Before I start off, I'm NOT a virtuoso by any means. I am NOT an expert on everything music related. I am NOT a know it all.
But I can't tell you how many times somebody has told me they use a drop tuning when they are using a standard tuning. Ill get an audition, and Ill be given a few songs to learn. when I ask for the tuning they say "drop C" (just for example) so ill tune my bass to drop C and learn the songs. Then I show up to the audition and everything is completely off because they are actually in C standard.
Again, I'm not an expert. And I know that people make mistakes. But this is becoming such a regular thing that I had to make a post about it. does anybody else go though this? How do you usually handle it?
I understand your problem. On TB drop tuning means dropping the lowest string
only by one step. Other places (and even some people here) use the term to indicate a tuning where every string is tuned down the same amount. It is all compounded by those who then consider their retuned instruments to be transposing instruments and still consider their lowest open string to be an E even though it is actually a C or whatever but they never tell you this, they just give you their music to work from. Probably in many cases they don't realize what they are doing. And they may be really good musicians, just not well trained enough to understand the ramifications of what they do.
Having run into this several times I guess you need to ask more questions when working with a new band. You could also ask for rehearsal recordings to work from, those will reveal what the band really does. If they only use one tuning then most likely even a single recording will let you sort out what they do in advance. With some bands a recording will tell you more than the answers to your questions because the band really does not understand what they are doing in terms of standard musical theory and concert pitches. When you are working with a band that tunes to a standard tuning, just not E standard, the pitch shifting functions built into some multi-effects pedals can let you bridge the gap between what you were told and reality without the need to transpose on the fly.
I tune like a cello and I am pretty much always the only person on stage in my church band who does that. At least I have never played with a cellist or violist on the team yet. It really does not cause any issues, but you already understand that even though some are trying to educate you on that point. The difference is that the worship pastor who leads our worship band teams has a degree in music and he understands all the ramifications of how the various instruments are tuned. He expects the guitarists all to play a concert C when a C is written on their music and since we all do that it does not matter how we are tuned individually. At the same time he understands that the Bb clarinets need to be told to play a D if he wants it to come out as a C. He is expecting that the clarinets need to be treated as transposing instruments and that the guitars will have relearned their fingerboards to play the correct concert pitches if they do retune. You are dealing with people who are clueless about these issues and so having been burned several times already you need to adopt a trust but verify attitude. Ask questions and get recordings well in advance and consider bringing along a pitch shifter for those cases where it will get you out of trouble.
As I say, some of these guys may be excellent self taught (probably) musicians who just don't realize that what they don't know is hurting you. Why would it, it works for them!
There are many legitimate reasons to retune. I started tuning in fifths to get the range of a five string out of four strings. I ended up loving the tuning in its own right. And it certainly does make it easier to play music that was written for cellos. And probably violins, not that I have tried. But when I switched tunings I relearned the fingerboard so that when you ask for a B I play a B for you. You really have to do that when you switch from fourths to fifths. You can pretend your C string is really an E string if you want but that won't make your G string into a substitute for an A string! But when you go from one standard or drop tuning to another you do have the option of either relearning your fingerboard which keeps your instrument in concert pitch or of continuing to think of your fingerboard as if it were in concert pitch which makes your instrument into a transposing instrument. Yes, you should understand what you are doing when you do that so that you can correctly tell others how to play along with you but many people don't understand it, they just do it. If you play several different tunings then it does make sense to use the transposing approach because then a written E chord is always fingered like
this no matter what pitch it actually comes out on.
