I've had several good live gigs to try different things on. One with an electronic
straight up keyboard.

My conclusion is that unless you tune straight up, or the Steel is the only instrument on the bandstand, you're not only going to be out of tune, you're going to sound that way too.

To loosely qoute somebody: Five cents flat is flat no matter how you look a it.

Here's the questions that jump right out at me.

Taking a flatted third, say E in the C scale as a starting point:

When playing a harmonized scale built on that E note, is the whole scale or Em7 chord five cents flat?. Is the flattened third of that chord flattened further?.

Is the E note, when played as a passing note or part of another chord in the song or passage still five cents flat?.

How about when a new I chord is started from the Five, or Four, is that E always flattened? How about the new third?

Is the third flattened in VI or V7 chords?

Since I know the "Straight up" tuning is indeed tempered as previously stated, I might opine, in the end, that the reason it is is a "lessening of evils", and that tempering it more than the "Standard Piano Tuner's Chart" is asking for things that start out as harmless enough "esthetics" but result in even short term harmonic train wrecks.

I've tried my best in this last month to tune things up or down, and as always, find that the best I can ask of myself is perfect sounding octaves, and straight up on all changes, and open strings.

I'm told I have pretty good intonation.

I suppose that could always change though...

It might seem that I'm being facetious here, but I'd like a couple of answers from those whose attention span hasn't been violated.

Carl?

Larry Bell?

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 22 May 2004 at 01:25 PM.]

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Five cents flat is flat no matter how you look a it.

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When playing a harmonized scale built on that E note, is the whole scale or Em7 chord five cents flat?. Is the flattened third of that chord flattened further?.

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"Wean singers early from the piano. When the piano plays ... proper vertical intonation cannot be achieved." Harvard choral director Jameson Marvin.

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And you guys thought only steel players worried about this stuff.

Bill www.wgpeters.com

Playing in tune has everything to do with hearing pitch and capturing your ears destination, NOT the way the guitar is tuned.
Also, the more defined your center of pitch becomes the more you'll fight the fact that everything on stage is not perfectly in tune, no matter what the tuners say. Its a balancing act, at best.....Paul

[This message was edited by Franklin on 22 May 2004 at 03:11 PM.]

Also, how come the following popular lap tuning cannot be made beatless between any two notes?:

E
C#
B
G#
F#
D
B
E

Beyond that, I plead the fifth.

I AM crazy.

I have come to the realization that like rythym, it often is a battle of wills, and I believe best fought with an electronic piano on the stage. Best fought with Octaves, and Melody.

I find that I do the best when all my changes and strings are tuned to zero on a good korg type tuner. I'm of the mind that on a bandstand, that pitches within 10 cents to the audience are pretty hard to tell.

I've found that it varies often a lot between individual guitar players, as I've played live with probably a hundred of them, and found but a half dozen that even cared whether their intonation was good, let alone hard to tell from perfect, and of those, only two that made me wonder if my tone center was right on.

I had a couple recent good insights when the band leaders I've worked with looked at the guitar players and told them that they needed to check their tuning. Without looking at me, they both did, and it got better..

Playing next to electronic pianos in the last year with this "JI" thing in the back of my mind has been a good reflection.

I think the moniker of "Pitch Approximator" will stick for me, and I'll continue to tune straight up, and pray for a continued reasonably good brain/hand connection, and a strong will without excessive vibrato.

I believe that tuning straight up allows my "JI" brain/ear to play as automatically as I always have before I came aware of all these complex tuning charts and obvious unattainable mobius type connections. The most any of my changes puts me away from "it" is 4 or five cents on an open chord, and that's more liveable than coming up 15 cents short when I've "forgotten" which string, or change I've dicked with..

My Ignorance has indeed been my pathway to finding Bliss. Such as it is...(well, sort of..).

I'd love to have a dozen beers and eat a couple crosstops and hash it over till dawn, but alas, I'm twenty years away from either. Boy, those were the days..

Nap, gig, work, nap, gig, work, eat, etc. Ad Inf....

Thanks.

EJL

I know full well that they all do.

They are simply tuned to a less drastic curve than those that "tune the beats out" of their PSGs.

If you tuned the beats out from C to E, from E to G#, G# to C, at 5 cents each, you'd be 15 cents out within the octave. 7 octaves and you'd be a tone off.

I know that a PSG isn't laid out that way and you can "move" the tempered set of changes, but questions nag.

Also, I'd like to know, if there are changes that don't sound good on a PSG, then why have them?

No lack of pertinent questions here. Some slightly obtuse I guess, and believe me they're all academic, as I will play and tune the way I have for 25 years of steady gigging.

I have more for those not valiantly trying to save my sanity.

It's gone for all practical purposes.

I didn't miss it a bit.

EJL

Ernie http://www.hereintown.net/~shobud75/stock.htm

For you guys that think that keyboards are tuned 440 go ahead and check them sometime. Its wild how different they all are. A big difference in keyboards comes from how the overtones ring beyond the basic pitch. Thats where I think some of the intonation issues are.

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Just about every instrument in an orchestra is a pitch approximator.

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How right you are. The worst instrument I think for intonation is the oboe. It has no pitch adjustments at all, and many of the fingering combinations aren't even close to being in tune. Piccolo is a close runner up, at least when I try to play it.

At any rate, MAKING your instrument play in tune with the other players is one of the most important parts of musicianship.

This results in human hearing perception as though it was tuned straight up. In other words, UNLIKE most other stringed instruments, the piano has a unique problem. The strings are not all the same length. Because of this, their vibrations tend to shift hearing perception in either direction from the middle C octave. To compensate for this, pianos are "stretch tuned".

For a very good detailed and theoretical explanation of this; along with pictoral drawings, click on the link below: (NOTE: click on "apps", then on "The Equal Tempered Scale and Some Peculiarities of Piano Tuning" when you get to the website. For those of you who do not care for deep detail, scroll on down to "piano tuning" if you wish)
http://www.precisionstrobe.com/

One cannot in anyway compare this "stretch tuning" to the way most of us steel guitar players tune. IE, trying to get the "beats" out has NO semblance to the way a piano is tuned (IF it is tuned properly). A piano has beats between any two notes.

Those of us who tune the beats out (JI) are flatting (and sharping) given notes far away from the way a piano is tuned. Even within an octave.

Because of the physics unique to the piano, the "stretch tuning" physically, makes it sound perceptually as though it was tuned straight up across all octaves.

A harp has similar charateristics.

1.) How you tune is immaterial.

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Playing in tune has everything to do with hearing pitch and capturing your ears destination, NOT the way the guitar is tuned.

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Those of us who tune the beats out (JI) are flatting (and sharping) given notes far away from the way a piano is tuned. Even within an octave.

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If one is "out" within an octave when tuning out beats, then the nearly three octaves of the spread of the standard double neck is a little problematic, isn't it?

I'm indeed going to study harp tuning as I have time, and see how they deal with beats. I hadn't thought of that, as they are the only other stringed instrument that has FIXED pedal changes.

The one thing I might note is that with Elect Piani, there are no strings.

I do agree with everything I've read about the playing being the MOST important ingredient, and as I say I can only preffer that I indeed do PRAY ( sorry to shout) for my continued left hand/tone center connection.

Straight up to a Korg DT3, and a lot of left hand compensation as the lord sees fit to allow me.

Lots of octaves and Root/Fifths.

Thanks.

EJL

------------------
Olli Haavisto
Polar steeler
Finland

[This message was edited by Olli Haavisto on 23 May 2004 at 11:19 PM.]

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Taking a flatted third, say E in the C scale as a starting point:

When playing a harmonized scale built on that E note, is the whole scale or Em7 chord five cents flat?. Is the flattened third of that chord flattened further?.

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No, the E root for the key of E would be the straight up ET E, not the flatted 3rd of the key of C. Yes, the 3rd of the E chord (or any other chord) would be flatted by ear.

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Is the E note, when played as a passing note or part of another chord in the song or passage still five cents flat?.

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Not necessarily, the note might be flatted only when it is the third of some chord, not necessarily in passing.

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How about when a new I chord is started from the Five, or Four, is that E always flattened? How about the new third?

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No, E is only flatted as the third of a C chord. If you take the IV or V to modulate to that key, the root will be ET, and the third of the new root chord will be flatted, but only when it is the third of the root chord. If you take any key, and start playing major chords right up the scale (I, II, III, IV, etc.), the third of each chord will be flatted, but only when it is the third of a chord. This is why if you triy to tune a piano or fixed pitch instrument JI, it can't really play JI for every chord, even in the key for which it is tuned JI. The steel guitar is unique in that it has perfectly movable chords. Once you tune your third flat, it will stay properly flat for any chord, no matter what note the bar sets as the root.

This is why most pro steelers tune their octave Es (or As with the pedals down) straight up, and tune the internal notes of the chord by ear. Now they can move that sweet JI chord anywhere on the neck. Yes, you have tuned your open string G# (the third of your open E chord) flat. But when you need a G# chord, you will go to the 4th fret, play the root by ear (if needed, straight up with the bass, lead guitar, piano, singer, whatever). Thus, the root can be straight up if needed, and the third can still be JI sweet. Where's the problem?

Ernie you said:

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I guess if everyone else in the world has there notes tuned to 440, I guess that pretty well says it all for being 'in tune'.

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But everyone does not play straight up 440 for every note. The orchestra will tune all of their A notes to 440. But they will not play all notes straight up after that. They will flat thirds by ear to harmonize in any major chord. In fact, if they play an F chord, the third of that chord is A, and it will be played flat, not straight up, in that chord, even though the whole orchestra tuned straight up A=440. As a passing note, the strings might use the straight up open A string. But as a sustained note, they would finger it and play it by ear JI with vibrato. Go to a symphony and see if the strings ever sustain a note without vibrato (i.e. just a plain open string).

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Is the third flattened in VI or V7 chords?

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Yes, the third is flatted in pretty much any major chord.

Someone mentioned the pedal harp. The harpist I know tunes everything (strings and pedals) straight up ET. But harps don't have as many octaves as pianos, so I don't know that they worry much about stretch tuning. Maybe the big harps in symphony orchestras do, I'll ask her about that.

Carl, in another thread on this, someone pointed out that when they check singers with a tuner, the singers are unconsciously singing to a stretch tuning. It is something about our perception of pitch, not just something unique to pianos, although this problem may be more accentuated with pianos.

Acoustic pianos and harps sound okay playing out of tune thirds partly because, their notes are not sustained. After they hit the note it is fading. Being out of tune while a note is fading is less noticeable than being out of tune on a sustained note. Strings and horns sustain, and they play JI. Steel guitars need JI for the same reason, and that's probably why most top pro steelers tune by ear more or less to JI, even when playing with pianos. Electronic keyboards and organs sustain and use ET. Church organs usually play alone and use some tremolo. They sound very warbly.

Everything is a compromise. For finding the right compromise, your ears will be more useful than a meter. We are not meters. We play for human ears - we should tune to human ears.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 24 May 2004 at 09:35 AM.]

Buddy, you tear me up...

Brian, b0b means that a Hammond is inherently out of tune to just intonation (JI), the tuning that the human ear wants to hear (mainly characterized by what we are calling flatted thirds). The equal tempered scale (ET) is something piano tuners came up with centuries ago. Fretless stringed instruments and horns (which set the pitch with the lips) had not had to deal with the problem the flatted third causes when changing keys. They simply flat the third by ear whenever the need arises, in any chord or any key. Piano tuners found their fixed-pitch instrument could only play in-tune chords in one key. By adjusting all the notes in an octave to evenly spaced intervals, they could play all keys acceptably, although they were all slightly out of tune, especially for the third of any chord.

The pedal steel is fretless, and so is like orchestral strings and horns. But it also has many strings with fixed intervals, like a harp or piano. So we have to mix our tuning method up a bit. We can tune some of the intervals we use the most to JI. But this will cause problems with some other string and pedal/knee combinations. The F lever and A pedal combination is one of these problems. So some combination of JI and ET, but not straight ET everywhere, is what most steelers seem to use. Tunable compensators can help. These are slight pulls or lowers on some of the non-pedaled strings of a particular chord.

Let's look at it this way. For complete versatility, if you go ET all the way, you can't sound worse than an electric keyboard, which everyone accepts just fine. On the other hand, where you can get away with something closer to JI, you will sound more like strings, horns and vocalists, also which everyone accepts just fine. So with pedal steel, you're not really stuck with either one all the time, the way some other instruments are. You're more free to split the difference and find your own way. Or maybe that's a curse. Keyboard players don't seem to worry about this stuff. It's all ET for them and that's the end of it. Strings and horns also don't worry about it. They play it all to the ear, and that's the end of it. We have options, so we have to think about it.

[This message was edited by b0b on 29 March 2008 at 03:49 PM.]

ET=Equal temperament. Or tuning all notes in 12 equal steps in a fixed logarythmic separation based when a number (frequency) doubles (or halves) in 12 steps. Or any note's frequency or distance on a fret board muliplied (or divided by) the 12th root of the digit 2.

An example is the 12th fret on any steel guitar. It took 12 steps to get there but it is exactly half way to the bridge. Or put another way, If your scale is exactly 24 and 1/4", the 12th fret will be exactly 12 and 1/8" from either end.

Two divergent schools of thoughts on how to tune a musical instrument with crossovers schools (views) between the two the world over. Those that are most divergent in viewpoint rarely if ever budge. Those that use some of each often divulge and given enough time, actually tend to often subtly voice their opponent's viewpoint as witnessed in this and other threads on the subject.

But then that is life isn't it?