Ok. Enough bullshit. Here's the thread for people who:

-Can't Work A Tuner
-Need String Guage Suggestions
-Want to know a band's tuning
-Want to know tuning terminology (IE: standard vs. drop)
-Need to know what a "Step" is
-Need to know what Sharp (#) and Flat (b) are
-Need to know anything else about tunings.

Ok. First off, working a tuner:
1. Turn it on
2. Plug your guitar into it by taking a patch chord, putting it in the output jack of the guitar and plugging it into the input of the tuner
3. Pluck string that you want to change the tuning of
4. Look at tuner, it should read as whatever note your trying to reach, or something wrong.
5. Using the musical alphabet (ABCDEFG) tune higher or lower as nessasary
6. Make sure that the appropriate lights are on or that the peg is dead center off the tuner.

Next, strings. Here's what I suggest, FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF YOU POOR, LAZY BASTARD. If you are truly too poor and lazy to go and do it yourself heres what many on this site say:

E standard: 9-42
D Standard/Drop D: 10-46
C: 11-49
B: 12-54
A: 13-56

Etc, etc, etc... Basiclly, go up one number on the high E, for ever step you take down.

Next, band tunings. Alright, theres too many bands to name so, refer to a tab on this site or Rivers of Gore.com.

Next on the list, Drop vs Standard. Standard tuning is as follows: EADGBE. You figure out what tuning is what by looking at the high and low E strings tunings. IE, if you want D standard, the high and low E strings, would half to be D notes. So, using your grade 2 education, count down the letters to figure out what notes go where.

Observe:
EADGBE
To B standard
BEADF#B

Remember that there is no such thing as Fb, E#, Cb or B#. Don't argure.

Now, Drop Tunings are when you can play a bar note on the low E string and the A and still get the sound of a power chord.

So this is standard:
|------|
|------|
|------|
|------|
|--4---|
|--2---|

Is this in Drop D

|------|
|------|
|------|
|------|
|--4---|
|--4---|

To be in a drop tuning, you must have your low E and D strings the same note.
So, drop D tuning looks like this:
DADGBE
Isntead of
EADGBE

And, if you want drop A, it would look like this:
AEADF#B
Instead of
BEADF#B

What is a step? A step is a whole tone, or for those of you who aren't trained in music, the distance between two frets. So one step down from B, would be A.

|------|
|------|
|------|
|------|
|------|
|-7--5-|
B A

A HALF step is the difference between ONE fret, or a semi-tone. So one half step down from E, would be Eb.

|--------|
|--------|
|--------|
|--------|
|--------|
|-12-11-|
E Eb

So, to tune one step down, would be D Standard. One half step down, would be Eb Standard.

Next is Sharps (#) and Flats (b). These, on a piano, are the black keys. This on guitar, is kind of confusing at first.

Ok, to make a flat note, you go down one fret, or one half step.

EX:
E > Eb
D > Db
C > B

You: Wait... the fuck? Why did you skip Cb?

Me: CAUSE IT DOESN'T EXIST YOU MUSICALLY IGNORANT FUCK!!!

Remember:


Now, in the musical alphabet, there are 11 notes all together:

A--A#/Bb--B--C--C#/Db--D--D#/Eb--E--F--F#/Gb--G

So, how do you know what is Flat and what is Sharp? Where you start of course!

If you start from E, and go down one half step, you get Eb. NOT D#. Why? Because you started on E and went DOWN. So if you start on D and go UP one half step, what do you get? D#! Very good!

And thats it! If you have any other questions about tunings and tuners, post it here. Have a shitty day, cunt.

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Why didn't I think of this? Tuning seems to be such a dilemma for a lot of people.

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Musical alphabet is CDEFGAB, isn't it? Not ABCDEFG.

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on a piano anyway, but your pretty much right

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thats the simplest form of a major scale, because there are no sharps or flats. *pat pat*

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Its all that "tune down to "D"-stuff" that is confusing to a lot of people. First time I read that on a tab I was like

Good topic, you should sticky it

Well, on the Treble staff yes, thats the order of the notes, but the actually alphabet is ABCDEFG.

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the order of a-g doesnt matter

The drop thing, you should make it clear that the two D strings are an octave apart and not the same.

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Ummmm.... i have ernie ball beefy slinky's which are 54-11 and tune at D standard..I always thought it was kindof difficult to play on the high 3 strings. Does ernie ball make 46-10's. Should i be OK with 54-12 on D standard? It always felt tight

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Have a try.

I use .10's for standard E and know that next time i am going for the .9's.

When i have tuned to D standard with .10's, they feel perfect imo.

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JOAMdude, those were just general guidelines and if you feel comfortable playing with those guages in D standard stay with it, or if you want to try something different go for it. 12-54 should be fine in D standard. I play 13-56 in standard tuning and at first it was almost impossible, but now after a few months its not too bad and I noticed a big speed and strength boost when playing my brothers guitar stringed with a set of 10-52.

mk. i think i might go down a gauge tho cuz now i'll be faster cuz of my heavier strings

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It might be worth mentioning if you ever come across one of these notes written on sheet music (for the select few here who will even look at sheet music), you play the note that the music implies. That is, for example if it is written Fb, you play E.

Basically, Fb is saying 'play me one semitone below F'. Because flats and sharps are semitones below and above the note.

So E is a semitone below F, and B is a semitone below C.


So after all my flabbergasting, it exists on sheet music, it is rather incorrect, but play the note a semitone above or below.

Meh.

You are right, but, in the end, thats still just a complicated way to write out E, B, C, or F. There is still no Fb, E#, B# or Cb.

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If it doesn't feel right, it isn't right. When YOU like it, it's right. Stop asking about that shit. Everyone. It's just a stupid question. That's like hating chocolate and asking someone if you should get it instead of ice cream cause it's better tasting. IT'S JUST STUPID!!! Figure out your own opinions.


Learn your alphabet.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.

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Ok so im stupid, but can someone explain this tuning to me, its from Cannibal Corpses hammer smashed face. D# G# C# F# A# D#. How do I tune my guitar like this?

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This is just a half step down from standard e, a better way to write it is this

Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb

Also Slayer, Deicide, old Morbid Angel, and alot of the older death and thrash metal bands use this tuning

pretty much tune all strings down a half step from standard

Ok Guys so I Have a Old Ovation Guitar lying here and i need a drop c tuning to be its standerd how do i need to do springs and all that fun stuff its not a fylod or anything just a shitty trem thanks for replies if i get any

...damn....tuner is the easiest way to tune a guitar, how can people dont got it...you plug your jack in the input (tuner's hole) and you plug the other in your guitar and you press power.....

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Ok, what I'm getting from this broken English is that you have a guitar, and you want to down tune it so that Drop C is it's proper tuning. First you need it intonated (makes it so that your open string and your 12th and 24th fretsd are the same note). I'm not a master of this, so take it to a pro. I know it has to do with moving the sadles and adjusting the truss rod but that's the extent of my knowledge. Also, work on punctuation. Took me a couple times to figure out what the hell you were saying.

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Ok, here's my problem.

I dunno why, but I can't seem to tune all the strings to each other. I know what each perfect 4th between all the strings sound like (with the exception of the G and B strings, which are a major third), but whenever I play any 6 string or even 4 string chords, it's sounds out of tune. And the root of my problem is my G and B string. I tune them to each other, and they sound out of tune with the rest of the strings. I then tune them to the rest of the strings and they don't sound in tuned with each other. Also, whenever I play them just by themselves, they sound like shit, esspecially the G-String. On clean, it sounds like a cat screaming for air while fighting in a tied-up potato sack. On Overdrive, it still sounds like that except only more screaming.

I try to refrain from using tuners because after a while, you can't rely on them and you have to rely on your ears, which helps alot. I'm thinking the best solution to my problem is when I get new strings for my guitars, have wrapped strings for both G and B and maybe even the high e string. Would that do anything, or would I be wasting my time, and money?

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I mostly use my tuner, but recently i've been trying to do that whole harmonic tuning thing and am getting better at it very gradually. No offense or anything, but maybe your ear needs some more training to hear the notes correctly or it could be the strings are old and not holding tune correctly.

It's probably te latter because the strings have been on the guitars longer than I have owned them.

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Would 13-56 strings fit in an earvana nut? I remember a while back getting those ghs 10-52 strings and the 52 barely fit.

they should.

Well there's your answer... dead strings waver in and out of tune every couple of seconds. Change them, and make sure the nut is well graphited if it's a normal kind of nut, and you'll have a lot more luck with the harmonic tuning and staying in tune in general.

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I feel like a real idiot haveing to ask this but how would i go about tuning to a band like In Flames, C F A# D# G C, the A# F and D# give me trouble, because 1. there is no 'F' on my tuner, and 2. to hit the A# and D# i was thinking i need to play a normal not but hold on to a note, its hard to explain but like lets say if i wanted to tune it to D# i hold down the 1st fret and tune to D for example, can anyone help me with this, im sorry again im kinda new to this.

As well as far as playing In Flames how would you rate them on playing level, beginner, easy, medium, hard, guitar god? i'd figure it to be somewhere in the medium to hard area, but they are my main focus in terms of learning right now.

I normally used 10-52 strings at first, too. Then i changed to 13-56. The 56 string didnt fit in entirely at first, but was still playable. If you play alot over a decent amount of time the string will grind deeper into the nut until it fits in properly.

I guess maybe your tuner isn't Chromatic?

Buy a Chromatic tuner, so that it will tune to notes at any pitch you require not just the 6 standard pitches.

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What tuner do you use? I use a cheap Korg GA-30 guitar and it only shows the standard BEADGBe on it, but it has a button called "flat" which lowers the tuning by 1 semitone (or 1/2 a step) per press. So basicly if I wanted to tune to D#, I press flat once. D is 2 presses, C# is 3, C is 4, B is 5 (but the tuner normally does B anyway). The tuner won't go as low as F, but if you wanted F# you could hit flat 5 times and tune to what it calls B. I can't even imagine playing in F or F# though. That's practically standard bass tuning. Way too freaking low.

About your in flames question, though I've never heard any of the band's songs, if playing them helps you improve your playing, by all means, play and learn them.

Also, you can get the tuner I use off musiciansfriend for $15 plus s&h. http://www.musiciansfriend.com/prod...uner?sku=210526

Thanks for taking the time to help me!

I have a Seiko Guitar & Bass tuner (ST-727)
http://www.bella-music.com/pages/st-727.html

the tuner if you look in the pic, has the b and # on it but its not quite presise in terms of where to tune it on the guitar.

On it the 'note' will change which string your tuning, the 'mode' switches it from guitar to bass (to tune to C i switch it to bass) and pitch affects the 'Hz'
it starts off at 440Hz goes up to 446Hz and down to 435Hz, is this the 'flat' thing you were talkin about, that lowers it a semi tone?

Your tuner doesn't have the feature I was talking about. You'd have to contact the makers of the tuner or read the manual.

When I tune a string and move on to the next one, the first one goes automatically a lot higher than I tuned it, resulting in me tuning over and over again for half an hour untill the strings finally stay the way i tuned them. I already tried adjusting the springs.

how would u tune [C#,F#,B,e,g#,c#] with a standard tuner?

I use the Dimebag DR high voltage strings and heres what i've come up with:

E: 48 Eb: 50 D: 52 Db: 54 etc. I like em a little thicker, it makes it easer for me when im playing speed metal. I just say 48 for standard and 2 guages down for every half step. I say the same thing for dropped tunings too, just deal with a little floppieness on the bottom one.

how would u tune [C#,F#,B,e,g#,c#] with a standard tuner?

If you're saying what comes up for those letters on a standard tuner, C# is the same as Db, F# the same as Gb, etc. its just a different way of saying it. rather than sayings its low on the D, its saying its high on the C.

If by "standard tuner" you mean one of those shit ones that's only capable of recognising EADBGe then you can only do it fretting the strings in the positions that will produce those recognised notes. Alternatively, either buy a chromatic tuner, or tune by ear from a song (CD, mp3 etc) or from Guitar pro (software, free trial version) or Power tab (software, free). If you have an adapter, you can plug your guitar into your computer and use tuner software (I know guitar pro 4 has this capability, I'm sure there's hundreds you can download).
If it is a chromatic tuner, listen to metal redneck.

Here's a handy site I found, it's a guitar tuner and it works with a computer mic, so you can tune acoustics easily, I found it really hard to tune my acoustic until I foiund this, I hope someone enjoys it.

http://www.aptuner.com/cgi-bin/aptuner/apmain.html

And, no, it is not spyware, a virus etc, I scanned it.

What about a list of all of the tunings and thier coresponding notes for each string? Like we all know that E tuning is:
E A D G B e,

Eb is obviously
Eb Ab Db Gb Bb eb,

And i personally like C# tuning, which is
C# F# B E G# C#,

could someone fill in the rest of the tunings (D, C, Bb, Ab, etc.) for me?

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well, here Ill leave you with a sort of half assed quiz
A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#
thats the musical alphabet, your welcome.

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I don't understand the necessity of this. If you have a guitar tuned to a certain note, it shouldn't be any trouble to figure out what the rest of the strings are.

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0 steps down E A D G B e
0.5 steps D# G# C# F# A# D#
1 step D G C F A D
1.5 steps C# F# B E G# C#
2 steps C F A# D# G C
2.5 steps B E A D F# B

I thought A# was Bb, and D# was Eb?



What about Bb (A#) and A tuning?

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If you have one of those inexpensive Korg GA 20 or 30 tuners, just press "Flat" three times. or you can try to tune by ear, Its just 1.5 steps lower from standard.

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I'm bored at work, so I'll try to explain this as clearly as possible.

TUNING DOWN, HOWEVER MANY STEPS:
From the standard tuning of EADGBe, all you have to do is pretend you are moving one more "imaginary" fret to the left for each half-step down. A half-step is one fret, a full-step is two frets.. and that's all! But, since the fretboard does not have these "imaginary" frets because there is a nut and then a headstock at the beginning, you have to tune each string down to accomplish this instead. For example, to tune your heavy E string down a full step, you are making it the equivalent of two imaginary frets lower, or D. Also, this may not be obvious to all beginners, but remember that tuning down means tuning ALL of the strings down, and usually in the same proportion (same number of steps for each string). Yes there are exceptions, the most common being drop-tuning (millions of descriptions of drop-tuning out there, search).

P.S.> You need a *chromatic* tuner! A typical tuner will not recognize alternate tuning (you can trick it, but not worth the effort)

That depends if it´s raised or lowered.
In C minor (for example) the third is lowered so it would be Eb, but if you had a D and raised it (as in A lydian) it would be D#.

I understand that, and i think many others do also. I just want to know the names of the notes for each of the coresponding strings, for whatever tuning they may be in.

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what tuning or tunings did Euronymous of mayhem play in
and what tuning/tunings do Blasphemer use

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I recently bought a Korg chromatic tuner (CA-30) but am having some difficulty using it. Basically I want to tune to E flat and but don't know if I have to press the calib buttons in order to change the frequency from 440hz to something difefrent. I found this on some website but have no idea what it means:

''The Calibration function (410--480 Hz) supports a wide range of standard pitches, and can be adjusted in 1 Hz steps for accurate and flexible tuning to any song or key.''

Please help!

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Some bands like Pantera for example likes to intentionally tune "wrong" with some hertz, I think they downtunde like 1/4 of a note or something

yes they did.

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So do you have to adjust the hertz from 440 when using the tuner to tune down to Eb? That's what I want to know.

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Not at all.

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Thank you very much. Now I know, lol.


One last question which I'm hoping one of you can answer.

I'm trying to set the intonation right on my ESP/Ltd EC-500 (string thru body)
but am having problems. When I play the octave E at the 12th fret on the lowest string the note reads flat on my chromatic tuner. So, naturally I moved the saddle towards the pickups to 'shorten' the length of the string and make the note sharp and hence, in tune. But even when I moved the saddle back as far as it could go the note was still very flat and nowhere near in tune. I'm guessing the tuner isn't fucked since it's brand new so what other adjustments can I make or should I take it to a qualified guitar tech.?

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I guess it doesn't really matter now, because we all seem to know better anyhow, but why didn't someone Zerton' in the first place by saying that there are in fact 12 notes in the chromatic series and that he out missed out G#?

11-note microtonal chromatic series? Hmmm... Like that funky series you get on the Gamelan. Or J.P. Thesseling's 72-note series bass.

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Wasn't it a quarter note up from D or some shit?

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According to Riffer Madness, Dime always tuned approximately a quarter step flat. E would be Eb plus 40 cents. So if a song was in Eb standard (half step down), then yes, the E strings would actually be about a quarter step sharp from D.

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Yeah, a good way of demonstrating this is trying to play the widely-tabbed 'I'm Broken' in D, and noticing you are the slightest bit out, then go to C# and notice you are still a tiny bit out. This used to frustrate me when I learned it back in the day.

Dimebag called this tuning 'Pantera tuning', funny enough.

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When you listen to some of those early 60's pop records like The Rolling Stones, you can hear the guitars out of tune! (In the days before tuners).

I'm guessing that this question goes here, although it's more of a string question. Does anybody know a brand that makes thicker gauge for 7-strings? Except Daddario Chromes, they're a bit expensive here in Sweden.

Just order them from Musicians Friend. They're only like 12 bucks compared to the 30 they run at a shop and are pretty friggin heavy at .65. I don't go quite that heavy on my strings so i get Kerly Sinister Strings Heavy which are 11-58 and cost 9 bucks which is about half what they normally run.

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I use a few weird tunings for some of my genius music and was wondering if there are actually proper names for them or if I'm just some sort of fuckin' maverick mould-breaker. Here they are:

Tuning #1:

E -- D# [down ½]
B -- B
G -- F# [down ½]
D -- D
A -- A
E -- E

Tuning #2:

E -- E
B -- A [down 1]
G -- F# [down ½]
D -- D
A -- A
E -- D [down 1]

Tuning #3:

E -- E# [up ½]
B -- A# [down ½]
G -- G
D -- D
A -- A
E -- E

Regardless of whether or not they can be named does anyone know of any music that may have employed them? I'd be interested to hear what other people do with these tunings.