Pedal Steel Guitar Tuning Frequencies
I am looking into doing some things with the steel that aren t necessarily related to playing tunes and in order to do so i need to know the exact frequencies but i can t seem to find a.
Pedal steel guitar tuning frequencies. The steel guitar forum pedal steel tuning to an exact frequency page 1 your profile join. Pedal steel guitarists switching over to lap steel often bring over a modified version of the ten string e 9 tuning that is the standard for country pedal steel. The pedal steel guitar is a very unique instrument. So this tuning is called the e9 tuning.
Tuning the pedal steel guitar. I would like to know the exact frequencies of the strings. Soon legs were added and the instrument was called a console steel. Note range of the steel guitar.
First tune a central note using a tuner or another instrument. On steel guitar the 8th string e is probably your best starting note. This tuning has the advantage that it is only different from the standard guitar tuning on one string hey it makes it easier for those learning steel as a second language yet gives easy one fret bar positionings of all major and minor chords in the standard folk and country keys. The tuning of the open strings more or less makes up the notes of the e9 chord an e9 chord is spelled e g b d f.
If you tune a steel guitar by ear using a tuning fork to get the open tonic note e in the case of e9 and striking harmonics at different frets to tune the other open strings and pedal pulls you will be using a system called just intonation. The pedal steel guitar is usually tuned to either e9 or c6 or both in the case of a double neck but there are other tunings. Pedal steels and a few non pedal console steels actually have multiple necks each in a different tuning and very often on a pedal steel the 2 main necks will be in e 9 and c 6. When tuning by ear the idea is to play the consonant intervals and try to eliminate the wah wahs.
The most common pedal steel guitars have 10 strings followed by universal 12 string instruments which purport to offer the same versatility as a double 10 string instrument 8 stringed instruments were very popular in the 1950s and 1960s they are less popular nowadays. Hello and welcome to steel picking. Then tune the high e note string 4 to it eliminating any beats. Some players accomodate this so called cabinet drop effect by tuning slightly closer to the equally tempered notes 100 200 300 etc.
In this video i thought that i would give a rundown on the e9 tuning and explain some of the mechanics involved with the. In practice almost all pedal steel guitars detune slightly when a string is pulled due to physical stresses on the instrument. It has actually evolved over the years dating back to the early 1930 s with the electric lap steel.