I want to learn a song and tabs on the internet say that I need to tune my guitar 1/4 step down. How do I go about doing that on an electric tuner accurately? Does it have something to do with the Hz thing?
Reg
I've been doing this by instinct for years without giving it much
thought
so I'm glad you asked about this. First of all recording and
playback
machines aren't always 100% accurate so if you're listening to a
recording and
it sounds a little flat, it may be intentional and it may
not. Also the
person who wrote the tablature may have said tune down 1/4 step simply
because
his cassette player or turntable without a strobe light sounded that
way.
In most cases if I wanted to play along with a recording and didn't
want to
sound sour, I would just tweak my tuning up or down slightly to
fit. When
I played the song separate from the recording, it didn't matter much
anymore, so
I just played tuned to standard pitch.
There are cases though where the 1/4, 1/2, or full pitch lower is
intentional...
If you're tuning down one full pitch, then you would just tune the
strings lower
until your tuner reads
D G C F A D
low to high.
Tuning down 1/2 pitch would be
Eb Ab Db Gb Bb
Eb low to high.
The tricky part is the 1/4 step. Try tuning your guitar 1/2
step down to
Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb low to high on the tuner as mentioned above, then
sharpen each
string slightly. On a chromatic tuner try
sharpening each string by
about +40Hz on the scale. Again, this is not exact.
Listening to
the recording will be the only way to really get in tune.
Bob, Gman ( o )==#