Play along

Burning Down · 06-10-2009, 06:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by asshat

I remember I was really into soundgarden when I started and their tunings were a bitch to figure out.

...to cheezy:with an instrument with a fixed tuning like pianos and horns you can pretty much adapt to whatever tuning the guitarist might be playing: I can't quite explain why, probably because with the piano you have pretty every musical note at your disposal: keith richards always changed his guitar tuning, but I'm pretty sure nicky hopkins/ian stewart always played the piano tuned the same way.

Well when playing a piano, you can do key changes in the blink of an eye, whereas with a guitar in standard tuning there are only a certain amount of keys available to you without altering the tuning. Pianos are a hassle to tune (if you change 1 string you need to change all 87 others) so generally they will not stray away from regular tuning.

A pianist has the ability to adapt to whatever wacky tuning the guitarist is using. Also, many bands who have a pianist will generally tune to the piano (whether or not the piano is perfectly in tune, it is usually in tune with itself).

As for playing along to a track, I agree with what has already been said here. Not everybody has perfect pitch (meaning that you can already tell what is being played before trying it yourself) so getting a songbook or even a basic internet tab is the best way to go about learning a song on any instrument.