OK. so we are on our first Alaskan tour and all is going well but the songs that I play Mandolin on just doesn’t seem right. Intonation is off; either me or the guys in my band were off but it was noticeable.

Dave, our bass player and lead singer keeps looking over to me with the look of “are you in the right key”. I stop in the middle of the song and do a quick check and yes, I’m in tune.. Finish the song and I pick up my guitar and all is well, it only seems to be with the mando. I’m actually getting worried that there is something physically wrong with the instrument and it will need to be repaired.

Tensions run high

After a couple of shows, the tensions are running high. I’m getting the looks of frustration and annoyance because of this issue. I literally showed my tuner to the guys and said “look, it’s showing in tune.” Perplexed, we decide it might be the venue we are at; they can definitely distort the sound. The problem is, we are now facing this problem over the course of multiple shows. All The venues can’t be bad right?

We are warming up, getting the sound check taken care of and the intonation issue shows it’s ugly head once again. What the actual?!?!??!? We are checking the mix, all the tunings and we can’t figure it out. I’m ready to scrap the mando songs until this is figured out but we can’t; they are some of our most popular songs so not an option.

“What is you tuner set to?”

That’s what our other guitarist asked me and at first I’m like, huh? What he was wondering was if I had my tuner set to 440. DUH! holy crap, it was set to 441. How about that? I set to 440, retune and the great tuning fiasco was finally resolved. It is crazy how just that one notch up can create such a discord in the music.

Goes to show how important our ears are to a musician and when you know your music in every way, a little change is noticeable. Needless to say, I double and triple check to make sure my tuners are always set to 440.

Lesson learned!