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Best way to de-tune?

What do you do?

  • Tune my bass down 1/2 step

    Votes: 23 28.0%

  • Grab another bass.

    Votes: 59 72.0%
  • Total voters
    82
#21
Tune down half step, play all songs in E, which is what was being done on those recordings. Did we solve the whole E/Eb thing? Maybe, but now you need to seriously think about drop D.

You CAN play ROTM and Tool and Creed on a 5 string, but you'll really want that drop D tuning on the 4 string. But here's your issue, if the problem solving tuning above is your way forward, you're going to be actually tuning down to C# and you'll be getting kinda floppy. But...your singer is now used to the 1/2 step down which is understandable. He's always been a taker. But his problems are your opportunities.

You'll need one 5 string tuned down a half step and a 4 string tuned Drop D. The combo of those cover everything down to Bb. However, if you're playing low Bb live, no one can hear you. God help you if one of your basses is passive and the other is active.

Find a new band...
 
#22
I use the "Simple Pitch" patch on my POD Go, set to an interval of -1 and blended 100%.

Some songs are tuned to A=432, and the same patch let's me detune by 8 cents.

Between that patch, and the HipShot detuner on my bass, I haven't needed a second bass on a gig in over 10 years.
 
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#23
New band plays Livin' on a Prayer dropped 4 steps to account for the pitch shift at the end. I made it work by just de-tuning two rehearsals ago, but such floppy! Went to GC to try 5-strings again, and I just don't care for the string spacing. Got a quote for $350 to make a new nut and setup to make my backup Ray 34 BEAD before realizing that the HX Stomp does an entirely passable job.
 
#25
If your switching back and forth between E/Eb for a small handful of songs over the course of the evening, a pedal solution is close enough and the easiest. Whether it be the Digitech Drop, a nice multi-effects pedal with pitch shifting, or an Amazon knockoff pitch shifter is up to you. Most of those options are cheaper than a new bass, can do multiple tunings, and are good enough for live use.
 
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#26
Greenman72 said:
Say you're playing a "normal" (EADG) bass, and suddenly you need to tune down a half-step (to play along with KISS, Alice In Chains, Poison, or Guns n Roses). What do you do?
Click to expand...

Oh man... this is a special pain point for me as of a few months ago so I need to vent (OP, you can ignore most of this and skip to the bottom).

In all the decades I've been playing, my bands have chosen one tuning or another. I'm currently juggling a bunch of bands (plus sub gigs), and it's roughly 50-50 split between standard and half-step down, but a few years ago the guitarist/BL of my all-original band went with full-step down because he's recovering from carpal tunnel surgery.

Not a huge deal. I'm old with a decent collection of basses, so my solution is to keep a few basses tuned to standard, a few more tuned half-step down, and just one tuned full-step down (with thicker gauge strings). Obviously, I bring the basses appropriate for whatever band I'm performing with.

That changed a few months ago. One of my bands decided to use both standard and half-step down -- depending on how the song was recorded: most songs in standard, but some from SRV and EVH (etc) a half-step down. I tried to fight this but was outvoted by the guitarist and lead singer. There were 7 or 8 detuned songs, so my solution was not to change basses or tunings mid-set. Instead, I transposed the detuned songs a half-step down on five string bass. The only song I had trouble with was Guns'n'Roses "Mr. Brownstone" in Eb instead of E, but I got the hang of it well enough.

This year I started subbing with a new-to-me band who did the same thing -- for vocal reasons (which makes a whole lot more sense to me than arbitrarily copying the recordings, but it's annoying to me that they don't just go with half-step down for the entire set). Once again I tried the one-bass solution, but unfortunately a couple of their songs are tricky for me to play half-step down. So, last Saturday with them I brought one bass in each tuning. I hate this -- I prefer to play all my gigs on one bass, bringing a second bass in the same tuning as backup.


The guitarist of the 1st band I mentioned above switches guitars. The guitarist of the 2nd band uses his Quad Cortex to droptune. I would much prefer a device to the solutions I've been using. I've had GAS for the Darkglass Anagram which would give me that capability (along with a buttload of other features), but my brain is wired analog so I may go with a dedicated drop-tune device.



TL;DR: When practicing at home, I switch basses: I keep some tuned standard, and others half-step down. I hate having to do this at the gig, but I already vented about that above.
 
#27
Are you playing live? And you are talking about dropping the whole bass a half step?
If it's just the low string, then just tune on the fly.
If it's the whole bass, just have another bass. Don't lose your audience.

or yeah just use a 5-string and play different ;)
EDIT: oh yeah, a pedal. That'd do it :laugh:
 
Last edited:
#32
Grab a fretless and adjust your playing positions until you are in tune. I never tune to records on my fretted basses. If they cannot play in proper tuning, why should I follow them?

As my mother used to say, "If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you follow them?"
 
#33
For playing at home I have a Boss pedal that will drop tune and a software drop tune effect in Two Notes Genome.

I recently tried the Genome shifter for learning songs and wasn't getting the tone I wanted though I was able to approximate the down tuning on a few songs that weren't quite a half step down. Some of the tone issue I had was experimenting with the cab and amp sims in the software. I'm going to try the same experiment using the Boss pedal this week. I'd like to find out how much of the tone issue was the amp and cab settings vs any weirdness from the pitch shifting effect. Maybe the Boss pedal will be similarly weird.

If you're playing along with recordings, there's also an option of using a pitch shift in software like Moises or Ableton Live to bring the songs in tune with your bass.
 
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#35
HX Stomp Pitch Shift for 1/2 step.
Drop D is a quick manual retune. I plan to get HipShot D-Tuners eventually for both my P and J 4 strings.
I have a 5 as well but for Eb I'd rather hit the Stomp preset. Some things sound and lay better with open strings. I will play my 5 for the "Drop D" stuff as well. Kind of depends which bass I had on when the song comes up.
 
#39
I hate to detune from E. If a gig requires some detuning, I'll bring and play a 5 (or 6) string. A small enough gig, that'll be the only bass I bring. If I need more, or for a larger gig, I'll bring a 4 and something with more.
 
#40
MCS4 said:
At home it is personal preference.

For live I would try to convince the band to play that one single Eb song in E instead. If that didn't work I would swap to a separate bass, since I would always bring a backup bass anyway.
Click to expand...
The cover band I am in we play a lot of songs that are in Eb. We just stay tuned that way the whole time. The songs written in standard tuning, some we will just play flat and some we will move a semitone to play them correctly!
 
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