Just had to share my brief, but embarrassing story of a man, his guitar and a poorly calibrated tuner.
I was all hyped and ready to play an outdoor gig. It was a cavalcade of artists, so my band only had two songs to worry about. We had practiced them a lot, were tight and ready to go. Being as it was an Autumn day in NY state, there was a slight nip in the air on an otherwise sunny day. But the guitar was in its case, in the shade. I had a half hour to be back stage and cued up, so I was constantly tuning. I noticed that, as I was tuning using a clip-on with it set to chromatic, each string was off by a step sharp. I assumed it was the cold air, so I brought everything back down to what it should be. Or so I thought.
With no time to warm up and my bass player's rig already on stage, I figured all was cool since he had just played a song with somebody else and it sounded fine and in tune. So, I relaxed and enjoyed the other acts that went on before me, tweaking my tuning now and then.
So, we get up there, start playing and...

Then came the second blunder. The next song was in E major, but I, like a fool, took off the capo and the same mess ensued. What was I thinking? Brain fart.

Once I figured out the solution in each case we played the songs quite well. But stopping them midstream and starting up again always seemed like a mortal sin. But maybe a worse sin is playing through and sounding lousy all the way. Or worse than that, feeling defeated and leaving the stage without entertaining anyone.
In any case, I figured out what went wrong. Ironically, I joked just prior to going on stage how I would set my tuning to A-441. I didn't. But what I hadn't noticed was a little "b icon" next to it. I had never used or even known about that option. It had eluded me. Lesson learned. That being said, I'm going to use the "guitar" setting from now on.
Funny, a line in the chorus of the song we sang was "Keep it simple, stupid..." I should have followed my own advice.
So, what's your story? Don't be shy. You're among friends. Look at is as group therapy. I know I feel better already.
