I've just bought a guitar tuner and now I don't know why
Posted on
For the last decade, I haven't had one. I've been content to tune guitars by ear. For those uninitiated to the instrument, or to music in general, this basically means that I listen for a note that I want to tune my guitar into, then pluck the string and either tighten or loosen it until I get the same one. It requires the ability to hear and recognise the pitch and identify the match. Apparently it's not as easy as it sounds (no pun intended), but to me it's always seemed pretty straightforward.
Once you've been playing a while, you get used to the note each string on a guitar is supposed to make, at least in relation to the others. Now, okay, unless you have perfect pitch (i.e. the ability to identify an exact note by hearing it—which I find to be very impressive), you might not tune your guitar in perfectly just by tuning the strings against each other. But you should be pretty close if you're at least given a starting note. (I usually prefer the note I'm tuning the fifth (or A) string into. And, before anyone comments, that's not necessarily A. My band often plays in different tunings—mainly drop C#, making the fifth string a G#.)
Now, there's nothing worse than two guitars playing together when they're not in tune with each other. Granted it's very possible to tune them to each other by ear, and I've done that for years, but if you want to be exact, it's generally best to use a tuner. And so, with gigs looming on the horizon, I finally decided to buy one. It's a pretty good one too (the Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner for anyone that's interested). I didn't want to take any chances when we start playing on stage next month.
Apparently, however, I didn't need one. I have quite a few guitars, of which more than half are electric. I picked up my new tuner on the way home from work this evening and have just been through my rack of electric guitars with a view to finally tuning them all in properly. But I didn't need to. Despite having not had a tuner for more than ten years, and having tuned them in by ear alone, nearly all of them were perfectly in tune. Only a couple of the older ones that I hadn't played for months weren't quite right.
Admittedly, I don't buy cheap. The majority of my instruments are very high quality and hold their tuning exceptionally well. But some of them have never even seen a tuner before, and I was shocked at how accurate they were. Regardless of whether they were in E, drop D, drop A or drop C#, virtually all of them were spot on.
So, I've decided it was probably a pointless purchase. Don't get me wrong; I don’t intend to send it back, and I'll still use it before playing live just for peace of mind. But it's somehow heartening to know that I probably don't need it.