nippyjun Posted July 18, 2016 Share Posted July 18, 2016 Is the pitch wham the best block to do drop tuning? And where can I find what settings to use for doing this. I'm new to alternate turnings. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
datacommando Posted July 18, 2016 Share Posted July 18, 2016 Is the pitch wham the best block to do drop tuning? And where can I find what settings to use for doing this. I'm new to alternate turnings. Thanks. Hi Nippyjun, First off, I think we need to differentiate between Alternate and Drop tunings. Alternate tunings are where the various strings of your guitar are retuned across the whole instrument e.g.: Accepted standard tuning is EADGBE which can be modified to DADGAD by dropping the pitch of the 1st and 6th strings down 2 frets. Likewise the 2nd string is retuned down to A. Simple! You now have what Jimmy Page used to refer to as his Celtic, Indian and Arabic tuning, others refer to it as D Modal. Try it - you'll like it. Listen to players such as Davy Graham, Bert Jansch, Al Stewart, John Martyn, John Fahey, Andy McKee, Pierre Bensusan, Michael Hedges and you will get the idea. Tunings such as Open G, Open D and Open E are great examples of tunings that are used a lot in bottleneck slide Delta blues stuff. Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones are great exponents of Open G. The Allman Bros are also renowned for this stuff. Buy yourself a Variax and a whole heap of this stuff is already built in, and you can edit even more - Easy! Now I will state that "Drop Tuning" is slightly different (IMHO) and is the sort of thing more associated with our "Metal Brethren" although many rock masters have been known to drop down half a step - Jimi, for one. So, dropping a guitar semi tone is ridiculously easy using modern pitch shifters - no more tweaking machine heads part way through a gig. Simple solution: Pitch Wham block set with position 50%, Heel and Toe Pitch both at -1 and Mix 100%. Assign it to a FootSwitch and custom name it "Eb Drop". Now whenever you are playing and want the your guitar to go down a semi tone - jump on that switch - Simple. A small caveat to this stuff: this is a real basic explanation of tunings - can take a life time to understand but, I once had a guy playing slide blues in less that 30 mins. He didn't know that a guitar could be tuned to anything other than standard. Also, another guy once told me that my guitar must be out of tune because the tuning pegs were all facing different directions - genius! Here's a link to a tone I made that already has an "Eb Drop" switch for you to play around with. http://line6.com/customtone/tone/2031305/ Have fun! PLEASE NOTE: A lot of users have complained that the upgrade to FW2.0 has screwed up the pitch shifting quality. Digital Igloo states that Line 6 are aware and a patch to revert the shifter algorithms will be made available. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nippyjun Posted July 18, 2016 Author Share Posted July 18, 2016 Thank you for this explanation. I appreciate it. If I wanted the drop tuning a full semitone lower would the settings be -2 and -2? Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
datacommando Posted July 18, 2016 Share Posted July 18, 2016 If I wanted the drop tuning a full semitone lower would the settings be -2 and -2? There you go - now you've got it - its easy! The only trouble with doing it through a pitch shifter as opposed to actually re-tuning your strings is if you can still hear your un-amplified and un-shifted strings. It can be rather confusing when you hear both together, if you understand what I am trying to say. Never mind - you will know when it occurs, it's very strange. Ah, who cares - play it loud! Enjoy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zooey Posted July 18, 2016 Share Posted July 18, 2016 Not -1? Isn't -2 a whole step? Or am I having a brain freeze? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HonestOpinion Posted July 18, 2016 Share Posted July 18, 2016 Not -1? Isn't -2 a whole step? Or am I having a brain freeze? Yes -2 is a whole step, each number you increment/decrement is a half step (don't forget it is a half step [-1] between E&F, B&C). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aslakjohnsen Posted February 19, 2018 Share Posted February 19, 2018 Simple solution: Pitch Wham block set with position 50%, Heel and Toe Pitch both at -1 and Mix 100%. Assign it to a FootSwitch and custom name it "Eb Drop". Now whenever you are playing and want the your guitar to go down a semi tone - jump on that switch - Simple. Hi, Gear Head. Followed you advice regarding drop tuning and it worked perfectly. Then after noodling about I went back to make it again. Same procedure, but this time, with same settings, the sound of my bass comes through even though I´ve set mix level to 100%. I´m working on studio headphones. What am I doing wrong? All the best from Norway Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
datacommando Posted February 19, 2018 Share Posted February 19, 2018 Hi, Gear Head. Followed you advice regarding drop tuning and it worked perfectly. Then after noodling about I went back to make it again. Same procedure, but this time, with same settings, the sound of my bass comes through even though I´ve set mix level to 100%. I´m working on studio headphones. What am I doing wrong? All the best from Norway Hi to “aslakjohnsen†in sunny Norway, I’m not sure what has gone wrong. If you had it work perfectly then it stops, it could be many things or one very simple thing. I’m not in the studio today so I don’t have the Helix in front of me to try to figure this out. You need a quick solution. O.K. I suggest that you download my patch from CustomTone: https://line6.com/customtone/tone/2031305/ Load my patch into an empty slot in Helix. When you have it loaded, select and delete all the used blocks, except the pitch shift/whammy. Name the patch Drop Fx (or whatever you like) and save it. Now you have a basic block with the downtuned effect. You can copy and paste the block into any other patch and it should work fine. Please make sure you have no splits in the signal path before the pitch shift block which will let the untreated bass to come through. Also make sure that you a selecting the correct pitch shifter and if it is set to mono or stereo as needed. If this works for you then you will always have a patch with the base settings ready to drop in anytime you need. Hope this makes sense. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aslakjohnsen Posted February 19, 2018 Share Posted February 19, 2018 Hello again, Gear Head. Problem solved. Rookie mistake. I had 2 signal paths running... therefore I got the signal from path 2 as well as path 1. Sorry for your troubles. Anyway; your advice served me great. Many quick tuning changes in our live set are now eliminated. Saved presets for drop D and C. Both sounding good. And thank you for sharing your patch. Will check it out. All the best from Norway Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
datacommando Posted February 19, 2018 Share Posted February 19, 2018 Hello again, Gear Head. Problem solved. Rookie mistake. I had 2 signal paths running... therefore I got the signal from path 2 as well as path 1. Sorry for your troubles. Anyway; your advice served me great. Many quick tuning changes in our live set are now eliminated. Saved presets for drop D and C. Both sounding good. And thank you for sharing your patch. Will check it out. All the best from Norway Hi, again, Good to know that your problem is solved and you can take advantage of the quick tuning changes. Happy to know that it was something quite simple that you managed to figure out. Some things are easy to overlook until you have spent a while playing around with all those options. You will soon be a real gear head yourself! Happy to help - have fun with your Helix Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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