Tuning on a gig.

[BigRedX]

IME musicians who tune too often do it simply because they can now that everyone has an electronic tuner somewhere in their signal chain or attached to the headstock of their guitar.

When I started gigging in the early 80s electronic tuners were only for bands with record deals. We tuned up to one of the synths before we played, and that was it. I can't recall any of my band members sounding horribly out of tune at any point later during the set.

Later on when I was playing in a synth band we did buy a tuner, but it was mainly to check that the analogue synths were in tune with the pre-recorded backing tape. Again we would tune up once during the sound check, and as long as the synths were left switched on they wouldn't need to be tuned again. When we finally got digital synths, the tuner was left at home.

When I went back to playing bass and guitar, I bought guitars with locking bridges, nuts and machine heads. Again check the tuning at the sound check and make any slight adjustments as required. After that I never found the need to retune during the gig. And none of the basses I've used live have ever needed anything but the smallest readjustment of tuning between use (unless I had managed to knock the machine heads taking it out of its case).

I used to play with a guitarist who had a novel approach to the problem of tuning during the set. He was a heavy user of string bends and vibrato bridges, but he managed simply by having two guitars which were tuned just before playing - using the tuner in my rig as he didn't have one of his own. He would then play one guitar for the first half of the set and swap to the other for the second half. I never once noticed any tuning problems during a gig.

When you don't have the ability to pedantically check your tuning between every song, you become a lot more relaxed about having to be "perfectly" in tune all the time.

[TimR]

[quote name='bertbass' timestamp='1494414043' post='3295720']
Before tuners it was tuning fork, pitch pipes, piano, wild guess?
[/quote]

I try to tune by ear at home as much as possible. It gives you an advance of being able to adjust tuning mid song if it is a problem.