Stevie Ray Vaughan · Texas Flood · song 10
Lenny tuning.
Lenny (Stevie Ray Vaughan, 1983) is in E♭ Standard at concert pitch (A 440), measured by TuneLit from the record.
Measured by TuneLit
At concert pitch
The album's value, measured on the CD.
Stevie Ray Vaughan · Texas Flood · 1983
About Lenny
The ballad that closes Texas Flood, written for Vaughan's wife Lenora and played on the guitar he named after her. It is a slow, free instrumental built on movable major-sixth chords that he shakes with the vibrato bar, in E shapes on a guitar tuned down a half step, so it sounds in E♭.
Lenny is the one song on the album that reads clearly flat: about 7 ¢ under concert pitch, steady from the first chord to the last and the same on two later remasters. That is just short of the 8 ¢ TuneLit needs to give a song its own setting, so the Tune button uses the album's A 440. If the chords sound a hair sharp against you, set the reference to about A 438.
With a song this quiet and this slow, small tuning errors are audible, and the vibrato bar makes them worse: a vintage-style tremolo that does not return to pitch drags strings flat after every shimmer. Tune with the bar at rest, play the main sixth chord, dip the bar and release, then check again. The chord shapes are standard ones; nothing in the tuning changes except the half step.
Tip: Hold the first sixth chord against the record and nudge the reference toward A 438 if your guitar sits slightly above it.
Step by step
Tune your guitar like the record
- Tap Tune like this: the tuner switches to E♭ Standard, the notes Lenny was recorded in.
- From E Standard: Every string down a half step. No tuner that knows E♭ Standard? Clamp a capo across fret 1, tune to E Standard as usual, then take it off: every string drops to E♭ Standard. Check each string again afterwards, since a capo pulls the strings a little sharp.
- Turn String 6 to String 1 until each shows ✓ in tune. Lenny sits at concert pitch on the record, so the tuner stays at A 440.
- Then play Lenny along with the record: its lowest open note and your String 6 should ring together without a wobble.
Or the other way round
Move the record into your tuning
Rather keep your guitar as it is? Let Play along move Lenny instead. Add your own copy, for example from your CD (it never leaves your device); the link already says the song is in E♭ Standard. Choose E Standard at A 440 and Lenny moves up 99 cents, at its own speed. Slow it down or loop a few bars to learn it, and save the result as a WAV file.
Questions
What tuning is Lenny in?
E♭ Standard: E♭ A♭ D♭ G♭ B♭ E♭, low to high, at the pitch TuneLit measured on the record.