Tuning Before Electronic Tuners

[James Quillian]

Is there anything written as to an efficient technique that steel players used before the advent of electric tuners.

This is as much out of curiosity as anything. I do some of my tuning by ear as it is now. I would like to find out how the experts used to do it.

[Erv Niehaus]

I think a lot of musicians used a tuning fork and then went from there.

[Chris Lucker]

Winnie Winston’s book and a tuning fork and ears.

[Pat Chong]

Although I'm not familiar with this method, there were those who tuned via tuning fork and harmonics between strings.

[Jack Stoner]

I had an E tuning fork. Started with that, some harmonic, some by ear, some with the bar and unison.

I also had a Chromatic "pitch pipe".

[John De Maille]

In the old, old days, I'd ask the guitar player for an "E" then tune by ear. If I was near a piano, I'd do the same. Then, I got an "E" tuning fork and tune the rest by ear. Luckily I've got a good ear for pitch, thankfully.
Then..... the electronic tuners came out.! What a boon to bandstand tuning. Especially if the guitar player and drummer are fiddling around. I didn't have to worry about what they were doing because I was plugged into my tuner. However, I do believe that some steelers get overstressed about their steels if they see that it detunes when pressing a pedal using a tuner. Most of the time you can't hear the deficiency when you play anyway.
So, using an electronic tuner might make you chase your tail when trying to correct an unnoticeable defect. Never the less, I believe an electronic tuner is the way to go in order to be as close as possible to being in tune.

[Doug Beaumier]

Yep, an E tuning fork and use your ears for the rest.

[Thomas Alexander]

Is there anything written as to an efficient technique that steel players used before the advent of electric tuners.

Al Brisco recommends tuning by ear from an A440 at pedals down, so that the pedals down is perfectly in tune with other instruments and the pedals up is a bit sharp. For this you could use a regular A tuning fork. https://www.steelguitarcanada.com/tunin ... continues/ and https://www.steelguitarcanada.com/al-br ... ng-method/ explain these techniques in greater detail.

I was taught to start with an E +9 cents and tune the triads by ear from there using harmonics. I might try Al's A440 method, but starting with a lower string and tuning up the highers just feels more natural to me that starting with a high pitch and tuning downward.

[Donny Hinson]

Is there anything written as to an efficient technique that steel players used before the advent of electric tuners.

As far as I know, no. Music is like any other art form, certain things in it must be learned. Tuning your guitar, just like playing it, is not something you get out of a book. It's a skill, a skill that must be learned by training your ear to hear when it's "in", and when it's "out", and making adjustments accordingly. Guitars are different, as are those who play them, and one size does not fit all. There are different copedents, different string gauges, different scale lengths, etc., etc., and because of that, one setting or tuning chart simply won't work for everything and everybody.

So how did we tune before electronic tuners? We developed our musical ears, and tuned from one reference note. We learned what sounds good, and what doesn't.

[Lloyd Walsh]

We had pitch pipes as kids learning to play guitar (late 70’s). Recently I bought a B6 Ric Panda lap steel and found an old metal 4 note pipe in the case (part of the sale included collected tidbits). The E was really close to pitch, the others were “paint peeling off the wall” bad.

[Fred Treece]

If you tune by harmonics and get rid of the beats, you’ll have to go back and tune sone of them back in because your guitar will sound like crap.

[Roger Rettig]

I reference an A with a tuning fork (pedals down), then I go with my ears. I've tried using convoluted charts with varying degrees of sharpness and/or flatness but, I'd always have to correct things to please my ear.

For bandstand scenarios I have a Boss TU-12. I will also use the Boss if I've made some big changes (as I have recently).

These days, the guitar stands in an air-conditioned room and some fluctuation is unavoidable. The tuning-fork is invaluable to get me in the ball park.

But tuning by ear is a vital skill that must be learned. I can occasionally reach a point where my ear gets tired but that's usually when I'm chasing my tail trying to tune a pedal/kl combination that's inherently untunable.

[Dale Rottacker]

When I started, I thought, "tune to the Piano" and that sounded awful, so LONG before I knew nothing from nothing, I was sweetening my tuning by ear. I'd use the E on the piano as a starting point and then tune everything open to sound right to MY ear and then tune the various pedal/knee lever changes to sound right. Mind you, that old Maverick didn't have many changes so it was somewhat easier than today.

Now I mostly tune harmonically, with the exception of my 9th string combinations which I tune by ear, according to how its used.

[Dave Magram]

Is there anything written as to an efficient technique that steel players used before the advent of electric tuners. This is as much out of curiosity as anything. I do some of my tuning by ear as it is now. I would like to find out how the experts used to do it.

James, before you spend a lot of time learning how to tune without an electronic tuner, you may want to first ask the question “Why do all of the professional and semi-pro working steel players use an electronic tuner?”

There are several obvious reasons why working steel players use an electronic tuner (as mentioned above) such as:
1. It is much quicker to tune with an electronic tuner, especially onstage—and it can be done completely quietly—even in the middle of a song, if for example you have broken a string or the temperature has changed at the venue.
2. It is very difficult to tune onstage without an electronic tuner because of the noise from the crowd, the jukebox, or other band members.
3. An electronic tuner is extremely accurate, and doesn’t depend on the player being able to “tune out the beats” that occur based on the mathematics of musical intervals. More on that below.

However the most important reason requires an understanding of “equal temperament tuning” versus “Pythagorean tuning”.

Here are two highly detailed explanations:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_tuning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament

Here’s a simplified explanation:
- In 600 BC, Pythagoras (the mathematician who came up with the equations to solve triangle problems) did a series of experiments to discover the mathematical relationships between the intervals in a musical scale.
- His findings resulted in very harmonious intervals (based on fifths and octaves) that were most pleasing to human ears; however if one tried to use an A note from the A scale in say, a Bb scale, it could be off by a several cents and sound quite dissonant.
- To be able to play in all 12 keys, using the pure “Pythagorean tuning” scale would require any given note to have several pitches associated with it, depending on the key signature. Imagine a piano with three or four different piano keys for middle C-—and every other note. Instead of 88 piano keys, you might need 264 or 352 piano keys!
- So, for many hundreds of years, most composers used only a few closely related key signatures, such as C, F, and G in which the dissonances were minimal.

To allow all 12 key signatures to be played, several composers promoted a “compromise tuning”, in which there was only one pitch for each of the 12 chromatic notes, called “equal temperament” (ET).
- To further promote “equal temperament”, starting in 1722, Bach wrote his famous “Well Tempered Clavier”, two sets of preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys for keyboard.
- The tradeoff was that all 12 ET scales contained some dissonant notes. All of the scales sounded slightly out of tune—but composers probably figured most non-musicians wouldn’t notice.

Classical violinists, when playing in a chamber music quartet with viola and cello, are able to play the very pure Pythagorean tuning because there are no frets on a violin--which is why chamber music quartets sound so pure and harmonious.
- However when a violinist plays with a piano, he or she adjusts their fingering slightly to play in “equal temperament” with the piano—which is slightly dissonant.

The problem becomes pronounced when one plays chords instead of only scales--not something that violinists do very often, but pedal steel players do all of the time!

How does this apply to pedal steel guitars?
- If you play a perfectly tuned (Pythagorean) E major triad (E, G#, B) on your E9 neck, and press the pedal that raises your B to C#, you have, in effect, changed from an E major scale to a C# minor scale-—and one or more of the notes on the new C# minor scale will likely sound a bit dissonant.
- If you press the pedals that raise your B to C# and your G# to A, you have, in effect, changed from an E major scale to an A major scale--and one or more of the notes on the new A major scale will likely sound a bit dissonant.
- Each change of chord using pedals and knee levers will introduce more possible dissonances—which makes it harder to tune all of the pedals and knee levers “by ear”.

Of course, for many years the Nashville session PSG players did tune by ear, using a tuning fork or another instrument for a reference point to begin. However, remember these were the days that great players often had just three pedals and one (or no) knee levers.

To tune a pedal steel “by ear” really means adjusting some of the notes between the “equal temperament” compromise tuning and pure “Pythagorean tuning” so that the chords produced with pedals and knee levers sound more harmonious. This is called “just intonation”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_intonation

When the first electronic tuners became affordable in the 1980s, Jeff Newman met with Lloyd Green one day and asked him to get his PSG in perfect tune. Jeff then used his new electronic tuner to identify the degree of “just intonation” Lloyd used to get his guitar, pedals and knee levers in tune. Based on those measurements, Jeff produced his first “just intonation” tuning chart.

Related posts:
viewtopic.php?t=197268
https://steelguitarforum.com/Forum5/HTML/013518.html

I hope this is helpful.

- Dave

[Roger Rettig]

That is a fascinating history and explains why tuning is so complicated. Watch a skilled piano-tuner at work and see him observe the compromises demanded by the different scales. There will be dissonance.

When I talk of 'learning to tune', it's purely in the sense of training our ears to recognize when the 'perfect compromise' has been reached. There's a danger that we might depend upon the tuner completely. That's rather like depending upon someone else's tablature and learning the piece by rote.

Even standard six-string guitar is a minefield but it's a pushover next to a pedal steel with multiple pulls. I've just been tussling with such a trouble spot on C6. I hadn't appreciated that it was a problem until I really tried to nail the combination of P6 and the KL raising my high A to A#. I now know the compromise.

[Jeremy Threlfall]

Lloyd Green has never owned a tuner

Buddy Emmons would get standing ovations following his tuning routine


These two historical facts address the OP's question

Q "what did pros do before electronic tuners?"

A "tuned up by ear, and sounded damn good while they did it"

[Roger Rettig]

True, Jeremy, but they also knew how to 'play' an out-of-tune guitar into tune. A bit of slanting, some extra bar pressure here or there, and the listener never knew.

I recall strumming Buddy's E9th immediately after his set at Chattanooga - it was all over the place! His set, though, had been a joy to hear.

[Fred Treece]

Lloyd Green has never owned a tuner

Buddy Emmons would get standing ovations following his tuning routine


These two historical facts address the OP's question

Q "what did pros do before electronic tuners?"

A "tuned up by ear, and sounded damn good while they did it"

Imagine if you will...most of us who are not Buddy or Lloyd or Paul walking on to a stage in the midst of the chaos of band setup time and demanding silence from our band mates while we tune our pedal steel by harmonics for the next 5 or 10 minutes. I doubt they would be cooperative or awestruck.

It is a good skill to have, but there are practicalities to consider for when and where to apply it.

[Jeremy Threlfall]

well the magic must have been in having the skills to play an out of tune guitar, because they must have had to play in noisy pubs and with impatient band members, just like everyone (in bands) does today. That, or being able to tune up really really quickly, and make little adjustments on the fly. And not only live, also in the studio - i love that story of Tom Brumley playing the Together Again solo on a broken down unfamiliar Fender 800 or something

[Doug Beaumier]

Herb Remington and Jerry Byrd would often retune their non-pedal steel guitars on stage between songs. Not simply tune the string(s), but change the tuning of the guitar... in seconds, by ear. I saw Herb do this in person and I've seen video clips of Jerry doing it. It would take them about 5 seconds to do, without a tuner.

[Roger Rettig]

Although it was at least sixty years ago, I have never forgotten attending a recital by Narciso Yepes, the renowned Spanish classical guitarist.

It intrigued me at the time but, between most of the pieces he performed, he retuned his instrument. He took the time to explain to us that 'No guitar is perfectly in tune; depending on what key I'm playing in and where on the fingerboard it lies, I must adjust my tuning accordingly'. Not in his first language, but he respectfully did the best he could in English.

[Fred Treece]

If you are or were a working musician and are over 50 years old, you most likely tuned and retuned by ear on a noisy stage on a regular basis. Some of us were probably pretty good at finding our little quiet moment between snare drum thwacks and “checking 1-2-3”, or that 15 second break between songs where you could roll off your volume and try to figure out where the sour notes were coming from. I know nobody ever applauded my tuning process. In fact, even I found it annoying, and was glad when it was over. . Electronic tuners - now that's magic.

[Doug Beaumier]

Yes, annoying is the word! Some musicians would tune their guitars, bass, or fiddle after every third song! And of course, everyone in the club could hear them tuning, trying to match the guitars to each other. That would be unacceptable in today's world. I was just thinking... the young musicians I work with were born in the 1990s, and have never known a world without guitar tuners.

[Johnny Cox]

Is there anything written as to an efficient technique that steel players used before the advent of electric tuners.

This is as much out of curiosity as anything. I do some of my tuning by ear as it is now. I would like to find out how the experts used to do it.

Tuning fork or pitch pipe and train your ear. I still only use a tuner for the root note unless there is a piano in the band then I tune A to the piano.

[john buffington]

I once asked the late John Hughey (at the Tulsa Show) if he used an electronic tuner to tune by he said: "No, it makes your ear lazy, I get my E's off a tuner and that's all, if I don't use a tuner, I use my E Tuning Fork only".