These clever, convenient and inexpensive little Snark tuners are a blessing in many situations, but they seem to have an effect on my students that seems a bit disconcerting….I have noticed that these quartz digital tuners work so well that they have become the only choice for tuning.  I will be tipping off my age but when I was first learning guitar the way one tuned their instrument was by tuning fork, pitch pipe or…..ta da……..by ear!!  Learning to tune your stringed instrument by ear meant you were applying aspects of harmony and music theory right from the get go.  Almost by necessity,  you learned the relationships and intervals between the strings of the guitar or any other stringed instrument.  I noticed that with some students, even those that seemed to be doing well with their lessons could not tune by ear!  So…if you are a novice player and use only a digital tuner to tune,  you may be missing the early opportunity to learning the relationships of note intervals and harmony.