Stevie Ray Vaughn question

[Andrew Lamprecht]

Re: Stevie Ray Vaughn question

That's how I picture it...chaos, unless the players are really good. You spend too much time focusing on transposing, instead of what you should be concentrating on.

Very true. If you are playing with people, you should worry about how you sound, not transposing in the middle of a tune.

 

[LtKojak]

Re: Stevie Ray Vaughn question

My buddy AJ tunes to E flat but will not retune when we play together or when he sits in with a band that is tuned normally.

I think that's just crazy! If I'm doing a tune in E he has to play it as if it was in F.

Why? If he can cope, why can't you?

But when he's doing a tune with E fingering he's actually playing in E flat and I have to play everything in E flat with no open notes.

What a drag! :banghead:

Take off the capo in your guitar and give it to him. Easy-peasy, Lew! :naughty:

Once I had a gig where I had to comp singing children.

They start to sing, so you just have to guess the tune, the key and follow'em when they went off pitch, off the tune itself and BTW that was Live on TV!

While playing I thought "Dear God, if these children are the future, I want to die NOW and I don't care if I go to Hell; it can't be worse than THIS!"

Oh, yeah, the joy of children... :banghead:

 

[FAC]

Re: Stevie Ray Vaughn question

I was running sound one night at a small club in Santa Barbara (mid '90's, hard rock/metal). The headliner called the guitarist and the singer from the opener up to jam on the last song (they did a cover of Black Sabbath's The Wizard). It took them about a minute to figure out what the hell was going on...headliner was tuned down, opener standard, singer playing harp in standard.

Was it one minute of pure spinal tap-esque hilarity, or musical tragedy? I go back and forth because they were my friends...

 

[j9fd3s]

Re: Stevie Ray Vaughn question

i like how Eb sounds, but i just tune to standard these days

 

[DoronEsh]

Re: Stevie Ray Vaughn question

Maybe listen to some more Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks...they do all their slide work in standard.

1. Derek Trucks plays open E. Read all about it: The Derek Trucks Interview: ‘Gear Gets In Your Way If It Becomes Your Focus’. But Skydog played standard a lot of times, and so does Haynes, at least some of the time.
2. Down tuning is good if you want to use heavy strings and bend like you've got light ones. AFAIK That's what's behind SRV, Hendrix, and others tuning down half a step.
3. Most of these players, and, I suspect, SRV as well, didn't tune down all of the time, so sitting in with others, which was the question to start this thread, wouldn't have been a problem. When playing with others they either used standard tuning or some open tuning (G, D, E or A mostly), which is common practice for The Blues.

Last, but not least: How's the weather up there, Lew? Still snowing? Got enough of that hot chocolate?

Have fun

DoDo

 

[Bludave]

Re: Stevie Ray Vaughn question

That's why I try to do things without open strings. You get locked into certain keys & struggle when someone changes them on you. You can get some surprises jamming on stage.

If you're playing with people who use standard tuning, I think it's inconsiderate to downtune, as it creates communication problems and inhibits spontineity. Hard to follow what everyone's doing, and shouting out the chord changes gets old.

I don't know, but to me it seems that if you have to downtune to play, something isn't right with the way you have your guitar.

Most people tuned down to accommodate vocals. Most guitars that are setup with 10's or 11's can be down tuned without any real issues. I tried it with my last band with nor real success(we were working on a couple of songs that our singer was struggling with). We wound up just dropping the songs because he could not sing them.

In Lews case the easiest thing to do is to for him to tune down because his buddy is refusing to tune to pitch. For Jamming at home that's OK, but I agree that on stage it gets tricky. Anybody who insists on playing tuned down should be willing to adjust how they play to fit in to the rest of the band not the other way around.

 

[Stratman]

Re: Stevie Ray Vaughn question

HECK

Jimi Hendrix never played in tune, especially when playing Red House..



ROTFL

 

[LtKojak]

Re: Stevie Ray Vaughn question

HECK

Jimi Hendrix never played in tune, especially when playing Red House..



ROTFL

He didn't have to tune, his audience was always even higher than him! :naughty:

 

[blueman335]

Re: Stevie Ray Vaughn question

HECK

Jimi Hendrix never played in tune, especially when playing Red House..
ROTFL

Not by choice. He said he was continually frustrated by his Strat's vibrato throwing his guitar out of tune. Maybe that's part of the reason why he set one on fire. :haha:

 

[Lewguitar]

Re: Stevie Ray Vaughn question

In Lews case the easiest thing to do is to for him to tune down because his buddy is refusing to tune to pitch. For Jamming at home that's OK, but I agree that on stage it gets tricky. Anybody who insists on playing tuned down should be willing to adjust how they play to fit in to the rest of the band not the other way around.

Not with a Strat with an unblocked vibrato. The bridge tilts up and forward, raises the action and besides, I don't like the way the guitar sounds tuned down with .010 - .046 strings. Sounds loose and sloppy.

AJ's just stubborn!

I do tune down on my acoustics and they are usually tuned to DGDGBD or DADF#AD. But I play with medium gauge strings with a wound G on those guitars.

 

[Zhangliqun]

Re: Stevie Ray Vaughn question

I recall sitting in with a band once and everybody was in standard tuning...except the bass player. He had borrowed a bass right before that was tuned down and he wasn't up to transposing the key. The first set was a mess. If you tryed to get with the bass player then the other players didn't follow as well. I kept trying to signal him to just move everything up a fret, but ....


I quietly retuned the bass myself between sets.

The bass player couldn't HEAR all that sonic horror? Was he trucked in from the Special Olympics band?

 

[jeremy]

Re: Stevie Ray Vaughn question

Maybe listen to some more Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks...they do all their slide work in standard.

warren is mostly in std but derek is ALL open E

My slide stylings are more Sonny Landreth than Derek Trucks. He's great an everything, but the things that Sonny Landreth does with his guitar are to me more impressive and appealing.

what sonny does (and its great) is way different than trucks. sonny uses a lot of delay which i think works great for his style to get those slap backs. derek is almost singing on the guitar

2. Down tuning is good if you want to use heavy strings and bend like you've got light ones. AFAIK That's what's behind SRV, Hendrix, and others tuning down half a step.
3. Most of these players, and, I suspect, SRV as well, didn't tune down all of the time, so sitting in with others, which was the question to start this thread, wouldn't have been a problem. When playing with others they either used standard tuning or some open tuning (G, D, E or A mostly), which is common practice for The Blues.

the other reason for downtuning is for vocals. i keep a guitar in std but down a whole step to make it easier to sing some things. its not that i couldnt sing it a step higher or play the chords in a different position but some things work better with open strings or in a lower position.

if im playing a whole show with a group thats tuned down, ill tune down. if its only a few songs then ill stay in std tuning. playing in e flat kinda sucks but almost anything else is fine. i love playing in F. guys that play tuned down all the time like to stay there, it changes the feel of the instrument. like you said you can use heavy strings and it feels slinkier. 11's tuned down a half step feel like 10's in std but sound way bigger. i use 11's in std but use 13's on the guitar i tune down a whole step to keep the tension up a little.