Tuning a Guitar

Tuning is one of the most important things you need to learn. Even simple music sounds good when your guitar is in tune, but if the guitar is out of tune, everything played on it will sound a little off, or pleasant. Be patient when you first learn to tune your guitar, it will become easier after a while.

The easiest way to tune your guitar is by using a digital guitar tuner. These battery operated tuners take out the guess work and ensure that a note is dead on. There are several different types of tuners that you can buy. A standard guitar tuner will have a built in microphone to hear your guitar, and usually an input jack for electric and acoustic electric guitars. The input jack will give a more accurate reading because it will eliminate any background noise that the microphone might pick up.

The more sophisticated tuners will include guitar and bass tuning, a metronome, and settings for alternative tunings such as a drop D tuning, etc.

Peizo tuners or Clip-On Chromatic Guitar Tuners work by clipping onto the headpiece of your guitar and picking up the vibrations of each string. These are inexpensive and very accurate and are great fora a quick tuning that only takes a couple of minutes. Even the nicer digital guitar tuners are very reasonably priced and it is worth the money to purchase one.

Other devices you can use to tune your guitar are pitch pipes, tuning forks or other instruments. A pitch pipe is like a little whistle that has six notes, one for each string of the guitar. These are great to keep in your case for a quick tuning. Just adjust your string to the tone of the pitch pipe. The E tuning fork is something you don’t see around much but will give you the most accurate starting note, the E note. Hold the handle between your right thumb and index finger and strike the prongs against your knee. Then hold the end of the handle on the bridge of the guitar with the prongs in the air and you should hear the note you need. A tuning fork will give you a starting note and the rest of the strings will have to be tuned by ear, one string at a time. See this article, “How to tune your guitar by ear“

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