Tuning your guitar

by John Davison

www.pontefractguitarlessons.co.uk

So you arrive home with your brand new guitar desperate to try and play a few chords. You've placed all your fingers in the right place and the notes are ringing out clear but something sounds wrong. It doesn't sound the same as the guy on youtube!

Tuning your guitar is one of the fundamentals of beginning guitar. An out of tune guitar has about the same amount of use as a chocolate fire guard or the one legged man in the backside kicking contest! Nothing you play will come out accurately.

There are a variety of ways to tune a guitar. Things have come a long way and now we have chromatic tuners that are highly accurate. However a professional guitar player will not go for the electronic tuner every time a string is out. Here we will look at one of the basic ways of tuning your guitar by playing notes of the same pitch on different strings. First of all we need to get an open E (6th) string note. You can get this from a keyboard, piano, tuning fork, another in tune guitar, a chromatic tuner or an online tuner.

The diagram shows that you can play a note at the same pitch as each open string. If we start on the 5th fret of the high E(6th String) it gives us the note A, which is the same pitch as the A string open. The best method is to play the A note and then the A string open whilst keeping the 5th fret of the E(6th) string fretted. This gives you 2 notes played at the same time. Now bring across your right hand to the tuners. Rotate the tuner of the A(5th) string gradually until the pitch of both strings is the same.

Repeat this method on all strings, but note when tuning the B(2nd) string we play the 4th fret of the G(3rd) string.

The most common mistake I see from beginners is the amount of rotation they apply to the machine heads. You will often only need a very small movement to get the guitar back in tune.