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Hi Mark,
Tuning by ear is great for people who can do it, but for people like me, there is technology. I have a couple of preferred solutions — the first is a simple clip-on chromatic tuner like this one: https://www.amazon.com/Snark-ST-2-Multi-Instrument-Chromatic-Tuner. You really can’t go wrong with these — when you pluck the string, it shows you what note you’re playing and its degree of sharpness or flatness, so to tune to open D for example, it’s just a matter of tuning each of your strings down until the display says it’s right.
My other favorite is this tuner app for iDevices: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/guitar-tuner-easy-tune-chords/id838981369. It defaults to standard EADGBe, but under the settings menu there is a HUGE list of alternate tunings available, and there’s almost certainly an Android equivalent if that’s your preferred platform.
Cheers,
tails
