What to do when you have to tune a lot during shows?

[VREEEEVROOOOOW]

My current go to strategy of either a) awkward silence, or b) excruciating feedback, are both fine—but some variation would be nice. Any suggestions?

Saw a rig rundown with Phil from Caspian, and he mentioned using a looper between songs. For the first time ever, I now see actual value in a looper pedal (—i.e. for myself; I get why other people use them).

[MechaGodzilla]

i would make sure
- contact points (nut + saddles) don't bind the strings and are properly lubricated
- the method of stringing around tuning pegs is optimal. over/under with minimal wraps on through-hole pegs, fender split tuners tend to be fine whatever you do, so long as it's neat.
- any vibrato unit is of adequate quality and set up to return to pitch consistently

if i still had tuning problems after that, i guess something must be loose somewhere? idk

[VREEEEVROOOOOW]

I tune a lot because I use different tunings, not because my guitar detunes. Good points though!

[MechaGodzilla]

ohhh. different guitars then!

[VREEEEVROOOOOW]

Hah! Having a guitar per song is orders of magnitude too decadent for me to consider even if I could afford to.

[Dandolin]

offer aspiring mimes the opportunity to strut their stuff? Must be flexible enough to get out of the invisible box and off stage at a moment's notice....

[VREEEEVROOOOOW]

Maybe we could have jugglers. Emo Summer would read aloud from The Catcher in the Rye and other appropriately emo clichés, so that's another option.

[Dandolin]

now you're cooking with gas....

[backwardsvoyager]

- if you have bandmates, go silent while one of them plays an interlude to give people's ears a break

- trigger samples between songs (as simple as hooking your phone up to the PA with a music player app if you want it to be)

- peds with random playback functions - e.g. on the Red Panda Tensor you can record a 4 second loop and set the range for it to playback at varying pitch/speed/timestretch

Those are my favourite approaches

[Dowi]

I don't change tunings a lot between songs except going drop D occasionally.
Usually I trigger some loops and then tune, or I speak and say stupid things while I tune. Another useful thing is to plan your setlist in the most useful way so that you have to change tuning only a limited number of times. For example I go: standard tuned songs-->drop d songs--> drop d with B dropped in A# --> end.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Bandmates, banter. Ultimately it's better to have silence than pointless noodling/bad sounds.

[chromandre]

no I like the noises! has to be freaky though, I had some patches on multi effect that could do destructing loops with stereo panning but I have been experimenting with CBA blooper.

different tuning for every song so I'm seriously considering having 2 guitars, and strategically bunching the tunings that are closer together. sometimes it takes an entire minute to properly get from one tuning to the other its just a total waste of stage time.

[MechaGodzilla]

Hah! Having a guitar per song is orders of magnitude too decadent for me to consider even if I could afford to.

i'd probably rework some parts then to make the most of a couple of tunings. hell, i have done that. lots of weird tunings are good but sometimes you have to make the most of what you've got, and sometimes what you've got is EADGBE.

[coldbrightsunlight]

^^^^

Yeah but structuring sets so that you tune less will definitely help. I used to be in a band with a lot of instrument swapping. We made our setlists up to minimise it because it can take ages

[VREEEEVROOOOOW]

Bandmates, banter. Ultimately it's better to have silence than pointless noodling/bad sounds.

Well there is the option of having nice sounds instead of bad sounds, which I wanna explore.

We did play a couple of shows with a recording of a stream in the woods (which we recorded ourselves) playing in the background, and whenever we weren't making a bunch of noise, that was on.

Silence generally works fairly well, but sometimes people start talking, and I think that's annoying. Not as a musician really, but whenever I'm in the audience, seeing a band like God's Pee or MONO, it always irritates me a tiny bit when people start chatting.

i'd probably rework some parts then to make the most of a couple of tunings. hell, i have done that. lots of weird tunings are good but sometimes you have to make the most of what you've got, and sometimes what you've got is EADGBE.

Yeah I see how that'd be attractive to people. Personally, I'd rather spend a moment to tune, even in silence, than do that.

Not a fan of ordering the setlist based on convenience either. Although sometimes it ends up somewhat convenient just as a result of songs in similar tuning fitting well together. The setlist for our next show is DADFAD -> DADGBD -> CGCGBC.