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How do you suggest to a good friend to buy a pedal tuner?


honeyiscool

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I saw one of my friends play live last night. The dude plays a pretty good rhythm guitar, his vocals are actually really **** good, but oh my, both he and the bassist were out of tune and it was just so distracting that they sounded needlessly bad. It could have been prevented with a pedal tuner they used between songs, hell, I'll take a Snark, or anything.

So yeah, how do you suggest to a good friend that they buy some MFing tuners?

 

(That should be a rule, btw. If you don't have a tuner, you can't be on stage.)

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honeyiscool wrote:

 

 

I saw one of my friends play live last night. The dude plays a pretty good rhythm guitar, his vocals are actually really **** good, but oh my, both he and the bassist were out of tune and it was just so distracting that they sounded needlessly bad. It could have been prevented with a pedal tuner they used between songs, hell, I'll take a Snark, or anything.

 

So yeah, how do you suggest to a good friend that they buy some MFing tuners?

 

 

 

(That should be a rule, btw. If you don't have a tuner, you can't be on stage.)

 

Acoustic or electric?

If acoustic, I prefer small chromatic headstock tuners from Intellitouch, and I especially like the small Planet Waves which has a nice low profile.  Both will handle acoustic guitar and bass.  Those guys run about 25 bucks.  If their both tuned to A/440, shouldn't be any problem staying in tune with one another.

If electric, I would suggest a TC Electronics Mini Polytune.  Very fast, very small, very reliable, very good for about $100.  The old time favorite is the Boss, now a CH-3 IIRC, but it's not poly-chromatic like the TC Electronics.

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Maybe since you own so many tuners, you could give them one. Say "hey I noticed at your gig you guys didn't have a tuner between you. I just happen to have an extra..."

 

There really should be a boot camp for performing musicians.

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honeyiscool wrote:

 

 

I saw one of my friends play live last night. The dude plays a pretty good rhythm guitar, his vocals are actually really **** good, but oh my, both he and the bassist were out of tune and it was just so distracting that they sounded needlessly bad. It could have been prevented with a pedal tuner they used between songs, hell, I'll take a Snark, or anything.

 

So yeah, how do you suggest to a good friend that they buy some MFing tuners?

 

 

 

(That should be a rule, btw. If you don't have a tuner, you can't be on stage.)

 

Better yet, record them somehow the next time you hear them and let them hear for themselves.

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If they couldn't tell they were out of tune, I don't think a tuner is going to help that. that's Elementary stuff.

Get them both a clip on the headstock tuner. Just tell them straight up, you guys were out of tune bad. Give them a love ya bro thing. there's also the tune it or die Tee shirt.:smiley-cool15:

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kayd_mon wrote:

 

"man, you guys were great. I don't think you noticed you went out of tune after a song, though. You should get a pedal tuner."

 

 

 

Or something.

 

This.  You could also cushion it a bit by saying that neither were badly out on their own, but seriously off between each other.

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I was playing with a buddy, and his late-teen son came in and started playing with us. The son is far more musically gifted than I, but he did not seem to give a single damn about the fact that the guitar he picked-up was not even near to being in tune.

We had to stop and tell him to tune the darn guitar, which seemed to surprise him. 

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What if they really were intune and you are the one with the bad ears?

 

Best advice so far in this thread was to record them. They either don't sound as bad as you perceived, or they do and will adjust based on the recording, or they won't hear that they are out of tune in which case you will look like an idiot and they will resent you as they continue to play on, out of tune, probably more in their basement than at any sort of real gigs.

 

If you just simply tell them they are out of tune, they may or may not believe you and if they don't, they are most likely going to resent you for being jelly of their awesomeness, brah.  If you are armed with a recording, then at least you have some sort of proof. You could also use it to blackmail them at a later date once they start getting good as their ears develop.

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Write them a note if you can't do it in person. And put a bunch of hello kitty stickers on it and make all the letter I into little flowers to soften the blow. Or of they're really good friends go to amazon and buy them a $10 snark.

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honeyiscool wrote:

 

 

I saw one of my friends play live last night. The dude plays a pretty good rhythm guitar, his vocals are actually really **** good, but oh my, both he and the bassist were out of tune and it was just so distracting that they sounded needlessly bad.

 

I'm surprised someone who can sing in tune, cant hear it he's plyaing out of tune.

 

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Sometimes the singer is just going on how it feels in his or her body rather than going right with the guitar. So if the guitar is a bit flat, the singer might still sing on-key just based on feel. If that makes sense.

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mistersully wrote:

 

 

"you were out of tune... you should buy a tuner pedal"

 

This.  I mean, you can be nice about it - "hey, I liked your songs but you were out of tune and it detracted from the good stuff..." You can be positive, but be honest and don't beat around the bush.  It doesn't do them any favors.  Stuff happens, I can understand going out of tune in the middle of a song or over the course of a set, but if it's that noticable then defintiely tune between songs.  Sucks for the audience, but sucks less than being really out of tune.  Some people aren't as sensitive, though, so if you've got really great ears maybe it wasn't as bad as it seemed.

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Before being too judgemental we should all take this musical study on "in tune" into account.

 

"Perfect pitch may not be so 'perfect"

 

People classified with perfect pitch may not actually be as in tune with the notes they hear as they think.

Played a long piece of music, a study group failed to notice when scientists turned the tones ever so slightly flat. They then misidentified in-tune sounds as being sharp.

Researchers say it demonstrates the adaptability of the mind even for those skills thought to be fixed at birth.

They have published the work in the journal Psychological Science.

Only around one in 10,000 people has the ability to correctly classify a note simply by hearing it. This phenomenon is called perfect, or absolute, pitch, and has been made famous by the well-known composers who are believed to have possessed such talents, such as Mozart and Beethoven.

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Part of the current fad of not tuning up beforehand together.  Do the band memebers even know how to tune by ear? Probably not. Electronic tuners are fine to a point, better then nothing. But if musicians dont tune together by ear at start of pracrtice or before gig and during. Or at least use elkectronic tuners for ballpark then compare by ear. Then they gots musician problems imo. 

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I don't get it. Why do you need to compare by ear if you have an accurate enough tuner? Sure, it's not always 100% correct, but a decent tuner like a Boss TU-3 or Korg Pitch Black, it's still more accurate than is needed for most situations.

p.s. The low E on the bass was especially flat, maybe about a 2/3 of a semitone flat. After a few songs, he attempted to fix it by playing an octave with the D string, and then ended up taking the D string out of tune as well. It was pretty awful.

I've seen some good advice, and I think the next time I see them, I'll just tell them that they need to be in tune, maybe that time they won't be too out of tune and then I'll mention that fact. But I'm not giving up any of my tuners. People can buy tuners on their own dime, and I wouldn't have bought those tuners if I didn't need them.

And as for the people suggesting that people who aren't in tune can't be very good musicians, are you serious? There are a lot of relatively tone deaf players who can play rather well.

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