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Guitarist tuning up


Kevin Dean
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[quote name='BigRedX' timestamp='1477054861' post='3159551']
There's doing it when you have the opportunity (during a guitar-free song intro or while the front man is telling the audience something important), and obsessively compulsively doing it between every song irrespective of whether your guitar has gone out of tune and holding up the flow of the set.
[/quote]

Those are indeed different situations.

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A good guitarist will know when he is out of tune by just playing an open chord , G seems to be the best for my ears ( not that I am a good guitarist ) . If the chord sounds good , we dive into the next song .

Obviously ,he would probably tune up after a particularly energetic " Pete Townsend-esque " rendition of Mustang Sally or sets his guitar on fire a la Hendrix stylee.

Worst offender was when I was playing in a band with a guitarist who would never pay more than 50 quid for a guitar , he had 5 such beauties , combined with a permanently whistling H/H combo amp , it was truly an audio nightmare , or just very avant guarde playing .

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Agree with that Martin, our guitarist can tell if he`s out of tune when playing, so then tunes up after the song has ended. I`m pretty much the same, I can tell when I`ve gone out of tune pretty quickly.

In an old band the guitarist used to tune between each song and it did used to break the flow of the music. I was also on guitar at that point. We both had the same guitars, and sometimes I wouldn`t even have to tune up between gigs. Think I got lucky there, never had an instument since that held tuning that well.

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Guest bassman7755

I've played guitar in bands and never needed to tune up during the set, but then I always used a locking trem setup. As a bass playing in a band I dont care what the guitarist does so long as 1) it doesnt cause an necessary delay between songs and 2) it makes no noise. Generally the bands I have played in operate a strict no f*cking about making noises before/during the set except to play the actual songs. Having said that our guitarist in our purple tribute band occasionally checks his tuning at full vol but I let it pass as RB used to do the same thing and it actually adds a certain authenticity to the proceedings.

Edited by bassman7755
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Never mind the guitarist what about sax and trumpet players? Ours are lovely but one doesn't realise temperature and humidity make a massive difference and the other looks at the tuning pipe and goes, it's never been set there before, can't be right.

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our old guitarist was always tuning up, I think it was his way of saying "I didn't play a bum note I'm out of tune" yeah right! I play acoustic at open mic and never tune up apart from the start, mind you I haven't changed the strings in a year, hate new strings., If a bass is a bit out of tune nobody will notice anyway, well I don't

Edited by PaulWarning
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I think it is an OCD thing, our guitarist re-tunes between every other song, he plays a mid eighties American Telecaster, so a decent guitar, every time he checks the tuning, surprise surprise it's still in tune but still he checks it.

I check mine twice during the set, both times on songs with at least 30 seconds before the bass comes in so it doesn't disrupt the flow of the set any more than absolutely necessary

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Machine head problem? My GMR is utterly stable - I give it as much time as I can to adapt to temp / humidity in the venue, then tune up and it stays tuned. On the Jazz, the E machine head was noticeably loose (A D G were stable). I had to (discreetly) check the E string tuning pretty much every song until I figured out how to tighten the head.

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