The Steel Guitar Forum

I am a beginner PSG player (Carter-Starter) and I have noticed in some of the teaching books I have purchased contradicts with the tunings of the owners manual from Carter and some other players tunings. The Carter Manual states that 2nd String, 4th String LKR and 8th String LKR is to be tuned to Eb. I have 2 books that I bought and the Jeff Newman Chart that came with my Carter-Starter PSG notes the strings to be tunned to D#. Are they the same?

This earlier thread may help: http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum5/HTML/014003.html <font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Bryan Bradfield on 11 December 2006 at 07:04 PM.]</p></FONT>

Yes !

Ok, thanks! That clears that mud-puddle up for me! I am sure there will be many more questions to follow! I appreciate your time.

This has always been a puzzle to me.And as music is called,it is a theroy.Most pro bands i ever worked with used the fingers on our hand up or down for the key so there would be no mistake.In theory E flat and D aharp are the same.But when the key was gave to the rest of the band you would hold 3 fingers down as E flat is written in 3 flats.1 finger down for F as F is written in one flat.
One finger pointed up as G is written in one sharp and so on.

In the Northern Hemisphere it D# and in the Southern Hemisphere it's Eb. I thought everybody knew this.

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There is a element of being in sinc with the universe. If your head is tilted North and you hear the ocean, and you live in Illinois, then it's D#.

I found out from playing the Bloody Bucket in Plymouth, Il. when I was a kid that there was no Eb. You just played a E and the dobro player flattened it.

The E isn't flattened, it's CHANGED to the note lower in the E SCALE .. D#
The Tuning is E based, therefore G# not Ab, C# not Db and D# not Eb. No matter how you arrive at the note albeit by sharpening of flattening the prior one.

The proper designation in this case is D#. The tuning on your steel guitar is E9. There are 4 sharps in the key of E (F#, C#, G#, D#). So that lowered note should be called D#.

For years I wrongly called it Eb... the E to Eb knee lever. It made common sense because we are lowering to that note (flatting), but that's wrong. That knee lever change should be called E to D#.

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<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Doug Beaumier on 11 December 2006 at 08:08 PM.]</p></FONT>

Exactly what Basil said... we posted the same idea at the same time

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Is it E or F flat?...just kiddin!

Either is correct...going up the scale it is sharp.....coming down the scale it is flat. At least that's how I understand it. The notes are very simple when you look at a piano keyboard. If you learn the notes there you will be able to understand the scales then you can transpose to other stringed instruments.

E Flat.

<SMALL>Either is correct</SMALL>

I respectfully disagree...

It is true that that note has two names... Eb and D#, but the name that we give it depends upon the chord over which it appears, or the tuning in which it appears.

The open tuning is E9. The E major scale has 4 sharps. One of those sharps is D#. So the note that the knee lever lowers to should be called D#, not Eb. Calling it Eb is musically incorrect.

However, we all understand when someone says "push the E to Eb knee lever". Many steel players call it that. The fact that we are "flatting" the E to get to that note is irrelevant. If that note appears in an E tuning it should be called D#.

I was actually scolded by a music professor in college for calling this knee lever E to Eb!!!

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<font size=-1>My Site - Instruction <font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Doug Beaumier on 11 December 2006 at 08:29 PM.]</p></FONT>

Opps, my mistake.

No, no D# in the world.

E, F , F#, G , G#, A. Bb, B, C, C#, D, Eb and the big EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Thanks for the clarification guys. So If I was to tune my 5th String RKL knee lever to A# instead of Bb like my tuning chart that came with the Carter-Starter states, then I would be ok???

It sounds like you are using a chromatic tuner that shows notes as sharps and not as flats. That's part of the confusion.

In answer to your question: Yes, tune that lower to A# if that's what your tuner shows. A# is the same note as Bb.



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Basil and Doug are certainly correct that if one is viewing the strings in terms of the E scale, then the note one half-tone lower than E is D#. As they say, it is because E is generally viewed as the key with 4 sharps in its signature. One gets the fewest altered notes in the key signature this way, so the convention is to view it as sharp key.

<SMALL>Is it E or F flat?...just kiddin!</SMALL>

One could view E major as Fb major, which would have a key signature with flats at every major scale note, including a double flat at B. Nobody does this, because it would make reading notes much more difficult. But this is purely a convention. A case where this kind of thing leads to real ambiguity is the key of F#/Gb. F# is the key with 6 #'s in the signature, and its equivalent Gb is the key with 6 b's in its signature. Either is equally easy or difficult to notate, so there's no critical reason to prefer one over the other.

Mathematically, if one is working in equal temperment, then D# is equivalent to Eb tonally in any key. I personally just view the scale tones as numbers in ET, since they're all equivalent in any key. In this system, there are tons of equivalences between intervals in different keys, which are all mathematically related.

But if one is working in a different interval system like just intonation, then - for example - the D# in the key of E (which is its major 7 note) is not the same tone as Eb in the key of Ab (which is its 5 note), which is not the same as D# in the key of B (which is its major 3 note), which is not the same as Eb in the key of Eb (which is its root). This really messes up these nice mathematical relations between intervals in different keys. I think this is the reason that ET may work better for certain kinds of music where frequent modulation between keys is important - rapidly executed modern jazz comes to mind.

This may be more than you wanted to hear about this.

one reason that I play bass. just joking. I wish that when I was in High school band that our director had taken the time to have given us some basic music theory. there is a pot full of chords on the neck, and it is giving this old man fits, the brain don't absorb information as quick as it used to, but I am trying sd10 3/5. The key signature of 4#s makes sense, never thought of it being explained that way. Thank you gentlemen for the music lesson. There are some very knowledgeable people on this forum, that is why it is important to ask questions no matter how dumb they seem.

Mike<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Mike Hoover on 11 December 2006 at 11:39 PM.]</p></FONT>

THIS is an Epiphany! Now I understand why I cannot find any D Sharps down here. Everywhere we look its only E Flats. There sure are a lot of E Sharps though! Could someone send me care package with some D Sharps in it.

M.

You can't have sharps and flats in the same key signiture. All accidentals in a given key must be one or the other.Since E9 tuning is rooted in the key of E and we know it has G# and C# as scale tones 3 and 6 respectively,then the scale tone 7,the enharmonic semi-tone known both as Eb/D# is called D# in the key of E.

FWIW - Before 1500,composers expected performers to raise or lower notated tones according to what their ears told them to do in a given key.This practice was called musica ficta or "false music". Good musicians knew which tones to change without needing special symbols to tell them. They scorned accidentals(# & b) as "signs for fools".

This is a weird thread! Who cares what it's called. I agree with the four sharps in E being F#, C#, D#, & G#. So what! I like calling my 3rd string Ab and I'll continue doing it. I lower my E's to Eb and I'll continue doing that. I lower my B's to Bb and I'll continue doing that. Play music and quit trying to be a bunch of theory snobs. Most of the theory snobs I know can't pick, they teach!.....JH in Va.

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Don't matter who's in Austin (or anywhere else) Ralph Mooney is still the king!!!

Yep...

Ignorance rules!

Let's always try and insult those who make the effort to make a musically correct answer to a specific beginners question. Makes for a much better forum.

Now I remember why I don't post anymore...<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Pete Finney on 12 December 2006 at 09:57 AM.]</p></FONT>