How were stringed instruments and pianos tuned before electronic tuners?
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There were three main ways. The first was to use something called a tuning fork, which is designed to emit a particular frequency when struck. Since a tuning fork doesn’t go out of tune this works.
The second was to tune your instruments so that they were in tune with each other. It doesn’t really matter if my A is exactly 440 hz (the standard middle A pitch), it matters that my A and the bass players A is the same.
The third, which is similar to the second, is to tune your instrument so that it was in tune with whatever the hardest thing to tune is. So for example tuning a guitar takes a minute, tuning a piano takes a really long time. So if I’m playing with a piano player I would tune my guitar to be in tune with the piano because it’s easier to tune. This practice resulted in regional variations in tuning in Europe. The hardest instrument to tune is a [pipe organ](https://www.kusc.org/culture/arts-alive-blog/chapman-challenge-pipe-organ/), tuning a pipe organ involves altering the lengths of the pipes, and there are a lot of them. For example the organ at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles has 6,134 pipes, and initial tuning when it was built took a full year. Since it was so tough to tune an organ, musicians would tune based on the local organ. This meant that if the organ closest to you had middle A at 438 hz rather than 440 hz you were playing at 438.
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