Hey Friend,
Do you ever think about how your guitar is tuned?
These days, most people have some tuning device like a Snark or an app on their phone, but in the old days we had to have a reference instrument or device to start with.
I had a tuning fork and a pitch pipe. Sometimes we would have a piano handy.
A lot of times, we tuned off a song we knew. We’d put a record on and tune up to the pitch. Since we knew what chords were in the song, we’d take the root note of one of those chords and tune from there.
But most of the time, we would tune off of each other. One of us would be tuned up (our lead guitar player), and the rest of us would get a reference pitch from him. He was by far the most musically talented and had a great ear, so we could always rely on his guitar to be tuned up perfectly.
Usually, the reference pitch (note) we started with was A (440 Hz). That’s the pitch for the fifth string.
From the reference note, I would often use the fourth interval tuning method to get the rest of my strings in tune.
To get the fourth interval (this is the four note in a major scale), simply place your finger on the fifth fret of the reference string. This gives you the pitch for the next highest string on the neck.
So if you are using the fifth string (A) as your reference, place a finger on the fifth fret of that string. The resulting note is D, which is the pitch for the fourth string.
The only exception to this technique is the second string B. B is a major third interval above the third string G note.
The problem with this method is that it’s not as accurate as using harmonics, another manual process. I don’t have time to discuss that right now, but in a pinch, harmonics is my preferred method.
That means I don’t happen to have my Snark or phone nearby to tune from...
These electronic devices have made tuning an easy process, but I’d suggest learning a manual tuning technique as a fallback. You ever know when a battery will die or power will be out (as I learned last week).
We’ll talk about harmonics tomorrow.
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Dave | 
