Guitar tuning is something that many beginners would rather not bother with. Wouldn’t it be nice if your guitar came from the factory perfectly tuned and stayed that way forever?
Quick Reference Video
If you just want to know the right pitch for each string and aren’t bothered about the theory behind tuning up, watch this video, which plays the individual notes in turn.
Make sure your strings are at the same pitch as those on the video and you’re good to go…
If you’d like to learn more about how to tune a guitar relative to the bass note, read on…
Just imagine if you could pick up the guitar whenever the fancy took you, safe in the knowledge that it would sound great. You could just play, without the aggravation of guitar tuning before each practice session or performance. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?
Well, that might happen in an ideal world but, unfortunately, that’s not the world you and I inhabit. No, in our world we have to tune our guitars.
But there is a way to make tuning a guitar easier. Read on to discover how…
Let me paint a picture for you, and tell me if it sounds familiar.
You’ve taken delivery of your new pride and joy, the guitar you’ve been saving your hard-earned cash for. You take it out of its packaging and sit it on your lap for the first time. You give it a pluck, then a strum…it sounds awful!
“Hang on a minute!” you think, “my shiny new guitar sounds like a tone-deaf cat that’s just had its tail yanked by the neighbours’ rowdy toddler. This is not right!”
Then it hits you – you need to tune your guitar but you don’t know how. Or maybe you’ve been told the basics of tuning a guitar by a friend or you’ve read about it in a book and you’ve had a go but it just isn’t happening. It’s immensely frustrating.
If this all sounds rather too heartfelt, it’s because I’m actually talking about me; I remember all too well my frustration when I got my first guitar and just could not tune it to save my life.
If you’re having similar problems, please allow me to alleviate some of your pain. You won’t have to suffer for long if you read the rest of this article. I’m going to guide you step-by-step through the entire process of tuning a guitar. It doesn’t have to be that hard – you just need to know what to do, and I’m here to teach you how.
It’s easy…
You see, this myth abou tone-deafness is exactly that…a myth. Actually, very few people are tone deaf, they just haven’t learned to recognise different notes and how these notes sound relative to each other. I used to think that I was tone deaf but in actual fact, all it took was a bit of ear training and I was good to go.
Tuning a guitar is a skill and, like any other skill, it can be learned.
So let’s get to it.
Reference Note
To start with, you need a reference note to tune your 6th string to. The 6th string is the thickest string on the guitar and produces the lowest note. This string must be tuned to the note of E, which you can get the pitch of from any one of the many online.
Now, a guitar tuning tool will normally give you the correct pitch for every single string on your guitar. However, I’m going to teach you how to tune your guitar relative to the 6th string because this is a really useful thing to be able to do as you can do it without the need for any separate tools such as an electronic guitar tuner.
Work Your Way Across the Neck
Once your 6th string is in tune, play the 5th fret of the 6th string and the open 5th string. The 5th string is the next thickest string and is right next to the 6th string. Playing the string in this case means that you don’t hold down the string on any fret. Play each of these notes one after the other repeatedly so that you can tell whether they are at the same pitch. Adjust the tuning peg of the open 5th string until you get the same note from both strings. Once you’ve got the same note, your 5th string will be in tune.
Now, repeat the process across the neck always playing the 5th fret of the thicker string and playing the thinner adjacent string. There is one exception and that is when it comes to tuning the 2nd string. The second string is the second thinnest string on your guitar and must be tuned to the 4th fret of the 3rd string. This is the only exception to the 5th fret rule.
So, to spell this out step by step, you tune the 5th string to the 5th fret of the 6th string, the 4th string to the 5th fret of the 5th string, the 3rd string to the 5th fret of the 4th string, the 2nd string to the 4th fret of the 3rd string and the 1st string to the 5th fret of the 2nd string…phew!
You’ve now got a perfectly tuned guitar, with the notes from lowest to highest as follows: E, A, D, G, B, E.
I told you it was easy, didn’t I? Now you’ve discovered the secrets of guitar tuning, go and learn some songs!
And if you’re still struggling, get yourself an electronic guitar tuner – these make tuning effortless if you still need a bit of help.