my ear for music is really bad

axisus

Not sure what can be done really, but I just don't have a good ear for pitch at all. I often see comments from people here about this video or that video, and how the guitarist is out of tune. Personally it is something I never notice, it's totally over my head. It feels way too nuanced for my ears.

Teetonetal

then you are blessed. I have really good musical ear  and it ruins my enjoyment of many songs and recorded performances - live it's not so bad.

Danny1969

@Teetonetal  ..... just for you mate skip to 55 secs ish

Teetonetal

Urgh. That's horrible. How does that take even get kept?
I may not be much of a guitar player, but at least my guitar is in tune and my bends are in tune...

Blueingreen

Not only kept but deliberately chosen by a director to open a big bucks Sky Atlantic tv drama.

It's an interesting subject.  I watched the first couple of series of Boardwalk Empire and actually rather liked the Brian Jamestown Massacre intro music despite the, er, creative use of tuning.  I know it really sets some peoples' teeth on edge.

Maybe that partly because I've listened to many albums before the days of electronic tuners when loud bands often really struggled to stay in tune.  There's an obvious Stonesey vibe to this: their best known live album, Get Yer Ya Ya's Out, was notoriously out of tune but many people  (including teenage me) loved it all the same.  So there's a kind of nostalgia for slightly out of tune music being channeled here.

Modulus_Amps

that should be illegal, but then it does add to the tension and drama of the song... I sat hoping he would eventually hit a note in tune, @axisus ; must be able to hear that??

paul_c2

What does "in tune" mean anyway, because 1) if everyone is tuning to equal temprament, its a compromise, not in tune and 2) a guitar is designed and constructed to play in equal temprament?

Or is the OP referring to ear-training as in, identifying intervals, chords, chord voicings, inversions etc quickly or struggling to do so, which is a slightly different thing to hearing something's in or out of tune?

guitarfishbay

I think OP is saying if there's a chord that's slightly out and someone else has pointed it out, he can't tell.

So it is a tolerance thing, and I think it is a skill that develops over time.  Just because the tuner says the open strings are in tune doesn't mean the chords will be, but most people don't notice until they've developed their ear

Blueingreen

From an interview with the wonderful Ray Crawford, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist (flute, Hammond etc) who played with many of the jazz greats and was responsible for one of my favourite guitar solos, on Tom Waits's Blue Valentine:

MW: What did guitarists do fifty years ago? Like Robert Johnson, did he change his strings? Could he afford to?

RAY: He’d just play out of tune. Old strings just won’t come into tune, man. You’ve got to accept the fact that modern day electronics are so exact and so precise that you can’t help but see the deficiencies in things the way they were. I used to play out of tune all of the time. Why? Because I didn’t have a decent enough instrument to play on, and I tuned it the best that I could, tuned the strings to one another. Before I played the second tune they’d be out of tune again. I have a chord tuner now. With this I could tune up and by the second tune it’s down again, it’s underneath but not enough for your ear to tell. But like tonight when I get to the intermission it’s down a quarter tone almost. So it makes a difference now. Those guys played out of tune, Django Reinhardt played out of tune all of the time. Charlie Christian played out of tune, man. They didn’t have any choice. If you’re pulling on the string like this on the string, ding, ding, every time you do that, unless you have $50 pegs on your instrument you move the peg a little bit more. Now you can buy German pegs or Grover pegs that don’t move an inch, they’ll break before they move. They didn’t make pegs like that 20 years ago.

What strikes me is that these guys almost certainly had a great sense of intonation, but they still had a tolerance that allowed them to enjoy music that wasn't very well intonated. 

axisus

guitarfishbay said:

I think OP is saying if there's a chord that's slightly out and someone else has pointed it out, he can't tell.

What I mean is that sometimes on a video someone is soloing, and people here say he is out of tune or his bends are a bit sharp. I really can't hear it (most of the time!)

octatonic

Some people have an inherently better ear than others.
I didn't- I had to work at it.
How much do you play?
How much do you work on ear training?

paul_c2

I admit, I really struggle playing by ear. Its awkward to hold the guitar up there, and the skin on my earlobe is really sensitive!!!

uncledick

Funny thing is that I'm pretty tolerant and don't really notice stuff that's a bit off tune but the strange thing is how something jumps out at me when the tuning is crack on.  Don't get me started on timing though.....

skunkwerx

I listened to the video posted to see if I would notice, and something sounds off to me, the guitar solo just doesnt sound in tune. Im guessing its that and not that hes just playing notes that dont work over the strumming. 

Whether its been amplified for me because you guys said it was out of tune though I dont know! 

Barney

The guitar on that vid is miles out of tune ...that has to be done on purpose for effect.. ?

viz

I reckon the guitar's actually tuned up correctly, but it's a case of under-bending and strings that are too light in gauge and pressed too hard on tFB. 

Grunfeld

axisus said:

Not sure what can be done really, but I just don't have a good ear for pitch at all. I often see comments from people here about this video or that video, and how the guitarist is out of tune. Personally it is something I never notice, it's totally over my head. It feels way too nuanced for my ears.

It raises a good question about how out of tune something has to be before it gets noticed by enough people though. 
I'm quite aware of things being out of tune playing live and it just feels uncomfortable when they are.  it doesn't make my playing any better or any worse!  I'm also pretty dependent on a tuner because when I tune by ear I'll get it spot on with open, or a chord, but then be uncomfortable with another chord, and a tuner kind of averages it out so I can tolerate the differences.

robgilmo

Danny1969 said:

@Teetonetal  ..... just for you mate skip to 55 secs ish

I quite like that ''out of tune'' type effect, its raw and honest.
Reminded me of this.

Veganic

viz said:

I reckon the guitar's actually tuned up correctly, but it's a case of under-bending and strings that are too light in gauge and pressed too hard on tFB. 

I think it sounds wonderful and intentional.

viz

^ yes could well be

Lewy

I think it's about intent and artistic expression - to me the guitar solo in that clip is deliberately out of tune as an artistic choice and it works because it lends an uncomfortable, unhinged feeling to the track which works well with the mood of the opening credits.

Similarly, where there is an element of performance involved, such as singing at the same time or improvisation, or just stage antics, these things can feed a greater tolerance to tuning deviations. Same with hearing old music (as per the Ray Crawford interview quoted above) or hearing something played on a vintage instrument that may not have great intonation but which has an interesting sound. I can hear out of tune playing in those settings and actually quite enjoy the frisson and authenticity it can lend to the music. Similarly, not all genres have the same sense of intonation. Bill Monroe's singing sounds pretty out of tune until you listen to a lot of old time fiddle music, then you come back to it and - well it still sounds out of tune but it makes sense as to how and why it's intoned the way it is. 

There's a world of difference between that, though, and someone playing something that is supposed to be in tune (like a cover of an iconic solo that definitely was recorded in tune, or a classical piece etc) and there are no mitigating circumstances as to why it might not be. Then I'm afraid it just smacks of laziness and/or fucked up musical priorities and it stops that piece of music being enjoyable to listen to.