Originally Posted by: kpjohn

On the Boston Hitch A Ride lesson it says to tune up to E#. I thought there was no such thing as E#. My tuner does not even have an E#. Do they really mean to tune up to F? What have I missed?

E# is the same pitch as F. There are certain musical contexts in which it makes more sense to call it E#. For example if there is already an F in the key signature; when you play in F# minor harmonic minor, the major 7th is E#. When you tune up a half-step the notes are:

E goes up to E#

A goes up to A#

D goes up to D#

G goes up to G#

B goes up to B#

E goes up to E#

This makes it easy to see that every string is still the same relative pitch to each other, but all are a half-step up.

If you you instead called it F, then you'd get this.

E goes up to F

A goes up to A#

D goes up to D#

G goes up to G#

B goes up to C

E goes up to F

Now if you carefully consider these notes, you will realize the F to A# is a 4th, as in standard tuning. But at first glance you see an F to A relationship that is typically a 3rd. Similarly for the rest of the strings, it looks confusing at first. Compare that to the E# listing & it's more immediately obvious that everything is just up 1/2 step.

At least after you know that E# is a legitimate note name. :)

But for practical purposes you can just call it F & use your tuner to tune to the pitch F. Hope that helps!