EVH Tuning in Guitar World

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ido1957

ido1957

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I was reading the latest Guitar World magazine which descibed Eddie's tuning. Apparently the bass has to be tuned to compensate...

Weber uses a Peterson V-SAM tuner and runs the signal to a Line 6 pre-amp so can listen to the guitars as he tunes them. "Ed's tuning is interesting," he says. "He's a classically trained pianist, so he has a different way of tuning his guitar. I use the tuner as a reference at first, then I temper tune from various positions, like seventh and first position. I set the intonation based on the fret height and the average of his finger pressure on the strings"
 
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tempered tunings have been in use for years, a lot of piano tuners will temper things out, I know Tony Rice tunes his B string a little flat, because it makes it stay in tune farther up the neck... there is some fancy math involved in doing it, but I guess it works.... I tune by ear most of the time now, only using a tuner on stages where the noise is a little too much....
 
guitar junkie said:
tempered tunings have been in use for years, a lot of piano tuners will temper things out, I know Tony Rice tunes his B string a little flat, because it makes it stay in tune farther up the neck... there is some fancy math involved in doing it, but I guess it works.... I tune by ear most of the time now, only using a tuner on stages where the noise is a little too much....
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All 12 tone tuning (meaning all the tuning used in the music we play) is tempered. There are variants, as in the "stretched" tuning that piano tuners use.
 
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I wish we had signatures back because in mine I used to have links to explanations on tuning and why tuning to a tuner or 12 ET will never be right and in many situations and to many ears will sound awful.

Read this link first. Then do a search for "intonation" here and use my user name as a filter. You'll find tons of explanations on why 12 ET is a hash.

Gunn, just to clarify, not all 12 note tunings are tempered. The origin of all harmonic relationships we use today is based on the Pythagorean scale. That is built entirely on ratio's of 3/2 and is arrived at by stacking perfect fifths on top of each other. The one problem that that results in and is the problem that has challenged composer and musicians for thousands of years is what to do with the extra bit you get once you go round the octave. Essentially you end up with what is known as the Pythagorean comma. No number of 3/2 ratio's (a perfect fifth) will divide into 2/1 (the octave). If it did we wouldn't have to divide the comma into small parts (the syntonic comma) and place them in other places in the scale (tempering). True the Pythagorean scale has not been used compositionally but it is vitally important to instrument makers and anyone trying to understand the basic of intonation and temperaments.

All the scales that follow as a result could be described as tempered as you say. The exception to these would be other ET scales which are designed to get close to the Pythagorean scale without tempering. 17 ET, 31 ET and 51 ET get close so do others. These admittedly be definition are not 12 note scales but are employed to play in 12 note intervals.

All a guitar player really needs to know about this subject though is really contained in the first link I listed.
 
muttley600 said:
I

Gunn, just to clarify, not all 12 note tunings are tempered. The origin of all harmonic relationships we use today is based on the Pythagorean scale.
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I stand corrected. I should have said that all 12 tone tuning that most of us are likely to ever hear is tempered. ;^)
 
i've always wanted to ask if tuning via an electronic tuner results in a tempered tuning on guitar/bass?
 
Gear_Junky said:
i've always wanted to ask if tuning via an electronic tuner results in a tempered tuning on guitar/bass?
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Absolutely. The 12 tone scale that we all use is by its very nature tempered; read Muttley's post for a good description.
 
ggunn said:
I stand corrected. I should have said that all 12 tone tuning that most of us are likely to ever hear is tempered. ;^)
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I wasn't pointing out that you were wrong. Your pretty much spot on. Just that the basis for ALL tuning temperaments whether they are mean, just ET whatever is the pure scale based on Pythagorean tuning from which evrything else follows. The one place where you will hear music that is very nearly "pure" in practice is choral or vocal music. The human ear and voice has a remarkable ability to adjust the intervals to perfect relationships unlike an instrument that in many cases has it's notes fixed. Thats why when you listen to a unaccompanied choral piece the intervals sound so much better than when they are played on modern instruments. You'll hear the same pure intervals in a lot of baroque music that was written pre 12 ET but they were arrived at through slightly different means. In truth the Pythagorean tuning or scale is nearly useless to us today apart from a basis from which most other scales and temperaments are arrived at.
 
Gear_Junky said:
i've always wanted to ask if tuning via an electronic tuner results in a tempered tuning on guitar/bass?
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Not only does it put you in a tempered tuning but in a pretty poor one at that. Raed the link I posted it explains it very well and saves us the bother.;)
 
thanks. so I suppose if mine makes my guitars "sound" fine (to me) then either my tuner is ok or my ears are shot, which is a useable result either way :D
 
Gear_Junky said:
thanks. so I suppose if mine makes my guitars "sound" fine (to me) then either my tuner is ok or my ears are shot, which is a useable result either way :D
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Either way is good if it sounds OK to you. Just remember that for certain situations and with many other musicians and punters it won't sound OK to them. You can include me in that.;) Read the link I posted and you might get a handle on why.

I always find it amazing the number of people that tune up every open string to a tuner insisting it's the way to go and then spend a good deal of time either tinkering with it or blaming everyone else because "they" are out of tune.
 
It's also worth mentioning here that what the guy in that article is talking about is no different from what thousands of guitarist do as a matter of course and always have.
 
thanks for the link Muttley. i've been tuning my guitar wrong for my whole life as a guitarist lol.
 
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