Guitar tuners - flats v sharps

CarbonCopy

carlos said:

Flats go BEADGCF, sharps go FCGDAEB
So... let's say only one sharp like F# is closer to C than Gb. Come on, you know what I'm talking about.

I understand what you mean now by closer to C major now. As in the the circle of fifths and key signatures. 

I'm not sure what question it was answering though! 

fretfinder

carlos said:

Flats go BEADGCF, sharps go FCGDAEB
So... let's say only one sharp like F# is closer to C than Gb. Come on, you know what I'm talking about.

 But surely there’s no Cb and no B#? 

Danny1969

fretfinder said:

carlos said:

Flats go BEADGCF, sharps go FCGDAEB
So... let's say only one sharp like F# is closer to C than Gb. Come on, you know what I'm talking about.

 But surely there’s no Cb and no B#? 

Yes I THINK there's Cb and double flats so A could be written as Bbb  .... I mean Cb is B pitch wise but in some circumstances would be notated as Cb 

GoFish

fretfinder said:

carlos said:

Flats go BEADGCF, sharps go FCGDAEB
So... let's say only one sharp like F# is closer to C than Gb. Come on, you know what I'm talking about.

 But surely there’s no Cb and no B#? 

I take it you mean Ti # ? Or would it be Do b ?

digitalkettle

Danny1969 said:

fretfinder said:

carlos said:

Flats go BEADGCF, sharps go FCGDAEB
So... let's say only one sharp like F# is closer to C than Gb. Come on, you know what I'm talking about.

 But surely there’s no Cb and no B#? 

Yes I THINK there's Cb and double flats so A could be written as Bbb  .... I mean Cb is B pitch wise but in some circumstances would be notated as Cb 

I don't think it's useful to anyone...but...theoretically, you can travel all the way around the circle in either direction and get back to where you started...here's the sharp direction:

c d e f g a b

g a b c d e f#

d e f# g a b c#

a b c# d e f# g#

e f# g# a b c# d#

b c# d# e f# g# a#

f# g# a# b c# d# e#

c# d# e# f# g# a# b#

g# a# b# c# d# e# f##

d# e# f## g# a# b# c##

a# b# c## d# e# f## g##

e# f## g## a# b# c## d##

b# c## d## e# f## g## a## == c d e f g a b

I guess you could take further passes around the circle too...next key would be F##

Pierrederesistance

Sporky said:

Voxman said:

I think most players, including myself, tend to think in flats, rather than sharps

Surely you think in whichever the key has? 

I would have no idea whatsoever. 
I've read all the circle of fifths stuff and remember being told a load of stuff about key signatures from school but I can't begin to understand what difference thinking of C# or Db can make to knowing what to play it where to put your fingers to do so.
The guitar is so pattern based that I don't even think in keys beyond knowing where the routes are on any given string, if you can play it in A, you can play it in any key. 
Fair enough, if you're one of the VERY edge case group of people who have to sight read I suppose it might mean something but like @stickyfiddle I've always had my own list.
F#, Ab, Bb, C#, Eb.
After all, no one ever tunes their strat to D# do they?

Sporky

Voxman said:

Sporky said:

Voxman said:

I think most players, including myself, tend to think in flats, rather than sharps

Surely you think in whichever the key has? 

As above, only for tuning purposes

Ah - then in that context I can't see how it matters either way.

Pierrederesistance said:
I can't begin to understand what difference thinking of C# or Db can make to knowing what to play it where to put your fingers to do so.

In that sense it doesn't make a difference. It can make a difference when you need to communicate with other musicians.

stickyfiddle

Pierrederesistance said:

Sporky said:

Voxman said:

I think most players, including myself, tend to think in flats, rather than sharps

Surely you think in whichever the key has? 

I would have no idea whatsoever. 
I've read all the circle of fifths stuff and remember being told a load of stuff about key signatures from school but I can't begin to understand what difference thinking of C# or Db can make to knowing what to play it where to put your fingers to do so.
The guitar is so pattern based that I don't even think in keys beyond knowing where the routes are on any given string, if you can play it in A, you can play it in any key. 
Fair enough, if you're one of the VERY edge case group of people who have to sight read I suppose it might mean something but like @stickyfiddle I've always had my own list.
F#, Ab, Bb, C#, Eb.
After all, no one ever tunes their strat to D# do they?

To be clear I fully agree with @fretfinder and that's why those are the ones I think of, because those are the ones you'll come across in notated music most often, assuming all else is even

SteveRobinson

E flat and D sharp are only the same note on equal temperament instruments. 

CarbonCopy

SteveRobinson said:

E flat and D sharp are only the same note on equal temperament instruments. 

I remember at school the music teacher was explaining equal temperament and how it was just a compromise. A difficult concept to understand until you hear it.

The school had a pipe organ in the main hall and he got someone to play a root and third, then did something to the pipe playing one of the notes to "bend" the note slightly so that the third was now in tune with the root. It made me appreciate how dissonant equal temperament actually is!

Paul_C

When tuning up to a note (new string) sharps make the most sense to me. 

skunkwerx

I've had to think.. I think the boss tu-3 displays sharps. 

For me at my basic level of understanding of any theory, I dont mind.. as I dont think in either flats or sharps, I refer to them as both lol.. so if the tuner showed flats, it wouldnt annoy me. 

ICBM

digitalkettle said:

* there was that one time the first number was in drop-D and I only managed to raise it by a semitone for the next tune…an unexpected maj7 bass note was a pant expanding moment (and not the good side).

That reminds me of starting a song where me and the other guitarist played unison power chords for the intro - it sounded huge… apart from the time she had her capo on 2 and mine was on 3 . It’s on video too . (Mine was right!)

Anyway, isn’t the reason tuners show sharps and not flats simply because they have a one-character LED display and use the decimal point to indicate a sharp? Which is the wrong character, but slightly less confusingly wrong than using it to indicate a flat.

viz

Major keys are flats.
Minor keys are sharps.

Normally.

Bb major
Eb major
Ab major
Db major

F# minor
C# minor
G# minor
D# minor

ICBM

viz said:

Major keys are flats.
Minor keys are sharps.

Normally.

Bb minor?

Pierrederesistance

ICBM said:

digitalkettle said:

* there was that one time the first number was in drop-D and I only managed to raise it by a semitone for the next tune…an unexpected maj7 bass note was a pant expanding moment (and not the good side).

That reminds me of starting a song where me and the other guitarist played unison power chords for the intro - it sounded huge… apart from the time she had her capo on 2 and mine was on 3 . It’s on video too . (Mine was right!)

Anyway, isn’t the reason tuners show sharps and not flats simply because they have a one-character LED display and use the decimal point to indicate a sharp? Which is the wrong character, but slightly less confusingly wrong than using it to indicate a flat.

I did 3 gigs chasing my tuning at the end of every song as we just sounded off. We were both spot in the entire time. The other guitarists tuner had a setting we didn't know about. They were tuned 3 cents flat the whole time. 

ICBM

Pierrederesistance said:

I did 3 gigs chasing my tuning at the end of every song as we just sounded off. We were both spot in the entire time. The other guitarists tuner had a setting we didn't know about. They were tuned 3 cents flat the whole time. 

 

Back when tuners were a relatively new thing and they were all analogue, I found I never sounded quite in tune with the other guitarist no matter how many times we both checked our tuning. We would constantly be looking daggers at each other... until one day I had an idea - I told him to tune perfectly with his tuner, as did I, then swap tuners and check again. We were out of tune in opposite directions. The two tuners weren't accurately calibrated with each other - since mine was a Boss TU-12H and his was a Something Cheap I insisted it was his that was wrong! He bought a Boss .

Danny1969

CarbonCopy said:

SteveRobinson said:

E flat and D sharp are only the same note on equal temperament instruments. 

I remember at school the music teacher was explaining equal temperament and how it was just a compromise. A difficult concept to understand until you hear it.

The school had a pipe organ in the main hall and he got someone to play a root and third, then did something to the pipe playing one of the notes to "bend" the note slightly so that the third was now in tune with the root. It made me appreciate how dissonant equal temperament actually is!

On the guitar we can compensate for that. If you tune your B string slightly flat then a third played on that string will sound sweeter .... if you play some songs without flattening the string then they will sound a bit jarring .. Loads of Van halen like Panama, Running with the devil, Dance the night away etc ... RHCP like Scar tissue, guitar break in We will rock you 

I don't actually tune to open strings anymore really except as a starting point. Then I tune while fretting the third fret so I'm tuning  to 

G
D
A#
F
C
G

When I started out no one had a tuner. We tuned to the school pianos. Then when we left we just tuned the guitars to themselves without a reference pitch. We discovered when one of use brought a tuner that we were a tone down. When we corrected this we found the songs were now too high to sing, so we went back down a tone. 

flying_pie

ICBM said:

digitalkettle said:

* there was that one time the first number was in drop-D and I only managed to raise it by a semitone for the next tune…an unexpected maj7 bass note was a pant expanding moment (and not the good side).

That reminds me of starting a song where me and the other guitarist played unison power chords for the intro - it sounded huge… apart from the time she had her capo on 2 and mine was on 3 . It’s on video too . (Mine was right!)

That reminds me when our keyboard player decided to use the transpose feature for some songs and then forgot about it later in the set. He doesn't so that any more.

But transposition issues can happen to anyone. Here's Evanescence playing My Immortal. The piano is a semitone off. When the strings come in most of them realise what's going on and manage to transpose a bit, but it's a total car crash when the band comes in

Sporky

Ye gods - Evanescence are bad enough when they were in tune!