Hi BB,
I encountered this tab of Peace Sells by Megadeth and was wondering about something. You’ll notice that the peace says at the beginning to tune to A = 426Hz. This clearly means to tune down the A string until 426 Hz, but I’m wondering whether it also means that I should tune down the other strings too.
Thanks!
When you come across this it’s normally because the original recording isn’t at standard 440.
It’s pretty typical on older stuff. If they sped up or slowed down the master tapes for the Final Cut then all the tunings are out. So in this case if your tuner can do it. Set the tuner to 426 and tune all the strings using that reference.
Barney nailed it, but I’ll try to add a bit more context. The reason it says to tune A when it means tune all of your strings is because A is the reference note used to tune something like a string quartet or a classical orchestra. Historically the frequency a is tuned to has changed, and rather than try to remember the whole thing I’m just going to link to Wikipedia.