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Kyle Everson
Sho-Bud Pro-II
Fender Twin Reverb
Goodrich 120

Cabinet drop is not a simple thing. You get more drop with two pedals activated than one pedal. And the length of the pull and the gauge of the string pulled has an effect, as well as the number of strings raised by a pedal or combination of pedals. You can also get cabinet rise when a lower is activated. So you can't really account for all the possibilities simply by how you tune the strings. But on E9 the A/B pedal combination is used so extensively that it is worth adjusting for if there is more than 4 cents cabinet drop of the Es with the A and B pedals activated.

When I first got a 12-string uni, there were no raises on the lower strings on the A and B pedals. There was only 2 or 3 cents cabinet drop (about 0.5 Hz), so it was not worth worrying about. When I added pulls to have the lower strings raised the same as the strings an octave above, I had three pulls on each of the A and B pedals, and the cabinet drop increased to 8 cents (2 Hz). So I tune the E chord 4 cents sharp (441), and let the A chord drop to 4 cents flat (439). Thinking about Scott's comments, maybe I should go another Hz sharp.

Splitting the difference like that, I mostly don't hear a problem playing with ET guitars and keyboards. But if there ever is a problem, it is always me being a little flat, and having to play slightly above the frets. Usually it is because guitar players seem to inch their tuning up, they never adjust the tuning problems they hear by tuning flatter. Or maybe it's just my strings warming up, even though I try to warm them up before I tune. For whatever reason, being a little sharp across the board is better than being a little flat.

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 27 September 2006 at 07:20 PM.]

Neither. I just tune the way I have most of my life..

As far as doing what other players do, I don't work with "other players", and I tend to try more to match what the ones I do play with do. They don't play pedal steel guitars. Usually guitars, basses and piani.

Sometimes they play horribly, and I can usually match them so as not to appear out of place.

Sometimes they don't, and I usually match that too.

Simplicity.

That's the most important thing.

(Especially for those just starting out.)

That and getting paid.

I suppose so a guy can save up for a $200+ Tuner to tune by ear with.

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 27 September 2006 at 10:17 PM.]

Going back to the original question, Gary is it possible that you didn't have the Petersen set to the correct temperment when you tuned the neck? A couple of times I have tuned the E9th neck when my Petersen was mistakenly set to the C6 offsets. I can assure you that my guitar was not in tune when I plugged into the amp!!!

quote:

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A couple of times I have tuned the E9th neck when my Petersen was mistakenly set to the C6 offsets.

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With a guitar with no cabinet drop or raise, I would probably tune the Es to +5 or 6 cents, and with the typical 3-5 cents drop on my and most other guitars I settled on at Es at +8 cents. The Newman chart is at +10 (442.5) which I have tried also and works fine for me also. The big decision for me is whether I want the intervals or the single notes at the fret marker, there is a noticeable difference in bar placement comparing Es at 440 and Es at 6,8, or 10 cents sharp. Cabinet drop/raise or lack therof would only influence whether I use 6 or 8 or 10.

On the D's on the Newman chart I think the intent was to split the difference between being a nice fourth with the A and being JI with the B note. I use a setup with two different Ds to get around this issue.

[This message was edited by Scott Swartz on 27 September 2006 at 09:45 PM.]

quote:

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I suppose so a guy can save up for a $200+ Tuner to tune by ear with.

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At long last. The Jeff Newmann Chart Origin.

quote:

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One morning sometime in the early 1980s Jeff called and asked if I could come out to his place for lunch and also bring my steel (it was the Sho-Bud). He said he had something important to discuss with me. He was a friend and I was curious and hungry enough to go.........Upon arrival he asked me to set my steel up, which I did. Now keep in mind he hadn't told me anything about what he had in mind and I was looking around for the food since I was bit hungry.................Besides, I was getting pretty damn hungry when about that time Fran appeared with a tray of food ample enough to tame us savage beasts.
Lloyd Green

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Now, only The Heretic would suggest that it might be changed a few cents here and there on a full stomach..

I was just recording some lap steel parts the other day and I tune it A6, with the As and Es at +7 cents and the C# and F# at -7 cents. Same deal, intervals right at the fret and depending on what note on what string have to play above or below the fret in some positions.

Since the Top Guy reportedly tunes his at exactly 440, all strings, all changes, and I do it the same way..

That pretty much represents the Top, and close to the Bottom.

I'll leave it to the rest to fill in the middle with whatever they come up with. I've read some whoppers..

There's not much more I can do except play it every weekend for money in public. God willing.

It's off my desk.

EJL

Buddy's Harmonic Tune-up is one of the best selling items in the Forum catalog. It's still in print from Buddy Emmons Music, and it was even updated to the CD format a couple of years ago. This isn't "new old stock" - it's a current product.

Whether Buddy currently uses the harmonic method or not is an open question in my mind. I don't care what he has said on the Forum. It's a difference of a few cents that most people can't hear anyway. I've proved that myself by adopting a temperament of convenience that is out of tune according to any theory (see my "In The Ballpark" topic for details).

The bottom line is that you should find a tuning method that sounds good to yourself and stick with it. After a while, you will be able to play it in tune.

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

Nope. They're still there.

quote:

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Buddy Emmons
Member

From: Hermitage, TN USA
posted 24 May 2004 12:06 PM
...

I’ve tuned both ways an equal amount of years and the albums I’ve recorded over twenty years ago speak for the difference. My primary reason for tuning ET is to get everything out of the guitar that it’s capable of delivering.

To me that’s what you should expect out of any musical instrument. Tuning ET has allowed me to use pedals and pedal combinations never before possible when I had to compromise. Besides, I figure if somebody can get away with tuning 9 cents flat to every other instrument, then I’m home free.

Buddy Emmons
Member

From: Hermitage, TN USA
posted 24 May 2004 01:05 PM

My apologies for not explaining up front ...., but I do tune everything ET. Compensation is what I had to deal with tuning the old way but now it’s a thing of the past.

I may go a cent or so flat in some cases but strictly to handle temp changes under certain conditions.

Also when I hear a JI steel third in a ET track, flat is the only word I can come up with.

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Off to the gig. Just like every other Friday..

EJL

I think too Gary, that should you decide to go to the "Standard", "Straight up" tuning system, that the Peterson includes it.

For that kind of money, I'd hope so.

b0b's right. You can play nearly any tuning "system" to sound good. It's in the playing.

I don't care what he's said on the Forum..

[This message was edited by Eric West on 29 September 2006 at 05:36 PM.]

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Also when I hear a JI steel third in a ET track, flat is the only word I can come up with.

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(By the way it is strange to have a certifcate signed by a "Scott Peterson" hanging in your living room.)

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I may go a cent or so flat in some cases but strictly to handle temp changes under certain conditions. -BE-

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I'm thinking he would have said "hertz" if he would have meant hertz.

Also I think it's a little facetious for you to claim that he decided to "compromise his sweetness".

In those two posts, I don't read that at all. Maybe you can highlight the passage regarding "compromise". Or at least read it...

Finding out that Buddy Emmons tunes that way was nice, because when all these guys come on telling people what simpletons they are for tuning that way, or how much more important they are because they detune their guitars and the studios still make artists use them.

They are talking about the way Mr Emmons tunes.

At least for the last twenty years where he states that the albums he's recorded in that period speak for themselves.. They don't sound bad to me.

Which ones do you notice a "compromise of sweetness" on?

Now, let me ask as a further question.

Is the natural Thirteenth interval pleasing to "the" ear? How about an eleventh?

How about when one instrument leads with a Sus4? Or plays a major seventh against a chord that has the higher octave in it?

An interval two frets apart?

Are there intervals that have beats in them that are commonly played?

How would you tune the beats out of say the common "Steely Dan" CDEG chord? How about the standard half step in several stacked chords?

At long last Mr Doggett, do you still maintain that the human ear cannot possibly find an un-minored major third interval pleasing?

I myself privately think that people that have not trained their ears to prefer ET intervals ( or at the very least .6hz "perfect fifth" (with the pythagorian comma) intervals are rather unrefined, And those that tune their instruments by "removing beats" from Equally Tempered Intervals are rather naive considering all the regular occurring "beating" intervals in modern ensembles.

Equally naive, I privately consider those that think they can perfectly "match up" all the intervals that they play, and still come in acceptably on accidentals, linear scales, and diminished chord subs on a pedal steel guitar. But those are only my private thoughts, and I realise I've only been playing them live with other instruments for thirty years..

Back to my "public thoughts':

Mike:

Is there actually a Heretical "Buddy Emmons" setting on the Strobo Flip that tunes everything Straight Up ET? Maybe one for how Mr Doggett thinks he said he tuned on 24 May 2004?

Actually, I have enjoyed all these "tuning wars" because I have been playing steadily live the whole time, and have been able to observe a lot about tuning and intonation, being lucky enough to work with some good guitar players in the area to check some of the wierd ideas out that I've come across here. Some panned out, some didn't. I didn't change the way I tune.

Also before I get accused of boot licking or leg humping, I might add that if Mr Emmons changes his mind, and decides to tune like Mr Franklin, Lloyd, Jeff, or Bobbe Seymore, I'll still be doing it the same way.

And working all the time, in the time I have left, playing jobs that I enjoy. God willing..

Thanks Mr Doggett for making me think. The way your mind works is amazing. I get a kind of vertigo when I read your posts and have to check to see if I'm standing near the edge of something..

"Obscurity"?

Nope. I'm already there....

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 30 September 2006 at 07:14 AM.]

But as great a player as Buddy is, there is greater knowledge of musical theory and physics that goes back hundreds of years before you and he were born. It recognizes that JI is the natural, beatless harmonic system our ears prefer. It is what vocalists, unfretted strings and horns play when they are free to intonate by ear. JI intonation was not invented – it was discovered. But from its initial artificial invention hundreds of years ago, it was recognized that ET is a compromise. Everything is intentionally put out of tune in an ET scale, because of the limitations of a few fixed pitch instruments such as keyboards and fretted guitars.

It is amusing that a country steeler, with so little education in music he didn’t know ET is not the only tuning system for many years, is calling all the worlds symphony orchestras and conductors, all the music school faculties, and top steelers like Lloyd Green, Paul Franklin, and Jerry Byrd “naïve” and “unrefined” because they prefer JI over ET. In fact, ET is the simple, naïve way to tune for people who don’t understand the difference between ET and JI, who use a store-bought chromatic meter as a crutch, and who don’t trust their own ears. That does not include everyone who tunes ET. Someone like Buddy Emmons knows the difference, has tried both ways for years at a time, and from extensive experience chooses ET as the best practical compromise for his copedant and his style of playing. That is exactly why my piano is tuned ET. That is also the way the keys on my sax are manufactured. But I use my mouth to intonate to please my ear, the same as all horn players. The steel guitar is unique in being able to use movable JI chords in all keys. I take full advantage of that for the vast majority of common chords. I have tried ET, and for the few little-used chords it improved, I didn’t like the sour harmony I got on all of the main chords I use.

I respect BE’s choice, and it all sounds good to me, but he sounded just as good on the old recordings I have when he tuned JI. I’ve answered your question, Eric. Now answer mine? Do Lloyd, Paul and Jerry Byrd sound flat and out of tune to you?

In terms of intervals and accidentals. The entire chromatic scale, including all accidentals, sounds okay to me on a JI tuned pedal steel, but also on my ET tuned piano. The major and minor scales sound much better to me JI than ET. I prefer the scales on my pedal steel to the ones on my piano. Intervals that sound better to me JI are: major 3rds, minor thirds, 6ths (including 13ths), major 7ths, minor 7ths, regardless of the octaves played. Intervals and chords that sound about the same to me with JI or ET are 4ths, 5ths, a whole step dyad (same or different octaves), a tritone (diminished interval), augmented (two whole tones), 9ths, sus4s, sus9. These latter are all dissonant intervals, so any additional dissonance introduced by either JI or ET doesn’t seem obtrusive. I haven’t found any intervals that sound better ET. The reason pianos are tuned ET is because that way some chords, such as the IIm, come out closer to JI than if the piano was tuned to a JI scale. That is not the case with steel guitar. You can tune the C pedal stops to give a perfect JI IIm, or you can play a VIm with the A pedal, move that perfect JI minor chord to the appropriate fret for a IIm. Problem solved. A steel guitar is not a piano and doesn't have the same limitations.

The reason a piano sounds better tuned ET is because it can’t play all the intervals above JI in multiple keys. It can’t even play all those intervals JI in a single key. On a fixed JI C scale, you cannot play Dm (IIm) with JI intervals. With tunable pedal and knee stops and a movable bar, you can play a IIm with JI intervals on pedal steel. In fact you can play all of the intervals JI that I list above as sounding better JI. A pedal steel is not a piano. We can do things a piano cannot do. I enjoy taking full advantage of that. And I am in good company with Lloyd, Paul and Jerry. And we shouldn’t be ridiculed for using the same natural intonation used by symphony orchestras and taught in music schools.

Please forgive me if I have lost a little patience here. I would never ridicule Buddy or anyone else who chooses ET from knowledge and experience. And I would not normally ridicule novices who don’t know any better than to tune slavishly straight up to meter and have never learned to tune by ear. But at some point the derision Eric habitually heaps on everyone who doesn’t tune like him and Mr. Emmons gets tiresome, confuses the issue for novices, and simply begs to have the record set straight. If I were a novice (or anyone else) interested in learning about tuning, intonation, harmony and theory, I wouldn’t take the sarcastic ramblings of a truck-stop country steeler like Eric, or a hack amateur like myself. I’d read up on it in books or on websites written by experts, and above all, I would try both JI and ET to hear the difference with my own ears. If you don’t know how to tune both ways, your musical education is incomplete.

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Student of the Steel: Zum uni, Fender tube amps, squareneck and roundneck resos, tenor sax, keyboards

[This message was edited by David Doggett on 30 September 2006 at 12:18 PM.]

quote:

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My bad. If Buddy said one or two cents instead of one or two Hz, then for all practical purposes he is tuning pure ET. Differences of less than 5 cents don't have much practical significance. However, I suspect Buddy was using a figure of speech, and meant that he sometimes tunes his 3rds a few cents flat of ET by ear- how much may only be known to him. But I'm just guessing. You can take a fundamentalist literal interpretation of his sacred quote if you like.

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>>Well DD, I think I'll just go with he wrote over your wordy, and presumptious embellishment if that's OK..

quote:

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But as great a player as Buddy is, there is greater knowledge of musical theory and physics that goes back hundreds of years before you and he were born. It recognizes that JI is the natural, beatless harmonic system our ears prefer.

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>>That goes beyond presumption to your pure speculation. "Our Ears". Maybe yours and the mouse in your pocket..

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It is what vocalists, unfretted strings and horns play when they are free to intonate by ear.

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>>It is not. That's a flat out unsubstantiated opinionoid. Kind of like saying that people without civilization will choose anarchy. Does your mouse sing?

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JI intonation was not invented – it was discovered. But from its initial artificial invention hundreds of years ago, it was recognized that ET is a compromise.

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>>A compromise that predates the amount of years you suggest by several thousand. Mesopotamian ring a bell?

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Everything is intentionally put out of tune in an ET scale, because of the limitations of a few fixed pitch instruments such as keyboards and fretted guitars.

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>>Don't forget Harps, Glockenspiels, Vibes, Organs, Bass Guitars, Tympani, Banjos, and of course Hammered Dulcimers..

quote:

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It is amusing that a country steeler, with so little education in music he didn’t know ET is not the only tuning system for many years, is calling all the worlds symphony orchestras and conductors, all the music school faculties, and top steelers like Lloyd Green, Paul Franklin, and Jerry Byrd “naïve” and “unrefined” because they prefer JI over ET. In fact, ET is the simple, naïve way to tune for people who don’t understand the difference between ET and JI, who use a store-bought chromatic meter as a crutch, and who don’t trust their own ears. That does not include everyone who tunes ET. Someone like Buddy Emmons knows the difference, has tried both ways for years at a time, and from extensive experience chooses ET as the best practical compromise for his copedant and his style of playing. That is exactly why my piano is tuned ET. That is also the way the keys on my sax are manufactured. But I use my mouth to intonate to please my ear, the same as all horn players. The steel guitar is unique in being able to use movable JI chords in all keys. I take full advantage of that for the vast majority of common chords. I have tried ET, and for the few little-used chords it improved, I didn’t like the sour harmony I got on all of the main chords I use.

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>>How did you get two dots over the "I" in "Naive"??

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I respect BE’s choice, and it all sounds good to me, but he sounded just as good on the old recordings I have when he tuned JI. I’ve answered your question, Eric. Now answer mine? Do Lloyd, Paul and Jerry Byrd sound flat and out of tune to you?

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>> Their playing and recordings sound very well played to me. I'm not a real "Shania" fan though, I have to admit..

quote:

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In terms of intervals and accidentals. The entire chromatic scale, including all accidentals, sounds okay to me on a JI tuned pedal steel, but also on my ET tuned piano.

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>>So you're saying your ears can't tell??

What about Ours??

quote:

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The major and minor scales sound much better to me JI than ET. I prefer the scales on my pedal steel to the ones on my piano. Intervals that sound better to me JI are: major 3rds, minor thirds, 6ths (including 13ths), major 7ths, minor 7ths, regardless of the octaves played. Intervals and chords that sound about the same to me with JI or ET are 4ths, 5ths, a whole step dyad (same or different octaves), a tritone (diminished interval), augmented (two whole tones), 9ths, sus4s, sus9. These latter are all dissonant intervals, so any additional dissonance introduced by either JI or ET doesn’t seem obtrusive. I haven’t found any intervals that sound better ET. The reason pianos are tuned ET is because that way some chords, such as the IIm, come out closer to JI than if the piano was tuned to a JI scale. That is not the case with steel guitar. You can tune the C pedal stops to give a perfect JI IIm, or you can play a VIm with the A pedal, move that perfect JI minor chord to the appropriate fret for a IIm. Problem solved. A steel guitar is not a piano and doesn't have the same limitations.

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>>Well Mr D, you are FINALLY taking a step in the right direction when you explain what YOU and YOUR ears hear, aside from what ME, MY, and OUR ears hear. I know it's semantics, but you semantically come up with some pretty over-reaching, over-presumptions, and wacked-out conclusions, that you must "smirk" over when you finally push the "Enter" key..

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The reason a piano sounds better tuned ET is because it can’t play all the intervals above JI in multiple keys. It can’t even play all those intervals JI in a single key. On a fixed JI C scale, you cannot play Dm (IIm) with JI intervals. With tunable pedal and knee stops and a movable bar, you can play a IIm with JI intervals on pedal steel. In fact you can play all of the intervals JI that I list above as sounding better JI. A pedal steel is not a piano. We can do things a piano cannot do. I enjoy taking full advantage of that. And I am in good company with Lloyd, Paul and Jerry. And we shouldn’t be ridiculed for using the same natural intonation used by symphony orchestras and taught in music schools.

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>>Well I'm sorry if I sound like I'm picking on youse guys..

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Please forgive me if I have lost a little patience here.

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Not at all DD. I think it allows you to get some of your thoughts together and temporarily break the habit of stating what "We" do, and more of what "You" do. Congrats.

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I would never ridicule Buddy or anyone else who chooses ET from knowledge and experience.

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>>How would they prove that to you? Maybe a few thousand gigs?

quote:

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And I would not normally ridicule novices who don’t know any better than to tune slavishly straight up to meter and have never learned to tune by ear.

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>>Well thank god for those periods of respitory normalcy..

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But at some point the derision Eric habitually heaps on everyone who doesn’t tune like him and Mr. Emmons gets tiresome, confuses the issue for novices, and simply begs to have the record set straight.

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>>Well you can call it that, DD or maybe Eric gets tired of the derision heaped apon steel players that tune to ET, like the other insruments they play with.. Hearing from guys way up the chain why painstaking examples of the same passages played well with the different tunings "Mean Nothing", and then don't offer any coherent counter effort except to leave others to point out how important they are..

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If I were a novice (or anyone else) interested in learning about tuning, intonation, harmony and theory, I wouldn’t take the sarcastic ramblings of a truck-stop country steeler like Eric, or a hack amateur like myself.

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>>Well, I think between the two of us Mr Doggett, I come closer to identifying myself as a Truck Stop Country Steeler with nearly every post, and not a "Well Read, Researched, and Experienced Authority on the Human Ear/Brain Mechanism", and what "We" hear, as if each one of us had the same mouse in our pockets..

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I’d read up on it in books or on websites written by experts, and above all, I would try both JI and ET to hear the difference with my own ears.

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>>Well, Dave, that's certainly one way to go about it.

Me, I got a good teacher, practiced 8+hours a day for a couple years while in the Air Force, and went right out into the world and PLAYED IT.

It worked, and I'm playing a gig tonight, just like last night in the same type of place thousands of us do. Even some "Important Players".

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If you don’t know how to tune both ways, your musical education is incomplete.

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Yeah... In my case, maybe a few thousand more gigs and thirty more years...

I think sometimes "Musical Education" is a little over-rated. My Associate Degree at a Community College didn't do much more than help feed me through the VA benefits for a couple of the years I gigged for a living in the 80s.

To Gary, at long last.

See what happens when you try to complicate something as simple as Tuning it and Playing it?

DD.

I really do enjoy your posts, and Line by Lined this one so you wouldn't think I didn't read it. (Some of them I admit I have only skimmed.)

I suppose I could take another thousand words and put forth "what you might have really meant"... or what you meant as a "figure of speech"...

Take care of that Mouse.

EJL

To b0b:

I know.

I've got one too..

[This message was edited by Eric West on 30 September 2006 at 06:47 PM.]

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Bob
upcoming gigs
My Website

Here's a news flash: ET was an alien with a tone bar built into his finger, and Buddy drops his G string when he's getting a bath.

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Rebel™
ICQ 614585
http://users.interlinks.net/rebel/steel/steel.html

First I'm gonnal check out the Newman presets.

Then I'm gonna load up a the user defined preset with ET and name it "Eric preset". I'll use that for awhile.

Then I'm gonna label the "off button" the 'tune by ear" button!!

Then I'm gonna have fun checking out all those other presets that the Peterson web site talks about. I'll list them here for ya:

quote:

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11 classic and historic temperaments are included with adjustable root notes. Concert A or Concert C is selectable. Use any temperament in any key. Just Major & Minor, 1/4 & 1/6th Comma Meantone, Pythagorean, Werckmeister III, Kirnberger III, Kellner, Young, Vallotti and Rameau included.

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Man, I didn't know leearning how to tune was gonna be so much fun!! One of these days I,m gonna learn how to actually play!

Terry

[This message was edited by Terry Edwards on 01 October 2006 at 07:59 PM.]

change the way I tune.

I'm getting tired of having people

bash the Top Guy's tuning on my account.

The "Wreckmiester III" looks interesting..

EJL

quote:

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…in the end it is really our ears that must steer us. Upon observing a student trying again and again to get their violin in tune, a colleague of mine will frequently exhort: "Don't tune, PLAY IN TUNE!" after which he will pick up his horribly out of tune violin and play a few passages very well in tune, just to demonstrate that it is our ears that intuitively guide us to play in tune, not having an instrument tuned well in the first place.

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