Tuning to a Fixed Source

As I've said in my previous posts about relative tuning methods, tuning the guitar to itself has its limitations. The guitar will only sound great by itself but not when it is played with other instruments tuned to the standard pitches. The standard pitches are followed by all musical instruments in order to have uniform tuning rules and sound in harmony with one another.

Let me share with you my experience...

I was just a kid back then when I watched the movie "The wedding singer" which starred Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler on our VHS player together with my siblings. I really liked the movie especially the scene where Adam Sandler played the song "Grow old with you" inside the plane.


After watching it, I immediately scanned through the table of contents of my newly bought songhits (A popular Filipino term for magazines that consist of song lyrics, chords and tablatures) to look for the "Grow old with you" song. Luckily, the song was very popular and it was included in the songhits. I grabbed my guitar and played it right away as its melody still lingered in my mind. The song's chords were very few and simple (A-Bm-C#m-D-E).

I was very confident that I played it correctly. I wanted to impress my sister with my skills and so I re-winded the VHS tape just before the part where Adam played the song so that I can play it together with him. I was very excited and right after Billy Idol finished his introduction, I started playing with my guitar as Adam did.

I was pretty sure my chords were correct since I saw him using the Bm-C#m chord progression. But, after playing few lines of it, my sister and I noticed that my guitar sounded differently from that of Adam. At that time, my father arrived home from work and he was actually listening to me while I was playing my guitar.

I asked my father, "Pa, why do I seem to sound out-of-tune?"
He answered me with another question, "Is your guitar in tune?"
"Of course it is!", I replied.
"Are you using the standard pitches or you just tuned the guitar to itself?", He asked again.
"I tuned it using the sixth string on its fifth fret.", I answered.
I didn't know what he meant about the standard pitches at that time but I knew for sure that i tuned the guitar to itself.
"Ahhhh. You sound out of tune because you are not using the standard tuning!", My father said that to me with a smile on his face.

He asked for my guitar and he instructed me to open the keys our good-old piano.
He then pointed his finger to a specific white key and asked me to press it down.
Donggggg! The piano sounded and he used it as a reference to tune the sixth string.
After getting my guitar in tune, we immediately replayed the movie scene once again.

I started to play my guitar as Adam did and this time it sounded great.

With that experience, I learned that two musical instruments, especially guitars, won't sound good together if they used different tuning. That's why, if you want to bring your guitar into the world of other people, you need to know how to tune to a fixed source, such as a piano, pitch pipe, tuning fork, or electronic tuner. Using such a source ensures that everyone is playing by the same tuning rules.