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I would like to share a list of Beatles Guitar Tunings, Keys, and Intonation parameters to see if other people agree. Here's an overview of how I see it (where I have adjusted the guitar intonation to D2 for every song).Beatles Guitar Tunings

This is based on The Beatles Complete Scores (where the tab is almost completely wrong) as well as the earlier sheet music, Everett's Beatles as Musician volumes, and recordings. Many of the early recordings are transparent and provide a basis for understand the later works as extensions of earlier material.

Now I am not saying I have every song right but I say this is an image that grows sharper under large numbers so that eventually people will agree about the tuning and key.

This is a bit like saying that everyone who plays in standard tuning ends up pretty much on the Keys E, A, G, C, and D (but other tunings have other key spectrums)

The guitar intonation is what really fools you because you think that moving the guitar up and down in pitch level doesn't really change anything. So you have these Open D songs tuned down to C like Blue Jay Way. Don't miss Lucy in the Sky and Strawberry Field in Open D. In fact, if the guitar changes intonation but the recorded key is constant, the guitar must transposed to match.

Procedurally, this means you have to find the tuning, then key, then adjust the guitar intonation to match the recording.

I know you think that I can't know this or it doesn't make any difference what tuning you use. But certainly there is one true correct tuning for each guitar part. There can be more than one tuning in a song.

What I want to show is that finding the tuning is not as hard as it seems.

I admit I have another motive which is to establish a base of information to use to ask questions on math and computer science SE.

So I am hoping I could post my list of Beatles song tuning, key, and intonation parameters here as a kind of guitar music intelligence base. If you know the tuning and key then finding the tab is not that difficult.

Or maybe you know of a better place for this information.

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  • Well, I thought they occasionally used drop-D, but the rest of the time went with capos & vari-speed... but I never studied it.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jan 3, 2019 at 16:47
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    I loved this quote from a certain Paul McCartney... "I play everything in standard tuning, except that sometimes I'll lower the bass E string to D when I'm playing in D. You know, we have a performing arts school up in Liverpool (LIPA), and in the prospectus of the music department I saw this item: we'll show you the special tuning for Blackbird. And I thought, You'd better show me that, guys, before we go any further!"
    – PeteCon
    Commented Jan 3, 2019 at 17:15
  • Terence - remember, this site is explicitly not about things like music's axiomatic basis in science, or Godel's theorem. The scope here is well defined in our tour page.
    – Doktor Mayhem Mod
    Commented Jan 3, 2019 at 18:31
  • @PeteCon A certain Sir Paul McCartney; I do believe he's been knighted :)
    – user45266
    Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 1:26

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Whilst this does sound interesting, this site isn't really the place for a repository like that. It's focused on asking questions about musical practice or performance, and getting specific answers to those questions.

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you might ask a concrete question like: is this Fmaj7 chord in 2nd bar of "the long and winding road" correct?" and then occasionally post the entire list.

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