I went away on a holiday, and just before I went I purchased an electronic tuner for my guitar. I wanted to try out a whole range of open tunings, and the tuner I bought let me do this, as well as standard. The whole experience was terrific. I realized that one of the things that has been holding me back has been the great difficulty I have in tuning my guitar -- I have tapes and tuning forks and the rest, but I can never get it to sound the way my teacher can make it sound in 15 seconds -- and the fear that if I get out of standard tuning I will never get back again. I launched out into open D and DADGAD and the rest, just for fun. I would never have done that without this tuner. I deeply appreciate the need to be able to tune by ear, and the need to internally tune the guitar, and not totally rely on a tuner -- and I intend to keep tuning by ear so as train myself better and not to get totally reliant on this thing -- but it was really a great experience.

yours, Peter T.