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Author Topic:  Tuning beats
Gary Cooper

 

From:
Atmore, Alabama
Post  Posted 18 Jun 2015 5:11 pm    
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I am confused on what is meant by "tuning the beats out". I have read some on this subject, but how does one hear the beat or the difference.
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Jim Palenscar

 

From:
Oceanside, Calif, USA
Post  Posted 18 Jun 2015 5:24 pm    
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Sometimes it's tougher than others to hear the beats between various frequencies such as between the E and B or 4th and 5th strings. Ideally it would be nice if each chord we played had no beats between any of the notes in it however there are times and chords that simply do not lend themselves to that if we want to be in tune with others in the band- especially a piano. If you are having trouble hearing beats it helps to use a distortion device which takes away the musicality of the note but the beats get right in your face.
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Gary Cooper

 

From:
Atmore, Alabama
Post  Posted 19 Jun 2015 5:47 am     Beats
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Jim, thank you
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Ian Rae


From:
Redditch, England
Post  Posted 19 Jun 2015 11:04 am    
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The interval between 4th and 5th never quite sounds right even when it is in tune. In pre-classical times it was regarded as dissonant. I check 5th & 8th first (you can easily tell when the beats have gone from those) then I listen to 4th and 8th.
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Lane Gray


From:
Topeka, KS
Post  Posted 19 Jun 2015 11:46 am    
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The "beats" are harder to explain than to experience.
Try this, assuming you have a tuner:
Tune your 4th string to straight up
Tune your 8th string to just a bit flat, like four cents or less.
If you have a fuzz box, turn it on (it makes beats more blatant, but it's not necessary)
Turn up the volume and hit 4 and 8 together.
Do you hear, in the background, a fairly faint pulsing, that goes away as you SLOWLY raise the 8th string? That's beats.
Beats also happen on unisons, fourths, fifths and thirds.
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Walter Bowden


From:
Wilmington, North Carolina, USA
Post  Posted 19 Jun 2015 12:23 pm    
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Harmonics on 2 open strings can bring out beats especially if you are doing unisons. BTW, I discovered that if my ceiling fan in my small practice room is running, it can affect trying to hear beats.

I wasn't aware of the affect it was having until I saw someone on the forum mention it. I turned the fan off and the beats were much easier to hear. I thought my amp had developed some kind of oscillation and it was driving me crazy. Best wishes, Walter
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Dave Hepworth

 

From:
West Yorkshire, UK
Post  Posted 21 Jun 2015 9:38 am    
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Beats ,
If you tune a string to say at 440 and then tune another to unison at say 444 then your ear and brain hear the resultant difference .That is 4 beats per second .What you here is 2 strings almost in tune but there is a PULSE in amplitude of the note which is 4 beats per second.Tune one of the strings up or down against the other and the beats will slow down and then disappear.At that point the strings are EXACTLY in tune as there is no differential in frequencies.
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Ron Pruter

 

From:
Arizona, USA
Post  Posted 21 Jun 2015 3:48 pm    
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Walter, Boy that's true.. Any fan in the room. Ya want a cheap tremolo? Sing into a fan. The Signal to noise ratio really sucks though (or blows, depending on which side you sing into Laughing RP
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John Roche


From:
England
Post  Posted 22 Jun 2015 5:45 am    
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I hate fans,electric type
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Jerry Kippola


From:
UP Michigan, USA
Post  Posted 22 Jun 2015 5:58 am    
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If you want to amplify 'beats', put your steel thru a good distortion box, and you will clearly hear the resultant note generated by and combined with any interval-
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Charlie McDonald


From:
out of the blue
Post  Posted 23 Jun 2015 2:18 am    
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Tuning beats what?
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Gordon Borland


From:
San Antonio, Texas, USA
Post  Posted 28 Jun 2015 1:48 pm     Headphones
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I have been tuning with powered headphones for years. This makes hearing the beats very easy.
I tune the lower E 440 on the E9 and C (string 4)440 on the C6th. Pick the lower e and the high e and tune out the beats by turning the high e sharp or flat so that there are no (beats). You can use this for the third (g#), fourth (A) and fifth (B). Now use the pedals down for the four chord. Use lower e for ref and tune the A and the c#. The trick for the low D is now that you have the A (pedal down) you use the A as ref and tune out the beats with the open D. At the same time use the A (pedal down) and tune your F#.
I expect to get blasted by other members for any mistakes I made. There bound to be a better way to present this process and I hope that gets pointed out as well. The only thing I can say with complete confidence is "Don't use a match to see how much gas is in the gas tank." If this whole thing gets moved to the humor section I will be fine with that.
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Charlie McDonald


From:
out of the blue
Post  Posted 28 Jun 2015 2:08 pm    
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You are pretty humorous, Gordon, but I see no mistakes.

A method Buddy Emmons used in the example of tuning the E, B, and G# was to tune the G# with E and B to where it disappears.
It will be a compromised G# between ET and JI, where the beat rate between the m3rd and M3rd will even out, so to speak.
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Ian Rae


From:
Redditch, England
Post  Posted 29 Jun 2015 1:55 am     Re: Headphones
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Gordon Borland wrote:
The trick for the low D is now that you have the A (pedal down) you use the A as ref and tune out the beats with the open D. At the same time use the A (pedal down) and tune your F#

That is all well and good, but the F# you get is too flat to work beatlessly in the B chord with the Es lowered. I tune it so that it does, as I use that position much more than the D triad on string 9 or the F#m on 7 with A&B. I suppose it all depends what music you play.
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Charlie McDonald


From:
out of the blue
Post  Posted 29 Jun 2015 2:56 am    
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The method Gordon describes is like the tuning circle that piano tuners use, albeit in twelve-tone equal temperament.
To follow that on pedal steel, it goes round and round til infinity, and I don't mean the steel manufacturer, but one can wish.

Using the same method, F# can be inferred with respect to B and D#.
Eventually a scism, a comma, will be reached. Somewhere, there will be beats.
A way of locating that can be found in meantone tuning, which establishes F# as its center, oddly enough, for reasons b0b can explain.
I present the chart for 6 comma meantone as a compromise (equal temperament for a piano is 12 comma).
Here is b0b's chart:
Tab:
lower     open      raise     
          F#  0     G +12.5
D +10     D# -7.5   
          G# -5     A +7.5
D# -7.5   E  +5     F -12.5   F#  0
A# -10    B  +2.5             C# -2.5
          G# -5     A +7.5
          F#  0
D# -7.5   E  +5     F -12.5
C# -2.5   D  +10
          B  +2.5             C# -2.5


Here is a graphic representation, kind of like the face of my Korg tuner:

Of course, this is done with a meter. The settings can be used to learn to tune by ear as Gordon does,
but then, once in tune, who wants to tune all the time? Playing beats tuning.
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Ian Rae


From:
Redditch, England
Post  Posted 29 Jun 2015 4:39 am    
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Charlie McDonald wrote:
The method Gordon describes is like the tuning circle that piano tuners use, albeit in twelve-tone equal temperament.

On the contrary, Gordon is describing tuning in natural intervals, where the beats disappear altogether. There is no circle involved, just the harmonic series.
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Gordon Borland


From:
San Antonio, Texas, USA
Post  Posted 29 Jun 2015 6:01 am     Msa
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I play a 1974 MSA D10. This sucker stays in tune so well that tuning before a gig is such a pleasure. I used to use a Korg chromatic on each string with each pedal and lever. I had a chart and it was tedious. At gigs when there is very little time to tune and sidemen who would do all of their tuning and practicing cranked to 10 volume with no regard for anyone else I had to come up with a solution. I opted for a pair of Yamaha powered earphones and tune out the beats. Oh I ran into problems when I would bump the tuner pitch control to A336 on accident have a wire break on the headphones or a dead battery with no spare. So now I just use two tuning forks one E440 and one C440. I carry an extra pair of headphones and extra battery. I also check tuning between sets because of a fiddle player (Ron Knuth) said about a steel player he played with......."Opperknockerdee only Tunes once".....
Thank you guys for your post!
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Ian Rae


From:
Redditch, England
Post  Posted 29 Jun 2015 6:28 am    
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I do a simlilar thing, except I don't rely on batteries - I use a pair of these plugged into the the headphone socket on my amp



One note of confusion (pun intended) Gordon - you refer to an "E440" tuning fork. You might mean E329.6, which is an even-tempered E relative to A440 and the most likely one to find on sale. If it says E440 on the fork, that's what it'll mean but it's misleading (which is a polite way of saying wrong) Smile

(I told my daughter about Opperknockerdee - she's a fiddle player and she laughed her socks off)
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Gordon Borland


From:
San Antonio, Texas, USA
Post  Posted 29 Jun 2015 2:07 pm     Great!
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Spot on!
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Charlie McDonald


From:
out of the blue
Post  Posted 29 Jun 2015 3:20 pm    
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I understand, and was pointing out a way the original poster could use a chart to get the idea and train his ear
to 'hear the difference' and apply what he learns to aural tuning.

As a piano tuner, I used powered headphones to tune backstage aurally, with two forks or a Korg for a starting point.
Pedal steel is certainly different, and I applaud Gordon's method and direction. He makes easier what is difficult for some.
Nonetheless, troublesome intervals are where the compromise must occur. Meantone is a good compromise.

Good posts, I've learned something.
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Ian Rae


From:
Redditch, England
Post  Posted 30 Jun 2015 1:51 am    
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Charlie, now I understand too.

NO COMPROMISE! - I rejected compromise with my E9/B6 universal tuning, and the only sacrifice I have had to make is that string 7 is too sharp to be used with the A & B pedals, but this doesn't trouble me as its use with the E lowers is more important.

Every other interval is exact. I have two different C#s on string 5 - one on the A pedal (a major 6th above string 8) and a sharper one on P7 (a 5th above string 7), and two different high F#s to go with them - the raise on the C pedal is a perfect fourth above the A-pedal C#, and string 1 is slightly sharper, an octave above string 7.

I carry an E=329.6 tuning fork, but only for legal purposes. I tune my 4th string to E=330 with my phone app and tune by ear (i.e. zero beats) from there. This E gives me A=440 on the B pedal and also stops the open E chord from sounding dull next to the other instruments.

All the major triads I use (pedals up; pedals down; B position; A/F; P7) are exact and indistinguishable from each other. It's the trombone player in me, but nothing else will do!
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Gordon Borland


From:
San Antonio, Texas, USA
Post  Posted 30 Jun 2015 6:04 am     Out of tune.
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I want my bad playing to get full credit for bad notes off my steel guitar and not the tuning. Thanks for your post.
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Ian Rae


From:
Redditch, England
Post  Posted 30 Jun 2015 9:29 am    
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I agree. With this tuning, if I get it right it sounds fantastic. If it sounds off I know it's something I've done and I don't waste time tinkering.

Saves a lot of learning time.
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Charlie McDonald


From:
out of the blue
Post  Posted 30 Jun 2015 11:36 am    
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I play with beats all the time (my pal and I are the deadBeats, but that's another rhyme).
I like to hear them come and go, reaching for it, sliding back, resolving, part of the music.
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Gordon Borland


From:
San Antonio, Texas, USA
Post  Posted 30 Jun 2015 5:49 pm     So Sonny and Cher were country?
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So Sonny and Cher were country? "And the beat goes on.........and the beat goes on. Uhmm. Beets for supper for me. I could never make my 6 string guitar sound in tune.. The G string was always the problem. Now I tune the E's and then play a E chord and tune while holding the chord. Yup. Tune out the beats or pulses between notes.
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