James Taylor’s sweetened tuning

[Sadie-f]

Originally Posted by nickv6

There's no escaping that any "sweetened" tuning is a movement away from ET and therefore an equivalent "soured" will arise in certain keys. Sweetening really only works for one chord shape. If you consistently use, for example, a first position D shape and use a capo to achieve different keys then sweetening can work. If you like to use open D, open G and open E and open A then sweetening is a disaster. No way round it.
Most musicians can hear a 3 cent movement in pitch. So if you have one note 3 cents flat and another 3 cents sharp you have a combined difference of 6 cents which almost anyone will find obnoxious.
Nick

I'm not sure if most musicians can hear 3c. A while back I took an online test hosted at Harvard that put my ability to distinguish tones at 1/32 of a semitone, and 95th percentile. That's 3 cents, and I can distinguish that reliably. At 1/64th I was barely better than random.

After doing that (which was a surprise), I used a strobe tuner to setup my tuning to +3/-3 on every alternating string, played a passage that way, retuned to exact pitch, and played the same passage. I gave both recordings to my GF who renamed them at random, recording the original names, then sent me back the renamed versions.

I could tell a difference, could not tell which was which, or really choose which I liked better.

Obv allow for self selecting populations, I have no idea about normal, and I do have an interest in whether intentional tuning off beat has advantages in perceived tone (which is a claim Peterson makes, irrespective of the source or their ACU feature .. i.e. they don't mention JT in their regular advertising of the feature).

[Italuke]

Originally Posted by Sadie-f

That squares to me as establishing that he was playing smaller venues ~17 years ago.

Hmm, "smaller venues." We can argue all day about what that means, but, in 2005, JT was NOT playing coffeehouses. Or am I the only one here on AGF that thinks that?

My point though, which you seem to ignore, is that that blog blurb may be partly inaccurate, urban legend, out of context, any number of possible subjectivities.

Just because a marketing dude says something doesn't make it 100% true.

[Sadie-f]

Originally Posted by Italuke

Hmm, "smaller venues." We can argue all day about what that means, but, in 2005, JT was NOT playing coffeehouses. Or am I the only one here on AGF that thinks that?

My point though, which you seem to ignore, is that that blog blurb may be partly inaccurate, urban legend, out of context, any number of possible subjectivities.

Just because a marketing dude says something doesn't make it 100% true.

A musician can choose to play smaller venues anytime. I don't follow JT, the only time I've seen him live was 1975 at Red Rocks (free, back then they didn't keep people from climbing the sandstone).

I've seen musicians who would normally fill 10,000+ venues/stadiums playing 100-500 seat venues many times, Jerry Garcia and Neil Young among them.

I'm not ignoring your point, neither POV is provably correct in this context. However I see no rationale for Peterson to dissimulate, or to risk pissing off JT. Most people that famous have folks looking after their brand.

[turtlejimmy]

Never mind.



Turtle

[steelvibe]

Tommy Emmanuel just gives his strings a little tug after applying his capos and then just fine tunes by ear after that. No fancy nothing- and he often uses a Kyser to boot- yuck! I guess when you’re good you’re good!

[b1j]

Time to retire this thread and get back to playing in tune? That’s my vote.
All the best,
Bob

[RussellHawaii]

So one commenter who personally dislikes JT has to derail this thread?
I was trying to honestly discuss a tuning method, and someone has to talk about bikini-clad women whom they never met and assume they got an opiate problem from a boat ride. We already knew you dislike JT but telling us once was not enough, you needed to also accuse someone you don’t know of ruining innocent lives.
As I recall rule #1 is ‘be nice.’
Besides derailing my discussion, it’s shockingly rude and irrelevant.
Admins, remove if desired. Sorry.

[TJNies]

My only input is that, as others have said, Peteson's sweetened tunings mimic JT's (or so I've heard).
I recall that I used a tc electronics tuner (which even allows for specific capo settings), and always thought an open-D just sounded "off". If I tried to retune, it was just more of the same.

Then I happened to see the JT video and wondered if I am hearing tuning the same way. I bought the Peterson, and tuned using the Sweetened ACU setting: bingo! Open-Ds now sound good.
I do think that an open-G can sound a bit off in the same way using this, but a minor low-E correction seems to alleviate that. I hadn't noticed any other anomalies, so I'm sticking with it!

[srick]

I'll echo B1J's comment above. "Time to retire this thread and get back to playing in tune."

This thread is closed

Rick

AGF Moderator

[DavidE]

Originally Posted by TJNies

My only input is that, as others have said, Peteson's sweetened tunings mimic JT's (or so I've heard).
I recall that I used a tc electronics tuner (which even allows for specific capo settings), and always thought an open-D just sounded "off". If I tried to retune, it was just more of the same.

Then I happened to see the JT video and wondered if I am hearing tuning the same way. I bought the Peterson, and tuned using the Sweetened ACU setting: bingo! Open-Ds now sound good.
I do think that an open-G can sound a bit off in the same way using this, but a minor low-E correction seems to alleviate that. I hadn't noticed any other anomalies, so I'm sticking with it!

JT's video came out MANY MANY years after Peterson's sweetened tuning.