
Tyson F. answered 05/20/23
Teaching guitar since 1992
Well answered, Cynthia! I love that song list - I will totally use it with some of my advanced students.
I'll add my 2 cents here: Each sharp (#) or flat (b) note, generically called "accidentals", can be written in one of two ways. This can become confusing, so some chromatic tuners are only designed to display either sharps or flats EXCLUSIVELY to make things simpler to read. So that makes the tuning "D#G#C#F#A#D#" IDENTICAL to the tuning EbAbDbGbBbEb" - they're the same notes, but each with two possible names - tomato tomAHto. This "same note/2 different names" phenomenon is called "enharmonics", as in "D# and Eb are enharmonic". Traditionally, it's considered good form in the music world not to mix your sharps and flats for simplicity in communication, which is why you'll see tunings like this in terms of all sharps or all flats.
The problem is that most guitarists are traditionally accustomed to think of that 1/2 step down tuning in terms of flats, as in "Eb standard tuning", so they are usually stopped in their tracks with tuners that only display sharps if they don't know about this factor in the music world. The lesson here is that it's worthwhile to learn and understand the similarities between the enharmonics so you can easily navigate through redundancies like this when they inevitably show up.
Here is a quick reference for all the possible natural notes and accidentals (sharps and flats) with their enharmoinic names. Accidentals are written in parentheses. Note that there are NO accidentals between the note pairs B&C and E&F:
A (A#/Bb) B C (C#/Db) D (D#/Eb) E F (F#/Gb) G (G#/Ab) A
Thanks!
Tyson