The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    This is an ongoing issue. Pianos get out of tune all the time!!!! The Pianist comes in and plays whatever piano is there with what ever deficiencies it has. Guitarist can get closer to "accurate" pitch than pianists because we can adjust and correct on the fly. If the piano is off there is generally nothing a pianist can do.

    If they are both/all (guitar, piano, bass, horns) CLOSE it doesn't matter that much as they will blend. When three octaves of a piano vary in their tuning accuracy it can get pretty bad.

    Having played in various churches for years you learn to deal with it by keying in on the bass or organ tuning which tend to be much better than the piano. If your pianist has good ears they can adjust by playing in different registers or laying out of certain parts, which guitarists should also do to serve the song.

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  3. #27

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    Quote Originally Posted by Marinero
    James lost me almost instantly with this conceptual mumble-jumble. All guitars--especially acoustic guitars are different. They have their positives, negatives and quirks and every one has its own personality if you spend enough time with them. I don't think you can ever be in perfect tune but you can get close and adjust if you know your instrument. I don't see how these generalizations/concepts could apply to serious guitarists. Good playing . . . Marinero
    It's not conceptual mumble-jumble; James Taylor has seen rain, and he is right as rain.

    He might have explained why the otherwise progressive downward offsets in tuning pitch include the retrograde step upward, but that is for the same reason that adjustable bridge saddles show the same pattern of position - it is to account for the transition from plain to wound string mechanics.

    Something else important:

    Playing in perfect tune is not the same as playing a perfectly tuned guitar.

    Classical technique for vibrato is a longitudinal pressure applied to slightly shift the pitch up or down. This works statically to adjust tuning as well. Beginners often do not control this pressure and will sound out of tune chords or lines. Eventually our hands learn how to avoid this and in time learn how to do it unconsciously to correct for slight tuning errors encountered on the fly.

    This is why sometimes a guitar feels like it is hard to play, but other times it seems very easy to play. The closer the tuning, the less unconscious effort is applied to fingering it into tune. The guitar will feel easiest to play when it is most in tune and demands the least work to play it into tune.

    A related thing can occur when shifting position. Beginners tend to land on the fretted strings after an upward shift with a little residual upward longitudinal pressure that can make the chord or note slightly flat. Likewise braking a down shift with grip can make the subsequent sound a little sharp. Our hands learn not to do this.

    I call these unconscious things the hands and ears learn to do micro-techniques... they are far too complicated to learn deliberately, but by luck the hands and ears are intrinsically designed for these kinds of things, just need time, not attention. But the point is that because of this, tuning is so important for performance. The hands will dutifully go the extra effort to finger the guitar into tune without you thinking about it, but if they need to do this the effect is that the guitar will feel "harder to play" in a vague undefinable way, more like the feeling that maybe you are just having an off night or difficulty concentrating, etc...
    Last edited by pauln; 03-14-2020 at 01:03 PM.

  4. #28

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    Hi, Pauln,
    Yes, James has seen fire and rain and, yes . . . he's all wet. No jobbing musician would use his Flash Gordon tuning machine since it is awkward, time-consuming and where in a club are you going to tune to this contraption? Especially during a gig. Perhaps in James' world this is possible, but not for a meat and potatoes working musician.
    However, for the record, JT was certainly one of my favorite popular musicians who had the ability to sing, play a quality popular tune. What he does to create his magic is fine . . . however, IMO it's not practical. Perhaps, in a studio.
    Finally, try this experiment: tune your instrument to a quality tuning device. Then, use relative tuning with an A440 tuning fork or A440 from an electronic tuner. You will be adjusting several notes immediately. How is this possible if YOUR guitar was in tune from the first tuning? The answer is that every instrument is different and requires relative tuning to get it "close".
    Thanks for your reply and the initial humor! Good playing . . . Marinero

  5. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by Marinero
    Hi, Pauln,
    Yes, James has seen fire and rain and, yes . . . he's all wet. No jobbing musician would use his Flash Gordon tuning machine since it is awkward, time-consuming and where in a club are you going to tune to this contraption? Especially during a gig. Perhaps in James' world this is possible, but not for a meat and potatoes working musician.
    However, for the record, JT was certainly one of my favorite popular musicians who had the ability to sing, play a quality popular tune. What he does to create his magic is fine . . . however, IMO it's not practical. Perhaps, in a studio.
    Finally, try this experiment: tune your instrument to a quality tuning device. Then, use relative tuning with an A440 tuning fork or A440 from an electronic tuner. You will be adjusting several notes immediately. How is this possible if YOUR guitar was in tune from the first tuning? The answer is that every instrument is different and requires relative tuning to get it "close".
    Thanks for your reply and the initial humor! Good playing . . . Marinero
    JT I think is describing the results of his tuning, not suggesting the process. What I mean is that after experience tuning his instrument, he knows it comprises some deviations to sound right. He has measured those and is showing how to do that to follow in his steps, as a demonstration, but not that those steps are how to do it. I agree that deliberately tuning flat by measuring a schedule of cents is not happening in performance... he is just showing how to reach the end result so you can hear it yourself. In actual use, that end result is reached quickly by ear.

    If you were discovering this on your own, it might be surprising or alarming that you were tuning down so much to get the right sound. You might not believe it or trust that it could be right and forgo it, just tune to what the tuner indicates as standard and move on. I interpret his video as more like a walk through some experimental evidence in order to assure people that it is real and important, not to be freaked out by it.

    I have been doing this by ear for decades; it is part of how I tune. I can see how it might seem bizarre, but that is why he went through it step by step... on the video, not on stage. For stage, you have to know your instrument and do it fast by ear.

  6. #30

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    Steel guitar players actually have access to what frequencies need adjusting for each string to provide the best intonation through the whole range of the instrument.

    Example:
    C6th
    Pitch Gauge Cents 440 Scale
    G .012 +6.0 441.5
    E .014 -6.0 438.5
    C .017 +4.0 441
    A .021 -6.0 438.5
    G .026w +6.0 441.5
    E .030w -6.0 438.5
    C .036w +4.0 441
    A .042w -6.0 438.5
    Last edited by cosmic gumbo; 03-22-2020 at 03:37 AM.

  7. #31

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    James Taylor's tuning works with any electronic tuner. It doesn't have to be exact to use his concept. And it does sound better with piano tunings than straight guitar tuning. Basically, tune flat from the lowest string and progressively raise it a few cents till the top string is right on. The B string should be a little extra flat in the sequence. It's hard to do by ear because our ear wants more perfect intervals. I think it is because physics of pressing down a string sharpens the pitch. The lower the string the worse it gets.

  8. #32

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    Could it be it sounds a little diffrent from the piano because when some chords played on the guitar have the third an octave higher than the root and fifth, but a piano playing the same chord has the third in the same octave. So to a piano player the chord will sound diffrent from his piano.