When we were finished, it sounded great!
I didn't tamper it, but I recorded with it, and I could actually play in tune.

I don't know what you call it, with the E's and B's sharp by 8 or 9 cents, and other notes as flat as 18 cents, but it doesn't matter. It's a great place to start.

Now, I may not agree that a note doesn't sound good without vibrato, or that a fast vibrato is terrible, but exposure to these ideas never hurts one, and it gets you aware of the left hand.

His right hand position is also good, and I'll even check out the Right Hand Alpha DVD to raise my awareness even more.

I use a digital tuner which actually gives me the exact number of the frequency. E's are 442.5 G#'s are 438.5 and so forth. Ever since i stqrted using Jeff's tuning chart I have never had a problem sounding in tune.

Jeff’s tuning may not be exactly JI everywhere, so in that technical sense may be tempered in places, but it is much closer to JI than to ET. So it approximates a natural tuning more than a tempered tuning. It is the meter that is truly tempered. Because of the widespread use of electronic meters, many guitarists have gotten the terminology and concepts backwards. They tune to the meter (which they mistakenly consider “in tune”), then, if they tweak their tuning away from the straight up meter, they consider that they are tempering. In fact, they are first tuning to the tempered tuning of the meter, then adjusting back towards the natural untempered tuning.

Also, Jeff has attempted to incorporate cabinet drop, for example by tuning the unpedaled Es slightly sharp, with the knowledge that they will drop slightly when the pedals are used. Each guitar’s cabinet drop is a little different. So while Jeff’s chart is a good general tuning to start with, the proper approach is to tune very carefully with your own guitar and own ears, then look at a meter and make out your own chart. In some cases your chart may be about the same as Jeff’s, in some cases maybe not. This is not a simple process, and you may decide you do not agree with Jeff’s method. For example, I see no point in tuning the pedal-down As exactly straight up to the meter (A=440), and letting the Es go sharp. One plays both with pedals up and down. Why be in tune one way, and out the other way? So I split the difference, and tune the As slightly flat and the Es slightly sharp. Also, applying a lower can cause cabinet raise. So all cabinet change compensations may not go in the same direction.

If you read the many threads on the ET/JI tuning problem, you will see that many steelers tune somewhere between ET and JI. The slang term that has been used for that recently is “tampered tuning.” While that makes the basic chords a little impure harmonically, it makes the steel a little more versatile in terms of playing many complicated changes in tune with itself, and also may help match the ET tuning of keyboards and guitars that are tuned straight up ET (not all guitarists always tune everything straight up). Some steelers say to heck with it and tune everything straight up ET. That is simpler to do if you watch a chromatic meter, but is more difficult to do if you take a single reference pitch and tune everything else to that by ear. But most steelers object to the dissonance in the basic common chords that ET causes.

You guys may know all this. But it is good to try to get all the terminology right for beginners who are tuning in, so to speak.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 31 August 2005 at 09:35 AM.]

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