On Jul 4, 7:26 pm, lookwhereallthistalkinggotusb...@yahoo.com wrote:
> I've always been amazed how somebody can sit down and tune their
> guitar without a tuner? Or how somebody can sit down and hear a
> fairly simplistic riff in a song and fret it on their axe within a
> minute or two?
>
> Now, I'm sure it took a lot of practice to get to that level, but what
> steps did these guys take in their practice to get to that point?
> What exercises will help me identify notes, chords, key I hear in a
> song within a minute or two? Perhaps it's not as easy as they make it
> look, but I want to get there. I understand playing mechanics pretty
> well now, but when it comes to tone, I'm lost like the wayward
> son. :-)
I'm not the greatest at picking up songs by ear - I can do it but it
takes me time. However, I always tune by ear and, apparently, do it a
bit strangely. This was probably a result of my first electric guitar
being a bit out of intonation or maybe something else that made the
guitar a pain in the ass to tune. The way I tune is to tune in
fourths using open strings: "Yo! Gimme an E!" I tune to the
bassist's low E string then, tune my A relative to my E, D relative to
A, then G relative to D. Next, I tune the high E to the low E and
then the B relative to the high E then compare the G to the B by
fretting the G to B. There's no trick to it; I just listen to the
speed of the pulsing until it gets slower then stops.
I have yet to try a tuner that wasn't a pain in the ass and tuned the
guitar accurately. I freely admit that a tuner will give me the first
note (low E) more accurately than I can do it from memory but, after
that, I never can seem to get the strings all in tune relative to each
other when using a tuner. I do want to check out one of those
Peterson Strobostomps though as it's supposed to be very accurately,
readable when looking at it on the floor, auto mutes and is true
bypass and inline in the first place so I don't have to unplug just to
tune.
Mark Bedingfie…
Hotfoot
