My tuner is not very accurate. It bounces around, and has a wide dead band. I have a rather tin ear, but I can tell when things are really bad. I'm using a Sabine Metrotune MT 9000. If anyone can recommemd a significantly better tuner, I would appreciate it.

A strobe tuner won't get you there (I never owned one), training your ear will.

My take, on this: " A tuner will get you into the ballpark, but you still have to be able to find your seats".

The lowest note I can sing is a d, so I start tuning a step higher than that.

necessity of re-tuning instruments for certain individual riffs

This is a very interesting thread. Thanks!

My few cents worth......

I spent years doing the singer/songwriter small venue circuit. One thing I learned for sure......RETUNE FOR EVERY SONG! If I go from a blues tune in E to a folky tune in G, I invariably had to retune to make it tolerable. I used to arrange my set lists to avoid having to do this too often on stage, so I would group together tunes of similar tonalities. I also found that I would need to retune when moving a capo as well, even if it was of the same chordal structures as the last tune.

Fast forward........I am now a collegiate conductor and director with many years of ensemble experience under my belt. In a top level ensemble, be it orchestral, vocal, or wind/percussion, the players adjust each pitch on the fly. The rules I give my ensemble members are as follows:
1. Tune all octaves perfectly
2. Raise the 3rd of every major chord by a few cents, and lower the 5th of every major chord by a few cents. This gives a major chord a more sonorous tonality.
3. Lower the 3rd of every minor chord by a few cents, and raise the 5th of every minor chord by a few cents. This gives a minor chord a charactersitic dark tonality.
4. In a chord involving more tones than just a triad type of voicing (i.e. dom7, maj7, 9, 13/#11, sus chords, etc.) you must find and tune the natural intervals, preferably the ones of a dominant to tonic relationship (i.e. the perfect fifth between the 3rd and 7th of a minor7 chord).
5. In a chord voicing where steps are closely spaced, or in a cluster, pull the steps away from each other to maximize the intervals. This allows the human ear to distinguish more of the individual tones that make up the cluster.

I think that on guitar you must consider the voicing of each tune. For example, if I go from a tune in E to a tune in G, I usually adjust by slightly raising the b string so it is nice and high for the 3rd in the key of G, and I adjust the g string down a bit to voice the octaves perfectly.

Regarding the studio techniques of pitch shift and correction.... we should resist traditions that cannot be reproduced in a live setting. The danger of the vernacular ear becoming accustomed to "perfected" pitch and doctored music is that it directly influences the way that our own artwork is perceived. It is best to not shoot oneself in the foot, sonically speaking.

A famous story in my neck of the woods came to me from an old boy who had perfect pitch and got a guitar custom built by a local guitar legend (mossman). When he went in and complained to Stuart about some of the intervals being off, Stuart told him not to listen too close.

Love, Peace, and Hair Grease,
Hans