuning and easy enough to remember by heart (anything not noted is tuned to 440)

Open tuning: strings 2,3, and 6 are tuned 10 cents flat

Knee lever raising strings 4 and 8 E to F:
tuned 18 cents flat

Knee lever lowering strings 4 and 8 E to E flat: tuned 10 cents flat

That's it, everything else is tuned normally.
I wanted to post this for some one who might be thinking about a tempered tuning, but are scared of all the crazy numbers you would need to remember. Also there is no need to buy a special tuner for this, you only need a chromatic tuner with some kind of cents readout.

I will not say this is a perfect tuning, I am sure someone will look at this and think It is missing something. But I think the best thing about this is the simplicity, and ease of use.

I knew I wanted to try this when I could not get my 6 string to sound right. I would play
a chord in the open position, then slide up 3 frets and play the same chord with the A pedal+ F lever, and the 6th would be flat, and I could not tune around it, I could not fix it, but this fixed it! And when I play out, the band members say I sound more in tune.

I always thought that temper tuning was like pole-vaulting over mouse turds, until I tried it. And I noticed a real difference!
I hope maybe someone who is ready to try stretch tuning will see this, and try this one. It is easy to remember, and IMHO sounds
good, and works very well.

Will Sevy<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Will Sevy on 25 November 2005 at 08:13 AM.]</p></FONT>

Yikes...

Will, you have just discovered the secret to tempered tuning. Some of us learned a long time ago that tuning to 440 on these string that you've mentioned gave us a type of "discord" we couldn't explain. I don't know who came up with the "10 cent rule", but i do know there are several of us who use it.
Phred.

When I first bought one of those new $275 Korg tuners back in the early 1980's I thought that I would end the tuning controversy on the bandstand.

On the first job, I hardheadedly maintained that I was in tune and everyone else was out, until some drunk from the audience came up to the bandstand and proclaimed that: "Them guitars need a tuning"!

I went home and checked, and sure enough I was out of tune. Thankfully, that ended forever any thoughts that I previously held that a tuner was the ultimate authority and was without faults!

Since then, regardless of what any tuner indicates, I tune so that I am in tune with the environment that I am in at the time!
www.genejones.com

There is a great article on tuning in the Dec Guitar Player mag, written by Steve Kimock. He uses a lap steel to demonstrate several of his points.
He gives some good examples (tabbed out so you can proove it to yourself), especially for guitar players.

Well, that pretty much settles that..



EJL<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Eric West on 25 November 2005 at 10:49 AM.]</p></FONT>

For what it's worth, tuning all the strings to 440 on the meter is a tempered tuning. It's a specific tempering scheme called "equal temperament" or ET.

Tunings that don't have beats in the harmonies are the only tunings that are not tempered. It bugs me when people who use a meter to tune straight up say that they don't use a tempered tuning. They are mistaken.

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<font size="1"><img align=right src="http://b0b.com/b0b2005.gif" width="78 height="78">Bobby Lee (a.k.a. b0b) - email: quasar@b0b.com - gigs - CDs, Open Hearts
Williams D-12 E9, C6add9, Sierra Olympic S-12 (F Diatonic)
Sierra Laptop S-8 (E6add9), Fender Stringmaster D-8 (E13, C6 or A6)   My Blog </font>

Tuned that way for years with a TU-12. Now with a Peterson tuner with the pre-sets it's not necessary for me to temper tune. I've checked my guitar each time after using the Peterson tuner and have yet had to touch anything.

<SMALL>I'm coming out of the closet</SMALL>

Uh oh, I think I'll be heading back in...

Billy, the Peterson tuner has the tempered settings programed in it so when you tune with it, it is automatacally tempered.

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Playing For JESUS,LC. WILLIAMS U12,SHO-BUD PRO1,CARVIN TL60,GIBSON LES PAUL CUSTOM,YAMAHA L-10A ACOUSTIC,ROLAND JW-50 KEYBOARD,G&L AND BC RICH BASS'S

Don't forget that when some of the notes we play when we tune to these "beatless systems" are 28 cents off, when playing single note runs out of the natural scale, it doesn't matter because we are playing them against notes that no longer exist..

I've known this ever since my buddies and I got stoned in my folk's garage 40 years ago, and tuned the thirds out of our fuzz tone guitars so we wouldn't hear the "wobbles". It sounded a lot better to us even if a couple chords sounded bad. We just didn't play them as much.


It's certainly nothing new.

Not to mention that Jeff Newmann, rest his soul, and Paul Franklin tune their thirds down. Now that I know Pete Burak does it, I'll just throw Buddy Emmons and his ridiculous "straight up" system out the window.

These newfangled tunin' devices are stupid anyhow. If they don't tell you how to tune so the beats don't drive you crazy, then what good are they?

The initial post had me a little shaken because usually, people coming out of the closet drag others with them...

I know when I do, I will..



EJL

<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Eric West on 25 November 2005 at 07:12 PM.]</p></FONT>

To reiterate b0b: there are several temperaments, but the most commonly used is equal temperament.
Lee Baucum's term 'tampered' seems to fit the bill here--taking the equal temperament and tampering with the thirds etc. to get a compromise between ET and JI, both of which have strict standards.
No matter how you do it, you can't break these rules: 5ths are never wider than perfect; 4ths are never narrower than perfect; and thirds are NEVER flat. The upper note of a third is always sharp from beatless. The only flat third is a minor third.

I'm an ET kind of guy, but tampering with the thirds has become a common practice with me....

notes that no longer exist...
sends me into samadhi....<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Charlie McDonald on 26 November 2005 at 04:17 AM.]</p></FONT>

I only use straight up 440 tunning when I don't have the time to sit there and temper tune my steel, like at steel guitar jams, or if I am playing out somewhere like the old folks home where no one can tell if my guitar is in tune or not.

If it don't sound like a cat wailing or send the deer into the next county, I'm happy

Someone in a previous thread said something that I guess I've always done without really being aware of it. The substance of the remarks were:

"The ideal playing environment is when everyone is in tune with each other and everyone is in a groove. However, this only happens infrequently, so the rest of the time we have to tune and play somewhere in the middle (of the chord) where we have the least conflict with the sharps and flats on the bandstand".

Of course there are those who refuse to compromise...but they are fighting a battle that they cannot win!
www.genejones.com

Gene.

If that last statement were truer, it wouldn't need an exclamation point.



EJL

"Winning is not, nor can it reasonably be, an unending phenomenon. Losing, on the other hand often is, and is far more exhausting in the overview." I forget who told me that.