Bob - wow, you missed the post entirely. I said I *don't* know *anything*. That's why it would be a bit tough to study intervallic relationships or whatever it was you suggested. I don't have the basic platform of theoretical knowledge most of you have. I come from a jam-band world, where 90% of the "practice" is listening to CD's, showing up at gigs and pulling hundreds of tunes out of a hat, essentially (any NRBQ fans around? They'd know what I mean).

So I wasn't dissing your very valid suggestions at all. I was just explaining that I'd essentially be entering a college physics class having just graduated from the third grade...

If one uses JI or something between JI and ET, the pedals down sixth will sound sharp with the other notes. Ergo, the compensator which lowers those strings slightly. I have both on my A pedal. Some do it differently, but the process is the same. A string that is not directly raised or lowered is 'tweaked' slightly sharp or flat using an additional bellcrank and pull rod.

Yes, apparently so. One doesn't need to know the names or whatever of intervals or any theory to get an instrument in tune.

You must not know any banjo players.

So that would mean you would, if using them as intended, need to install them on every string but somehow they'd have to be able to be adjusted depending on bar position, chord, grip, pedals/levers used....

Believe me, I didn't buy it either when they told me that equal temper wasn't the one and only way to tune; you figure that mathematically there would be no other right answer in the question of tuning and therefore it should always sound perfect; but believe me it just isn't so, and the sooner one comes to grips with it the better.

Now then, read this information and see how you feel. Trust me, there's something to it.

[This message was edited by Duane Reese on 19 May 2006 at 08:47 PM.]

"This is the most common tuning system used in Western music, and is the standard system for tuning a piano."

...for ET. which is the one I use, right? The "straight-up" tuning?

If so - why use an uncommon tuning that will NOT be in tune with a studio's piano, or apparently much else except itself without using compensators to "fix" it? A least, that's how I interpret it in layman's terms.

Again - If I read that article right and apply it in interpretation of all this other stuff about compensators and such - the use of compensators is, as I said earlier, to overcome mechanical poblems (where strings won't return to pitch), but also to overcome the simnple fact that the instrument is being tuned *wrong* in relation to other instruments.

So that would be fine if you play in your bedroom - but to take an instrument out to play with other people, it seems that 1) it needs to work - i.e. strings have to return to pitch, and 2) it needs all these compensators removed, and be tuned to 440 so it will sound right with other instruments.

That's the way the information presented reads to me. It seems to back up what I've found through trying different tuning methods. It also seems to back up the fact that string return problems are no mystery - just a mechanical design problem. Otherwise they would occur on ALL guitars, or any other string instrument. Which isn't the case.

The tuning issues of which you speak have been hashed over pretty well Here and Here..

I submit them for your perusal at your leisure.

They include some of the thinking of the denizens herein, as well as a glimpse of what you can expect when challenging some of these ideas. They pretty much run the range from the best of minds to...

Enjoy your read.

I'd participate more but I'm pretty busy working gigging and studying guitar again.

I've got to say that none of it changed my mind a whit or a diddle. It became simpler and more appearant to me that less time should for me be spent playing than discussing wild theories.

Good links, Eric. I ran into this quote by Bobby:

quote:

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If you consider ET and JI as two acceptable ends of a tuning continuum, anything in between will also be acceptable.

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But when it comes to Beatless tuning, I didn't know the Beatless had their own tuning system. I learn something new every day.

quote:

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All musical tunings have advantages and disadvantages. Twelve tone equal temperament (12-TET) is the standard and most usual tuning system used in Western music today because it gives the advantage of modulation to any key without dramatically going out of tune, as all keys are equally and slightly out of tune. However, just intonation provides the advantage of being entirely in tune, with at least some, and possibly a great deal, loss of ease in modulation. The composer Terry Riley, said "Western music is fast because it's not in tune", meaning that its inherent beating forces motion. Twelve tone equal temperament also, currently, has an advantage over just intonation in that most musicians are trained in, and have instruments designed to play in equal temperament. Other tuning systems have other advantages and disadvantages and are chosen for various qualities. It must be realized, however, that just as many people who play music today in equal temperament without having heard of it as musicians throughout the world that use just intonation without "knowing" it.

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"However, just intonation provides the advantage of being entirely in tune, with at least some, and possibly a great deal, loss of ease in modulation."

"Twelve tone equal temperament (12-TET) is the standard and most usual tuning system used in Western music today because it gives the advantage of modulation to any key without dramatically going out of tune, as all keys are equally and slightly out of tune."

i read that as stating that "just intonation" can only be in tune some of the time, and the rest it's way out of tune; "equal temperament", on the other hand, may not be precisely in tne but is far more practical - which is why it seems to be called "the standard" in every source given.

Or, you could do what most pedal steelers do and find some kind of very minor "tweak" of the thirds that is a mid-point compromise between ET and JI. A compromise that is close enough to JI to get that sweeter-than-ET-thirds sound -- but close enough to ET be able to play in all keys, all chords without anyone thinking it 'out of tune.'

Or, you could tune any way you like and put compensators on your guitar have that sweeter-than-ET sound coming from your thirds and still have the other strings come out straight-up ET.

------------------
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

[This message was edited by Bobby Lee on 20 May 2006 at 11:54 AM.]

Up has become Down, In has turned into Out, Black to White, Yin to Yang..

All by Incriments.

Hope you've been saved a few thousand words Jim.

For my part, it has been interesting, and I've learned a lot I suppose..

Jim, one of the most striking differences I've seen between participating players here are those that have trained their ears to expect non naturally occuring intervals, and those that haven't.

In my case, accidentally, from tens of years of not knowing any better.

Had I to do over again, knowing how many screwed up ways pedal steel players try to tune their "beats out" and play them against instruments that don't, I like to think I'd have chosen the same path.

(I do think I'd have flossed more between gigs though..)

I think the side that claims the "majority" is indeed correct.

In the end though, they are ruled by Twelve Notes. A distinct minority in the aural spectrum.

Some seem to like it better than others.

Wikipedia? The Modern Rock of Absolution..

Right(noun, verb, adjective) (R-i-t) def: Wrong defined through a series of Incriments..

Anyhow, it's just another of the wonderful exchanges of ideas that b0b has wittingly or otherwise provided for Our Craft, to his great credit, and our great benefit.

Seriously

quote:

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Or, you could do what most pedal steelers do and find some kind of very minor "tweak" of the thirds that is a mid-point compromise between ET and JI. A compromise that is close enough to JI to get that sweeter-than-ET-thirds sound -- but close enough to ET be able to play in all keys, all chords without anyone thinking it 'out of tune.'

Or, you could tune any way you like and put compensators on your guitar have that sweeter-than-ET sound coming from your thirds and still have the other strings come out straight-up ET.

---

Man, Tucker you are right on the money - that's just what I was trying to say, and I emphasize that regarding the second paragraph. That's the whole point - Jim, you can try out any temperment you prefer, but now that you know what the deal is with temper tuning, just please understand that conpensators aren't a lame fix for a mechanical design flaw - heck, maybe even try out a guitar with them - you may be sold!

b0b - "Actually, you're wrong, Jim. The pedal steel is unrestricted in modulation because of the movable bar. This allows us to play perfectly tuned chords in any key."

Actually, you're wrong. You are completely restricted in modulation. Hold your bar in ONE place and play a chord. Unless your bar is sectioned off to vary the distance to the bridge to fit the chord you are playing in JI, you either are stuck with a compensator...and hopefully one useful for the chord you're playing...or you have a very out of tune guitar on some chords. that same lack of modulation in ET gives you a *slightly* out of tune guitar on ALL chords.

I'd rather be able to play varied music with other instruments, and without relying on an overcomplicated instrument. And, with every added piece the cost goes up as well.

I can see why some makers love JI - they sell more stuff, albeit to fewer people.

quote:

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They trust their tuners and their eyes more than their ears, I think.-b0b-

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It still doesn't seem to sink in that it is possible to train ones' ears to hear notes in a Equal Temperment. IMHO, it is mandatory if you are ever going to try and play that way with others.

Taken farther, the 'other group' is at the mercy of any dissonance like having to follow a flat singing vocalist or a sharp guitar.

Trying to do both at once would likely produce an irrepairable schism in one's aura, I think. That might explain a few things around here though...

Funny, last weekend I did a three or four hour session of recording against a scratch vocal track and a scratch guitar track. The drums and bass were the only "laid down" tracks. The vocals were flat and sharp sometimes, and the guitar was sharp out of the first position. It was at first confusing, and then I listened to it, asked that my steel be a little louder in my mix with reverb added. Yesterday when I heard a closer to final mix it sounded perfectly in tune with the later tracks, keyboard included. It was after a weekend of loud bandstand gigs, which I find a better time to record than the middle of a work week.

It reminded me of playing with a live band, and having to keep my own intonation in my own head reguardless of what my "ears" are telling me.

As discussed earlier by some of us lessers as well as one of the "giants", intonation more comes after more than a dizen years or so of playing a fretless instrument, from a person's "being" rather than a reaction to his is her "ears" ET, JI, or otherwise. Let alone a reaction to a "tuner" or a group of fret suggestions...

EJL

ET playing IS an ear-related thing. Eric has been on the dime all along.

It's really interesting how cloistered the steel world is sometimes. ET is the way to go for the majority of musicians on any instrument, as proven even by the JI-group's sources. But the steel world somehow got locked into doing something "different", likely because one or two major players did it for a while and the "me toos" jumped on the bandwagon. Interesting also that one of those players (BE) now apparently has returned to ET. Wonder if he has/had compensators on HIS guitars?

Even with compensators, you're going to be horribly out of tune in some key...or two, or three. You can't mechanically adjust "on the fly" for every key. Players at Paul Franklin's level can work around it....but that's a VERY small group of players.

I'd be surprised if manufacturer's aren't adding to the price somewhere for more parts. It'd be awfully stupid to install extras of anything for free. If b0b isn't seeing the price adjusted, it's being built into the base price of everything - that's business.

But more significant to me is the return-to-pitch type of compensator, where the string can't be relyed on to return to pitch after being raised or lowered.

There have been a few posts regarding guitars where that does not happen, and I've gotten a few emails saying the same thing. It seems obvious *those* guitars are mechanically sound and well-engineered, while anything that can't accomplish that feat is not. Simply, if SOME builders don't have the problem, the ones that do are doing something wrong, either in design of construction.

I'd still like to...as would several other posters over several threads now...see what a mass of these compensators (or even one) looks like.

If I was a manufacturer installing compensators, I'd get hold of a guitar that doesn't need them as fast as I possibly could, figure out what's different, and change my design or methods right away; because otherwise I'm offering a "compromised" product - and there are people making better guitars than mine!

[This message was edited by Jim Sliff on 21 May 2006 at 06:42 AM.]

a) Assuming that "beatless" means you can't have everything:

When that JI/tweaked 3rd note in a chord no longer functions as the 3rd of the chord, isn't it just plain flat?
Doesn't the JI/tweaked tuning, especially on a complex C6th setup, present a tuning that works beautifully for the triads they are tweaked to but makes less usual combinations quite "out of tune"?

If a piano can play any combination of notes and no one complains about intonation, isn't there a way to tune a pedal steel that will allow for the freedom to choose voicings in 4ths and other "pianistic" voicings that sound in tune across the board, without 'fudging' (that term gives me the willies- you can't fudge the middle note in a three note voicing with a bar unless you are taking psychedelics and/or bend behind the bar...)

b) If Randy Beavers, Doug Jernigan, John Hughey, Paul Franklin etc. all use some form of tweaked/JI tuning, isn't there something to it that should be SERIOUSLY considered, regardless of the fact that ET should make life so much easier for everybody?

Buddy Emmons never sounds out of tune to me, neither do the above guys...

b) I would "shut up and play" but my conscience won't let me. Do you hear the voices too?

quote:

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Actually, you're wrong

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quote:

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Actually, you're wrong

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If you really want to be left curled up in a ball sucking your thumb, ask two piano tuners to come over for a tuning lesson.
They'll spend the whole time, at your expense, explaining to each other the right way to tune.
'Start with an A....'
'No, you start with a C....'

So there are tuning wars among tuners.
The two major camps are 3rds and 4ths, and 4ths and 5ths. (I favor strong 5ths, at the expense of a 'perfectly' smooth progression in the beat rate of the thirds.)
"Trying to do both at once would likely produce an irrepairable schism in one's aura." (So true, Eric, to use your quote out of context.)

So I start with an A and a C. The end result is that the only perfectly tuned ET interval is the A/C minor third I started out with.

quote:

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It still doesn't seem to sink in that it is possible to train ones' ears to hear notes in a Equal Temperment.

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Whatever the case, my limited exposure to steel guitar is that the beauty of it is you have a choice (unlike a piano, unless we're dealing in the many historical tunings that have led us to the modern standard for that instrument.) Actually, you have many choices in arriving at the temperament that suits you.

Right or wrong, wrong or right, don't let it tear a hole in your aura.

quote:

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If a piano can play any combination of notes and no one complains about intonation

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I have been in many situations where there were tuning issues with pianos. In particular digital keyboards can be a real problem. The reason as I see it with the steel is that the steel's overtones sit at the top of the heap so often if anybody is out on the track the steel can sound out. With pianos you get quite a bit of wiggle room because there are several strings vibrating to create a single note. This brings out the odd partials in the overtone series. Odd partials are more forgiving than even. The steel is more like an oboe in its basic tone. Think about how a tone cluster chord sounds dissonant on a guitar or piano. That is because of the odd partials clashing with each other. Now think of how you often hear chord clusters played by John Hughey and others that are stacks of major seconds that sound beautiful and clear. In in the nature of the sound of the steel that gives it so much of its expressive potential but also make it a very different beast to play in tune than other instruments.

------------------
Bob
upcoming gigs
My Website

I had the best luck with my Sho Bud PIII in this respect until the fingers wore grooves in them and became out of round from my filing them out over a 24 year period. Other fittings wore similarly, but seeing as how I paid for it the first couple months I was out playing it in the late 70s I was fine with it.

My current Marrs has a changer designed by Duane Marrs, who worked for Sho~Bud for many many years, and his design seems to work perfectly. Incidentally, the older SBs had adjustable pull return springs like a lot of guitars, and sometimes putting a higher or lower tension string can throw off return.

There IS a mechanism that I can see having a place in changers. It is like the old Harley Davidson "Mousetrap", that engages a helper spring shortly after activation and deactivates it when fully released through an eccentric spring fulcrum setup. I took a while to learn to adjust mine on my '63FLH,a dn found out why they called them "mousetraps".

Additionally any guitar with multiple raises and lowers can have "compensators" attached. I could do it with my Marrs. I suppose I could be shown the need, but as yet I haven't.

I'll leave it to the manufacturers to figure out what options they want to include on their guitars. They will of course abide my choice of the ones I use.

Franklin, Emmons. MSA and other guitars are certainly fine guitars, and I think the areas or mechanisms in them that I am not familiar with would make sense to me if I saw or tried them.

Well John, that probably the biggest reason I have gotten upset about this "Tunin Question". A new player has more than enough to worry about with setup technique and in general learning their way around the instrument without a nearly impossible prospect of "tuning specific beats out of specific chords.

You're right, a chord that has notes that are flat in it is a flat chord, or more accurately a partial minor whether "centered" over a stack of non dicked with chords from other instruments or not. You'll also note that tuned "straight up" a third that has many beats per second, when it has a fifth added to it played just as strongly as well as a root loses it's dissonance "miraculously". Especially at stage volume.

If it's hard to play some of those intervals in your practice space, by all means tweak them. If you find a way to do it where other chords or single note runs you play don't clash too badly.

Mainly, I hope you aren't too dissuaded by the hair splitters. I don't think they mean to do what they are doing to the "new guys". Especially when insults and insinuations start flying.

Charlie.

I think you might be right, and it stuck in my head that the Fischer Method my dad used called for counting beats in the fifths, and from what I remember, other intervals, and the many times I had my head pressed up against one of the pianos he tuned kind of ingrained it in me what a nice full flowering "major chord" should sound like. I didn't even know who Pythagoris was..

Bandstand playing over the last 26 or so years put a lot of things to the test.

Last night for instance at a local large club my favorite guitar player here locally, a young guy named Monty Moss has put a new set of strings on. The song, a slow Vince Gill song, "Whenever you come around" required us to play unison full chords, and some of his notes were obviously flat. Because we'd played together for a number of years, I instinctively omitted the notes I heard clash, and used more moving octaves, and sus4s. He did similarly. On one song, I realised I had hit my low B on the E9 with my hand, and bent the octave til it sounded in unison until I could momentarily shut off my VP and tweak it. All "on the fly" and with very slight notice of any of the audience.

I made my three bills for three nights, and I'm penciled in for future stuff if I ever have time.

Actually I have found something I am going to change on my Marrs WRT "mechanical throw". I am very hard on the pedals and stops. The nylon cushions that are under the pedal rod arms on the A and B pedals are free floating and have work ever so slightly a groove in one position that they randomly find knocking the tuning off a cent or two once in a while. I am replacing them with small brass washers. Also as I relayed to Duane and Jeff the finger clamps, I have put green loctite under to avoid having to clamp them down as hard as I otherewise would. That stuff is like "liquid braze" and if anybody else tries it for any reason I warn NOT to get it on any threads or they will not move in the future.

There are certainly enough ways to discuss differences without insults, insinuations, reminding people how important you are, or counting on others to do it for you.

I'm glad to see a few more of them employed.

It gives me a sort of Je Ne Se Qua...

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 21 May 2006 at 12:26 PM.]

A portion of Paul's comments are as follows...

quote:

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When I listen to Emmon's Black album or anything by Jay Dee, Reece, Green, Hughey, Jernigan, Rugg, and pretty much every steel guitarist on every major recording since country has been around, I can hear why JI blends well with the band and in all these cases the steels are in tune with their surrounding instruments.

The ET method is rarely found on major records. I believe the reason is because the rules for orchestral arranging applies to all instruments for sounding in tune with a band.

Since the human ear has to be trained to accept the sound of the ET sharp thirds beating feverishly in its major triads, and the steel sits on the surface of the band track, as does vocals and strings, and because ALL of those musical/orchestral parts are performed as JI, it then becomes more important that the steel should be tuned to fit its sonic place in the band.

Most producers I know will not accept ET as sounding in tune and will ask us check our tuning when we present them an ET tuned triad. I know this because I have tried this in the studio.

Percussive instruments like the piano and guitar blend together sonically. Because the steel is more bell like with its intial attack, it does not blend with the percussive attack of those instruments the same way the voice, violins, and other non- percussive instruments don't blend with rhythm section instruments. This is why something closer to JI has been and still is the standard way a steel guitar is tuned for recordings.

---

A good steel player knows what it takes with HOWEVER he chooses to tune or compromise so that everything is within the range of being 'in tune'. And 'in tune' IS a range. It's a range for a piano, for a guitar, and for a steel guitar.

That is the only explanation why Weldon can play in tune ET, Buddy can play in tune with EITHER, and Paul can play in tune with his system of tweaked JI with compensators. A good player WILL PLAY IN TUNE. He won't keep his job long if he doesn't.

Good point. and yes, that's probably why there are so many variations amongst "name" players...or anybody with decent skills, regardless of "name". All players find with experience what works for THEM. I've tried variations on JI and I sound like garbage, but when I tune "straight up" I'm usually fine, although I might tweak a string or two during a song. For others I'm sure exactly the opposite is true. There just isn't a "right" or a "wrong" way - there are just methods that work for different players.

Since Paul and others tune E to 442 with thirds much closer to concert than JI, I consider that 'tweaked'. Don't you?