Radiohead · Pablo Honey · song 2
Creep tuning.
Creep (Radiohead, 1993) is in E Standard at concert pitch (A 440), measured by TuneLit from the record.
Measured by TuneLit
At concert pitch
Measured on this song itself.
Radiohead · Pablo Honey · 1993
About Creep
Radiohead's first single, from Pablo Honey (1993), recorded almost by accident at Chipping Norton when the producers asked to hear it and the band did not know the tape was running (Wikipedia). It is in standard tuning and built on four chords, G, B, C and C minor, picked as a clean arpeggio, with Jonny Greenwood's muted, distorted blasts crashing in just before each chorus.
TuneLit measured the 2016 XL LP. Most of Pablo Honey sits about 10 ¢ sharp, but Creep reads within 1 ¢ of A 440 (A ≈ 439.8), which counts as concert pitch, so Tune opens plain E Standard at A 440. If you have just played along with You or Anyone Can Play Guitar and kept their setting, retune: 10 ¢ is enough to sour the long, ringing chords of the verses.
Two things confuse players. The blasts are a technique, not a tuning: the strings are hit hard and damped, so there is no odd string to hunt for. And many chord sheets add a capo or move the song to another key for singing; the record itself has no capo, and the four chords sit in their normal shapes. The bass simply follows the roots in standard tuning.
Tip: Tune to plain A 440, not the +10 ¢ of the rest of Pablo Honey, and check against the first clean G chord.
Step by step
Tune your guitar like the record
- Tap Tune like this: the tuner switches to E Standard, the notes Creep was recorded in.
- Turn String 6 to String 1 until each shows ✓ in tune. Creep sits at concert pitch on the record, so the tuner stays at A 440.
- Then play Creep 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 Creep instead. Add your own copy, for example from your CD (it never leaves your device); the link already says the song is in E Standard. Choose E Standard at A 440 and Creep moves up 1 cent, 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 Creep in?
E Standard: E A D G B E, low to high, at the pitch TuneLit measured on the record.