Kyuss · Blues for the Red Sun · song 4
50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up) tuning.
50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up) (Kyuss, 1992) is in C Standard, about 7 cents sharp (A ≈ 442), measured by TuneLit from the record.
Song tuning
C Standard +7 ¢
About 7 cents sharp (A ≈ 442).
Measured by TuneLit
7 ¢ sharp
Measured on this song itself: Tune moves every string +7 ¢.
Kyuss · Blues for the Red Sun · 1992
About 50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up)
50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up) is Brant Bjork's six-minute song from Blues for the Red Sun (1992), one of the album's longer tracks. Every tab has Homme's guitars in C Standard (C F B♭ E♭ G C) and Oliveri's bass in C too, but the guitar parts spend most of their time up the neck: in the Songsterr tab the open low string is never played, and the lowest notes are spread over E♭, F and C in the middle octave, with the bass mostly on F.
This is the one song on the album that TuneLit measured clearly apart from the rest. The album sits about 19 ¢ flat (A ≈ 435.2); 50 Million Year Trip reads about 7 ¢ sharp (A ≈ 441.8), 26 ¢ higher, and its Tune button sets C Standard +7 ¢. Twenty-six cents is a quarter of a semitone, easy to hear on long sustained notes, so retune between this song and Thong Song if you play the album in order.
The audio check cannot confirm the low string here, simply because the record has so few open low notes, but the tabs all agree on C Standard.
Tip: Tune with the song's own button (+7 ¢), not the album's: on this track the album setting is a quarter of a semitone flat.
Step by step
Tune your guitar like the record
- Tap Tune like this: the tuner switches to C Standard, every string +7 ¢, the notes 50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up) was recorded in.
- From E Standard: Every string down 4 half steps. No tuner that knows C Standard? Clamp a capo across fret 4, tune to E Standard as usual, then take it off: every string drops to C Standard. Check each string again afterwards, since a capo pulls the strings a little sharp.
- Turn String 6 to String 1 until each shows ✓ in tune. 50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up) sits 7 cents sharp on the record: at A 440 your guitar would sound that much flat against it, which Tune already corrects.
- Then play 50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up) along with the record: its lowest open note and your String 6 should ring together without a wobble.
Or the other way round
Move the record into your tuning
Rather keep your guitar as it is? Let Play along move 50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up) instead. Add your own copy, for example from your CD (it never leaves your device); the link already says the song is in C Standard +7 ¢. Choose E Standard at A 440 and 50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up) moves up 3 half steps and 93 cents, at its own speed. Slow it down or loop a few bars to learn it, and save the result as a WAV file.
Questions
What tuning is 50 Million Year Trip (Downside Up) in?
C Standard +7 ¢: C F B♭ E♭ G C, low to high, at the pitch TuneLit measured on the record.