These are the tunings Pantera commonly used on a lot of their songs. Playing music that’s all within the A440 standard gets your ears accustomed to it.īut if you were to put a Pantera record on right after listening to something else? Well, you’d immediately notice that it’s Pantera! Most Common Tunings That They Used But we can safely assume that they just wanted to sound different. It’s hard to say what’s the real reason behind this. These are very precise but were (and still are) very expensive.Īs for Pantera, they worked during a time when electronic tuners were available. What’s more, the only available electronic tuners were Peterson strobe tuners. So why did these bands do that? Many bandmates just made sure they were in tune enough with each other and went from there (particularly in the days before the internet and widespread computer use).Īnd even if there was a piano somewhere in the studio, it may not have been in tune. One of the biggest examples is AC/DC with their earliest material. In fact, plenty of older bands had these tunings that are slightly off. Now, this isn’t an exclusively Pantera thing. You can check out this absolute metal banger in the embedded player below: However, we have something that’s between C# and D standard tunings. Pantera Tuning Examplesįor instance, let’s take “Becoming,” a song from the 1994 album “Far Beyond Driven.” The guitar tuning on it features the same distribution of intervals as with the E standard. And I assume they never really cared about IOS standards in general. In short, they didn’t care for the A440 standard. This, however, changed over time as they started using drop D and other tunings.Īnd, with some of their later albums, they even started using “in-between” tunings.
And Dimebag Darrell is one of its band members who has had a profound influence on how many approach the electric guitar.įor the most part, the band’s guitarist Dimebag Darrell and bassist Rex Brown tune to E standard. This is significant because Pantera is a very influential metal band. Well, Pantera often deviates from the Stuttgart Pitch standard and tunes their A4 (and thus all other notes) to a different baseline frequency. So what does all this have to do with Pantera and the tunings this band uses? You’re still within the same 12-tone equal temperament. You just move by one or more semitones up and down on the guitar. A#4 will be 466.1 Hz and Ab4 will be 415.3 Hz. Just bear in mind that all of the other instruments playing with you should also be tuned the same way.īut what if you’re not tuning to the E standard tuning? What if you want to go down to drop C or Eb standard? Well, it’s the same thing. You can also change it and tune it differently. You may have even noticed that some tuners indicate a default setting showing the A4 note equating to 440 Hz.
This means that each one should have its exact frequency.Īs a guitar player, you’re probably vaguely familiar with frequencies when using an electronic tuner. So I won’t get too geeky here.Īll of the notes of the chromatic scale should correspond to the A440 standard. But there are only a few basic things that you need to understand as a guitar player. Guitar Tunings Within the Context of the A=440 Standard You essentially divide one octave into 12 equal parts. In simple terms, we have 12 notes in an octave. Likewise, all other notes adhering to IOS are tuned in relation to the A4 note of 440 Hz.įor further context, in western music, there is what’s called a 12-tone equal temperament. It also goes by another name, the “Stuttgart Pitch.” Setting an A4 note to 440 Hz is the standard these days established by the International Organization for Standardization (IOS). But what is the A440 standard? This refers to the musical pitch that corresponds to the A4 note equating to exactly 440 Hz. These days, almost all instruments are tuned according to the A440 standard. I’ll explain more in the following sections.Īnd if you want to check out some of the content I typically write about, here are couple posts to get you started: I’ll be honest, I’m not the biggest Pantera fan.īut I know many are interested in how this band tunes their instruments, so I decided to look into what they were doing.Īnd frankly, the way they tune their instruments surprised me. If you’re curious about Pantera tuning, this post is for you!