Yes, yes, yes. That's the joy and burden of equal temperment.
My daughter has a newish Washburn acoustic with the Buzz Feiten tuning on the nut. That guitar drives me nuts to play! It always sounds "out of tune" to me, even though it's technically LESS out of tune than my own guitars.
As for the art of tuning itself, I've found that I need to learn the ins and outs of each guitar I own to get them as in tune as possible. Electronic tuners can get you close, but for the guitar to really sing, additional tweaking is needed. And it's not just the guitar... it's your own fretting technique, and your own taste. DADGAD simplifies this a great deal, by reducing the several complex harmonic relationships between strings down to octaves, fourths, fifths, and a lone second. Of course, once you start fretting, all bets are off again, but the natural open tone of the guitar is much happier.
It drives me nuts too...since I'm just recording, I tune the guitar to the place in the neck where I'm playing...lol
Yes, yes, yes. That's the joy and burden of equal temperment.
My daughter has a newish Washburn acoustic with the Buzz Feiten tuning on the nut. That guitar drives me nuts to play! It always sounds "out of tune" to me, even though it's technically LESS out of tune than my own guitars.
As for the art of tuning itself, I've found that I need to learn the ins and outs of each guitar I own to get them as in tune as possible. Electronic tuners can get you close, but for the guitar to really sing, additional tweaking is needed. And it's not just the guitar... it's your own fretting technique, and your own taste. DADGAD simplifies this a great deal, by reducing the several complex harmonic relationships between strings down to octaves, fourths, fifths, and a lone second. Of course, once you start fretting, all bets are off again, but the natural open tone of the guitar is much happier.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ron Vogel
It drives me nuts too...since I'm just recording, I tune the guitar to the place in the neck where I'm playing...lol
Because I've played a lot of slide over the years, I've used a lot of open chord tunings.
Probably the very best illustration of why we need an equalized temperament system comes from getting as close as possible to a harmonically perfect open chord tuning -- and then fretting. Of course, that, in a sense, doubles down on the errors, since the frets are, of necessity, designed for a 12 Tone Equal Temperament set of values. But, unless you resort to those 'wiggly' frets on those quite rare guitars that are dedicated to a single justly intonated tuning -- a system which precludes any realistic possibility of conventional, modern modulation -- there's no way of getting in-tune fretting on a guitar tuned 'perfectly' to an open chord.
That's why, on a properly intonated guitar, you get the best all round playing by simply tuning to 12TET values.
You can tweak your tuning to sound sweeter on certain chords -- but you're robbing Peter to pay Paul. Some other intervals will simply be that much more out of tune. 12TET and other equalized tuning systems try to spread these irreconcilable differences around in a way such that the out-of-tune-ness will be as 'subtle' as possible across as many intervals as possible. (That said, there's nothing all that subtle about how out of tune sevenths can be. It's a real eye-opener to use a slide to find the 'in tune' interval of one of the sevenths and compare that to where the fret is.)
Because you can NEVER get a keyboard or guitar, etc, where EVERYTHING will be in tune (without dynamic intonation only available with voice, fretless instruments, software-controlled dynamic intonation systems, etc), it's a little like trying to even up sideburns when your ears are, themselves, a little uneven...
BTW... looks like the changes to the 12TET v. Just table on the Wikipedia page for Equal Temperament reflect someone's recent changes reimposing a 16/9 ration for the Just minor 7th instead of the apparently more conventional 7/4 Just interval ratio. There is a mountain of discussion over minor seventh ratio issues in the articles 'Talk' page -- unfortunately, it appears someone took it upon themselves to ignore all that and change the chart back to 16/9 for some reason. It's all pretty confusing to this ol' cowboy.
tuning so that you are always "perfectly" in pitch for all notes everywhere (whatever that means to you) is a nice exercise for a solo player, but when you're playing with other instruments, it becomes somewhat immaterial. because you now have *their* compromises and imperfections to deal with. and that's actually pretty cool because it's part of what makes different keys interesting - the different ways harmonies (or even unisons) 'rub' against each other in different keys for different instuments. pianos and saxes will never be in pitch with each other in any key, but they still make great music together.
tuning so that you are always "perfectly" in pitch for all notes everywhere (whatever that means to you) is a nice exercise for a solo player, but when you're playing with other instruments, it becomes somewhat immaterial. because you now have *their* compromises and imperfections to deal with. and that's actually pretty cool because it's part of what makes different keys interesting - the different ways harmonies (or even unisons) 'rub' against each other in different keys for different instuments. pianos and saxes will never be in pitch with each other in any key, but they still make great music together.
It's a grail, of course, unattainable in the real world because of both minor (or not so minor) imperfections in guitars and, of course, the inharmonicity and variability within (particularly metal) strings.
But, after a long and thoughtful (but highly informal and probably rather idiosyncratic) investigation of equal temperament issues as well as Just intonation and the characteristics of non-ET instruments, I decided -- or realized, actually -- that tuning a guitar (as closely as possible) to strict standard equal temperament gives you the most latitude in dealing not only with modulation and transposition issues but with the accompaniment of other non-ET instruments as well as vocalists who tend to sing pure intervals instead of ET intervals.
Equal temperament provides the closest thing to neutral ground we have.
Now, to some extent you can tune to 'sweeten' certain chord fingerings, but by doing that you are, by necessity, drawing other chords further out. And that is because your instrument is designed for equal temperament. If you detune a given string, you affect the notes represented by all those frets -- but those frets are spaced according to equal temperament relationships so when you tune that string to one fret position, you are then putting other notes on that string out of tune.
And that is why you're robbing Peter to pay Paul when you use a tweaked tuning to sweeten a given chord.
Now, maybe Paul doesn't play in that song... If you have an arrangement that avoids other chords that you've pushed out of tune, maybe that's OK with you. Still, for those of us who substitute chords and fingerings to vary things, simply playing a given chord in a different position may lead to tweaked, out of tune harmonic relationships when the strings have been tuned to sweeten a different inversion.
EDIT: I certainly don't mean to make it sound like there's anything wrong with experimenting with sweetened tunings or making minor adjustments to try to accommodate problems with a particular instrument; I'm just saying that after chasing many different approaches for years, I've finally settled on a fairly straight down the middle approach and stopped 'fighting' equal temperament.
Question about drop-tuning: if a guitar is permanently in drop-tuning (DADF#AD specifically) will it affect the neck?
It's never bothered me before and I have noticed no ill affects on the 2 guitars I have in DropD and DropG but a friend (long-time experienced guitarist) visited and advised me that leaving the guitar in permanent DropD might adversely affect the neck. Is he correct?
I wouldn't worry about it. You'll need to make adjustments to the truss rod and keep the neck straight as under any other tuning.
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After decades of playing, I've only recently started playing with open tunings. I tried DADGAD for a while, but I quickly went to Open D.
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After decades of playing, I've only recently started playing with open tunings. I tried DADGAD for a while, but I quickly went to Open D.
As a long time slide player, I've used open D (or open Db, as I've been dropping all my accompaniment guitars a half step for most of the last decade) for decades. But DADGAD, I didn't get -- what was the 'advantage'?
Since it's just a half step on one string away from open D, I fooled with it a few times but just never engaged with it until one day a few years back (which memory suggests I already went on about above).
For me, the advantage (or set of trade-offs) is that DADGAD seems to foster in me a more methodical approach to the notes I'm playing. Part of that is because I'm generally in one of only a handful of keys: D major, D minor, sometimes G or C or relateds, so it's easier to keep track of -- and, of course, there are simply less different notes - three as opposed to five -- so quick visual calculations become a lot more doable...
I now tend to be more aware of the relative role of a given note -- and that's given me more conscious control and understanding -- even as I continue to drill my 'muscle memory' on basic moves.
As I may have mentioned above, my goal for some time has been to be able to improvise multi-part guitar in Spanish/classical/Celtic finger styles. I've still got a ways to go before I can consistently tie it all together while improvising, my bass lines feel simplistic and seem to either lack motion or have too much, and my upper range explorations and ornaments are gaining coherence but slowly -- but I'm much farther along than when I started -- and working in DADGAD (as well as applying what I learn from that exploration to standard tuning playing) has allowed me valuable insights that have pushed me a lot farther down that road.
As a huge Sonic Youth fan, I've experimented with all kinds of open tunings. If you've ever seen those guys live, they generally switch out guitars for just about every song because just about every song was written with a different tuning.
I enjoy the challenges brought on by alternate tunings. DADGAD is one I've used many times. One thing I like about alternate tunings is how they force you to relearn the instrument. I really believe that it makes you a better player to see the same old guitar from an entirely new angle.
One of my favorite things to do on guitar is when I put on new strings to just tune each string until I find an open chord sound I like. It's often some kind of weird esoteric chord like an altered fifth or something that I don't care to understand on a scholarly level. All I know is it sounds like a foreign instrument and usually inspires some chaotic and beautifully haunting jams. After tuning the guitar without a tuner, I'll experiment to find out some possible chord shapes and scales. From there I'll write a quick song or something, and then retune the guitar to standard and never remember anything that I just did. Every once in a while, I'll record what I did with the first part of the recording just playing each open string, one at a time, to get the tuning down, should I ever plan to revisit it. But I never really do. It would be impractical in a live setting to retune your guitar to those strange tunings in between ever song. From what I understand, that one thing that really hurt Sonic Youth in the early days; taking forever in between songs to tune the guitars.
I now tend to be more aware of the relative role of a given note -- and that's given me more conscious control and understanding -- even as I continue to drill my 'muscle memory' on basic moves.
As I get older, I find that I simply want to play more physically. I want to hit the strings a certain way, and move my left hand in a way that facilitates moving between sounds. I guess it's my inner Keith Richards expressing itself. I've found that I have no greater difficulty playing in open tunings than in standard tuning, because it's all about having the muscle memory to move between certain sounds. That said, DADGAD just feels too harmonically static to me to move the way I want.
As I get older, I find that I simply want to play more physically. I want to hit the strings a certain way, and move my left hand in a way that facilitates moving between sounds. I guess it's my inner Keith Richards expressing itself. I've found that I have no greater difficulty playing in open tunings than in standard tuning, because it's all about having the muscle memory to move between certain sounds. That said, DADGAD just feels too harmonically static to me to move the way I want.
For years, heck, decades, after starting to play guitar (at 20), I would marvel at people who seemed to be able to simply make music on an ad hoc basis. I could improvise, but it was, in large part, 'rule-driven' in the sense that I was typically always conscious of scales and modulations from scale to scale in the course of a song.
To be sure, as time went on, my movements were more 'sound-driven' than scale driven -- but it's only been in the last 15 years or so that I've really started being able to just play, like you, you know, just sing.
(That said, as I've become increasingly annoyed with my vocal failings, I've been thinking more about vocal technique and pitch and that has mean a whole lot less ability to, you know, just sing. )
ADDENDUM: I guess what I was getting at is that it's been a long term effort for me to increase the percentage of the time that it feels like the music 'just flows out/through' -- with my conscious mind backed off to what we might call 'producer' mode, giving general directions but not getting involved int fret-to-fret minutiae. I often drill while watching 'TV' on Netflix. I turn on the captioning to make it easier to follow the dialog (and maybe give my conscious brain something to chew on) and just sort of let my muscle memory run free. Of course, it's easy to put the show on pause so I can dig in a little when I want.
PS... with regard to the perceived limitations of DADGAD... to be sure, particularly when becoming familiar with it, there can be a tendency to over-rely on certain elements. I was doing some improv last night trying to put together a few bits that showed that one doesn't have to be too trapped, but, as usual when I'm learning new stuff, I'm out in front of my expertise a lot the time and it seemed like everything I came up with had a few too many clams or missteps to put up here.
, just sing. (That said, as I've become increasingly annoyed with my vocal failings, I've been thinking more about vocal technique and pitch and that has mean a whole lot less ability to, you know, just sing. )
Hey, total lack of singing ability didn't stop Bob Dylan.
Hey, total lack of singing ability didn't stop Bob Dylan.
Damn that Dylan, Jagger, and all those other guys I thought were unbelievably cool in the 60s...
Dylan, especially, set a very low bar -- particularly as his career progressed. (To this day, I think his best singing and performances were on his first album. Maybe he felt more free to concentrate on his singing since there were only a couple of originals on it. Or maybe he was simply more malleable and subject to the imprecations and coaching of production staff.)
I mean, with few exceptions, I tended to think 'good' singers sounded hopelessly lame. Or at least the male ones. I grew up hating crooners and traditional 'good' singers, for the most part. 'Good' singers like the guys in 3 Dog Night or later period Doobie brothers really sent me running the other direction, even as I understood the craft appeal.
It was only after I started paying attention to some male jazz singers and going back and listening to some of the doo wop and early soul from my childhood that I started beginning to really appreciate 'good' singing. I always liked Sam Cooke when I was a kid and I was almost kind of surprised, as an adult, to find he was well-regarded. That kind of caused me to go back and listen to him critically, as well as to re-investigate some childhood faves like Nat Cole and Harry Belafonte. (Belafonte was another guy who was clearly a technically adroit singer who I never thought of as square. And, Cole, of course, seemed universally loved when I was a kid. His way-too-early death in '65 (lung cancer) was just another death of a beloved figure that made the 60s such an emotional roller coaster.)
As a huge Sonic Youth fan, I've experimented with all kinds of open tunings. If you've ever seen those guys live, they generally switch out guitars for just about every song because just about every song was written with a different tuning.
I enjoy the challenges brought on by alternate tunings. DADGAD is one I've used many times. One thing I like about alternate tunings is how they force you to relearn the instrument. I really believe that it makes you a better player to see the same old guitar from an entirely new angle.
Definitely agreeing with this, and I recently counted 22 SY albums in my own collections (not including the Thurston, Lee, Kim or Jim O Rourke stuff I have).
Try developing your own tunings and working around that is conceptualy amazing. For instance on Eric's Trip Lee Ronaldo tuned his guitar to a G Major pentatonic scale and plays the harmonics at the 12th for this beautiful melody. I've found ones I prefer, often simple modifications of E standard (EAEF#BE, EACF#BE) or Pavement style ones (CGDGBB) work great and force you to reconstruct chords. All of a sudden the intervals and shapes dominating your music and playing are very different - if you beleive in the "Every guitar has a song in it" mantra, beleive me when I say every tuning has a hundred. Even the timbre of the instrument will change dramaticly as you impose these new tunings on the instrument, and it's amazing!
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Just wanted to get in that I, too, spent a lot of time listening to Sonic Youth back in the day. I think I own 5 albums. They were one of the last rock bands I had any use for. Come to think of it, maybe the last. (Using 'rock' in the somewhat broad sense of my long ago youth.)
Even more than the tunings, though, for me it was the architectural use of feedback. But that's another thread, for sure...
Where's that wall-of-feedback, edge-of-chaos guitar plugin when you need it?
I could do that stuff at my old project studio, buried in my house but now that I live in a shoebox with big picture windows, little insulation, and cheek-to-jowl with my fellow beach 'hood neighbors (who in large part paid big bucks for their built-to-the-easements houses while I rent a tiny flat over some garages ), I've pretty much avoided feedback-fests.*
And then there's the fact that I've moved from Sonic Youth chaos to dubby downtempo and now back to the bluegrass/folk of my long ago youth... not much call for wall of feedback in the nice little country-ish tunes I mostly do these days.
That said, crazy, over-the-top feedback can be so fun I would surely be doing it if I could get away with it...
* This was reinforced by the momentary next-door tenancy of some frat-brats, one of whom had a very expensive drum kit he left set up in the uninslated garage where, a few times in the 2 months they lived there (that was about 8 frat boy parties where I would have to listen to the brain dead conversations between the frat boys and the bimborrific 'little sisters' they were perennially trying to sleep with -- conversations that made Beavis and Butthead seem like My Dinner with Andre) the would-be drummer would go out to the garage and pound atavistically on them with little apparent rhythmic consistency or general musicality. I think it was supposed to be heavy metal. I guess. Really, it was hard to tell.
It was at that point that I swore off ever (again) annoying people in similar fashion. (Again being an operant qualifier, since I, too, was young and totally self-centered once, myself, as memory serves; I could be a real ass about noise. )
And then there's the fact that I've moved from Sonic Youth chaos to dubby downtempo and now back to the bluegrass/folk of my long ago youth... not much call for wall of feedback in the nice little country-ish tunes I mostly do these days. )
Now your pidgeon holing yourself! I mean, Primus get away with their thing! Noisey Dub Folk, I'm hearing Neil Young with a Space Echo and an MS-20 feeding a Fuzz Factory.
If I didn't live in the country I'd be in the same boat as you. But with a neighbour who likes to repair cars at night, several local farms etc. I think I'm pretty much fine as long as it isn't loud enough to sour the milk. Musicians are the weirdos of the neighborhood, and while we're entitled to what we do there's limits. I don't want to hear what they're watching on TV, they don't want to here me blaring John Cage's collected piano sonatas.
In a weird way, this stuff does relate to the topic (outside of the Sonic Youth reference). Understanding an instrument in different ways opens different opportunities. Retuning a guitar, using an alternative technique (slide, ebow, fingerstyle, clawhammer, feedback) or external equipment (loopers, MBV style walls of fuzz and modulation, vocoders/talkboxes) are all valid avenues of exploring an instrument. And it's that feedback between what the player does and hears that allows the performance to happen. When X action produces Z result instead of Y, that's going to change how the player plays.
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If you have an arrangement that avoids other chords that you've pushed out of tune, maybe that's OK with you. Still, for those of us who substitute chords and fingerings to vary things, simply playing a given chord in a different position may lead to tweaked, out of tune harmonic relationships when the strings have been tuned to sweeten a different inversion.
