GreenDayTheory Posted June 23, 2017 Author Share Posted June 23, 2017 3 hours ago, madafaka said: I prefer having my acoustic guitar tuned in Eb all the time. I just keep a capo with me at all times and put it on the first fret when necessary. I just like the sound of slightly looser strings better I don't like to do it because i'm very scared at tuning acoustics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madafaka Posted June 25, 2017 Share Posted June 25, 2017 On 6/24/2017 at 1:57 AM, GreenDayTheory said: I don't like to do it because i'm very scared at tuning acoustics Why though? Most tuners have an option to flatten the strings by one or more semitones! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreenDayTheory Posted June 25, 2017 Author Share Posted June 25, 2017 2 hours ago, madafaka said: Why though? Most tuners have an option to flatten the strings by one or more semitones! It just scares me when i tune back to standard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bastard of 1969 Posted June 26, 2017 Share Posted June 26, 2017 I think that Misery from Warning is also tuned to E flat. Well, a fair share of Green Day "standard tuning" songs can be played in E flat, because they are much easier to play that way. 21st Century Breakdown has this chord progression, which is much better for beginners to play in E flat....you don't need to bother with power chords. Of course, this is not the case in most songs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GreenDayTheory Posted June 26, 2017 Author Share Posted June 26, 2017 18 minutes ago, Bastard of 1969 said: I think that Misery from Warning is also tuned to E flat. Well, a fair share of Green Day "standard tuning" songs can be played in E flat, because they are much easier to play that way. 21st Century Breakdown has this chord progression, which is much better for beginners to play in E flat....you don't need to bother with power chords. Of course, this is not the case in most songs. Letterbomb in Eflat sounds weird Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billie Joe's Fender Posted December 25, 2017 Share Posted December 25, 2017 It seems like whenever people talk about Green Day detuning a half step down they always seem to forget Uptight which is the only song on Nimrod that is tuned to Eb instead of E. When you play it a half step down you get to start each verse with 2 strums of an open D5 and instead of the chords being F#5 B5 and C#5 they're now a much simpler G5 C5 and D5. I know Billie sometimes likes to play a lot of flats (No Pride and American Idiot are good examples) but I'm pretty sure he detuned his guitar for this one, I know I detune my guitar whenever I play this one. Also, I think Misery is in standard, when they played it at the Milton Keynes soundcheck it didn't sound sharp compared to the album version and I know he was in E standard at the soundcheck because he immediately went to playing Minority and it didn't sound flat. Overall here's a comprehensive list of the tunings they used on everything pre-American Idiot: 1,039 Smoothed Out Slappy Hours: Quarter step down (Going To Pasalaqua is slightly sharp of standard) Kerplunk: Half step down (starts off slightly sharp, gets flatter as album progresses, Sweet Children is 3 quarter steps down) Dookie: Half step down (slightly sharp but not enough to call it quarter step down, All By Myself is in standard) Insomniac: Half step down Nimrod: Standard (Uptight is half step down) Warning: Standard (Castaway is half step down) International Superhits: Everything recorded from 1994 to 1995 is half step down, everything else is standard Shenanigans: Everything recorded from 1994 to 1995 and Suffocate is half step down, everything else is standard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billie Joe's Fender Posted December 31, 2017 Share Posted December 31, 2017 Is it just me or is Words I Might Have Ate in standard tuning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe. Posted January 1, 2018 Share Posted January 1, 2018 On 25/06/2017 at 5:36 AM, GreenDayTheory said: It just scares me when i tune back to standard You should be fine going form E Flat to Standard, it's the tuning the guitar is designed to be in, although alternative tunings are fine. The only thing you need to be careful of is tuning up as this starts to put tension on the neck that wasn't designed to be there. If it still worries you can always play a lighter gauge if string which will put less strain on the neck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
localinsomniac Posted January 1, 2018 Share Posted January 1, 2018 On 6/18/2017 at 11:55 AM, imXieli said: fun GD fact: dookie isn't exactly in half step tuning. it's close but not exact. every time i play along to basket case in half step it sounds fuckin weird. if you set your guitar tuner to 444hz (if i remember correctly) instead of 440hz then tune to half step down then you got yourself dookie tuning Never heard this, but I believe it. To add to your post, When I Come Around seems to be just the tiniest bit off from the rest of the album. I find myself having to tweak my tuning sightly when this one comes up. On 6/25/2017 at 12:36 AM, GreenDayTheory said: It just scares me when i tune back to standard No reason to be scared. Just make sure your intonation is set (open string frequency matches 12th fret note or harmonic), your action is at a comfortable height and your strings aren't too old. Those things can all wreak havoc on your tuning otherwise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clean Cut Asshole Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 On 12/31/2017 at 8:00 AM, Billie Joe's Fender said: Is it just me or is Words I Might Have Ate in standard tuning. Yeah, it is! I forgot to mention that in my post of all the Green Day tunings, so thanks for reminding me! Your list looks pretty good too! The only thing is that 1,039 is in all sorts of tunings, depending on which record the songs came from. The 39/Smooth songs are in E standard, more or less, and all the Slappy songs (except Knowledge) are in D standard. The 1,000 Hours tracks are the only ones truly a quarter step down. Also, good point you bring up about Uptight and Misery! I'll have to listen to them again to be sure, but I very well could've been wrong in my first post. Those aren't some of my favorites anyway, so I never became as familiar with them as all the others. lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billie Joe's Fender Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 The Slappy songs are in D? I'll have to look into this. Anyways, the reason i think no one really even bothered to think about Uptight being a half step down is probably because the song isn't well received by fans and on top of that it's hard to play on guitar and Green Day only played it live twice (according to setlist.fm) and neither of those performances have surfaced online so all we have is the version on the album to look at and since we have no definitive proof that it's in Eb and Nimrod is mostly in standard everyone decided to play this one in standard as well despite the fact that it makes more sense in Eb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billie Joe's Fender Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 I looked into it and you're mostly right about 1,039. 39/Smooth is in standard (although some songs may be a little sharp or flat) and 1,000 Hours is a quarter step down. I guess i just assumed the whole album was a quarter step down because i saw it on a website. I also looked into Kerplunk and my old research from 2014 of it starting sharp of Eb and ending flat of Eb doesn't seem to be true either, same thing with the Sweet Children songs being 3 quarter steps down, they just appear to be in Eb. I looked into Slappy and found out that it's halfway between Eb and D (with the exception of Knowledge which is in E). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spike Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 The Dookie tuning thing is wild. I mean it's definitely true, I can certainly hear it very clearly when playing along to When I Come Around and FOD in particular, but it's so weird. I don't think the whole album is off to the exact same amount, which to me suggests they might have been tuning by ear? Which is fine, but like, they spent hours and hours chopping up Tre's drum parts so they were exactly in time, but they didn't make sure the tuning was bang on? Strikes me as odd. It could also suggest that they messed with the speed of the master recordings somewhere down the line. Hmm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billie Joe's Fender Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 It'd sure be cool to see a Hz list for the songs off their first 3 albums since it appears that they tuned by ear until Insomniac. By the way, i don't think they messed around with the tape speed on Dookie, i think the reason the songs are slightly sharp is because they tuned by ear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clean Cut Asshole Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 1 hour ago, Billie Joe's Fender said: I looked into it and you're mostly right about 1,039. 39/Smooth is in standard (although some songs may be a little sharp or flat) and 1,000 Hours is a quarter step down. I guess i just assumed the whole album was a quarter step down because i saw it on a website. I also looked into Kerplunk and my old research from 2014 of it starting sharp of Eb and ending flat of Eb doesn't seem to be true either, same thing with the Sweet Children songs being 3 quarter steps down, they just appear to be in Eb. I looked into Slappy and found out that it's halfway between Eb and D (with the exception of Knowledge which is in E). Yeah, Kerplunk and Sweet Children are pretty much just straight up Eb! And yeah, the Slappy songs are a bit sharp, but they're pretty much D. You can tell 'cuz when they play the Slappy songs live, they're a half-step up if the band's in Eb and a full step if they're in standard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe. Posted January 2, 2018 Share Posted January 2, 2018 2 hours ago, Spike said: The Dookie tuning thing is wild. I mean it's definitely true, I can certainly hear it very clearly when playing along to When I Come Around and FOD in particular, but it's so weird. I don't think the whole album is off to the exact same amount, which to me suggests they might have been tuning by ear? Which is fine, but like, they spent hours and hours chopping up Tre's drum parts so they were exactly in time, but they didn't make sure the tuning was bang on? Strikes me as odd. It could also suggest that they messed with the speed of the master recordings somewhere down the line. Hmm. This whole discussion has never crossed my mind until now but that totally makes sense. You'd completely expect them to properly tune if they had been so picky about everything else, so something must have happened to the recordings after they were finished, probably just a mistake in mastering or maybe just wanting the songs a tiny bit faster or slower. A conversation about tunings has been surprisingly interesting Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billie Joe's Fender Posted January 9, 2018 Share Posted January 9, 2018 I looked further into Uptight to see if i could find any definitive proof of whether it's in E or Eb so i tried finding "ninja" guitar chords or when a guitarist plays all open notes when changing from one chord to the next, if there are any this would prove the tuning. So i used the instrumental since it's easier to hear the guitar there and started looking and i found some during the chorus. It goes from F#5 to B5 and then does an open F# ninja chord and then repeats and then goes from F#5 to C#5 and then another open F#. This means that they tuned down to Eb because you can't play an open F# in standard but in Eb you'd play it like as if it's an open G. I wonder why Green Day chose only this song out of all the songs on Nimrod to be in Eb tuning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billie Joe's Fender Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 I didn't know where to put this, hopefully this is the right spot but i put the Slappy EP in Eb tuning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billie Joe's Fender Posted January 16, 2018 Share Posted January 16, 2018 I've spent the past couple of days uploading Green Day songs to YouTube in different tunings and while doing that I've learned a few things. 1. Words I Might Have Ate is a quarter step down, it's about Eb A450. 2. All By Myself is about 6 Hz flat of E, which makes perfect sense considering how the song was recorded at a party and it's safe to assume the guitar was tuned by ear. 3. Jackass is flat of E but not enough to call it quarter step down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Billie Joe's Fender Posted January 25, 2018 Share Posted January 25, 2018 Is Amanda in E tuning or Eb tuning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.