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Tuning Your Guitar

One of the many challenges in guitar playing is tuning your guitar.

Most people, especially those in the early learning stages, find this task frustrating. In a lot of cases, beginners think that they could not get the technique right, when, in fact, the problem is that the guitar is not well tuned. Tuning your guitar should be done every single time you pick it up to play. Guitars have the tendency to get out of tune quickly, particularly the cheaper ones.

Tuning your guitar is therefore a necessary skill for anyone planning to learn to play the instrument.

Don't worry, you don’t have to run to the music studio every time you want to play your instrument!

These days, it’s not even necessary anymore to buy the tuning device for the guitar. With the power of the internet, tuning your guitar is as easy as 1-2-3 or Do-Re-Mi!

Tuning your guitar starts with matching the sound of the strings of your instrument to a reference pitch. Each string is supposed to produce a particular pitch: E for the 6th string (the thickest or the lowest sounding string), A for the 5th string, D for the 4th string, G for the 3rd  string, B for the 2nd string, and E for the 1st string (the thinnest or the highest sounding string).

The reference pitch could come from a piano, a tuning fork, another guitar or one of those electronic tuning devices.

On the internet, a number of websites have online guitar tuners which provide the reference pitch you need to tune your guitar. The tuner on these websites looks like a standard electronic tuning device that you can manipulate using the mouse. Websites like howtotuneaguitar.org provides step by step guidelines as well as the interactive tuning device providing the reference pitch that will help you in tuning your guitar on your own.

So, to tune your guitar you begin by tuning your 6th string to the pitch of E. Use the reference pitch to get the right tune. After getting the right tune for the sixth string, try tuning for the 5th string by placing the first finger of your left hand just behind the fifth fret on the bottom E string. That’s an A note. Keep your finger on that fret. Now pick the fifth and sixth strings in turn, gently adjusting the fifth string tuning peg until the two notes are the same.

For the 4th string, place the first finger of your left hand just behind the fifth fret on the A string (make sure this has been correctly tuned). That’s a D note. Tune the 4th string (the D note) to that.

The 3rd  string is tuned to the G note. Place the first finger of your left hand just behind the fifth fret on the D string and tune your 3rd string to that note.

The 2nd string is tuned to the B note. For this string, place the first finger of your left hand just behind the forth fret (note the B string is the only one that comes from a different position the forth fret, the rest are from the 5th fret) and tune your second string to that.

Finally, the first string, tuned to the E note, place the first finger of your left hand just behind the fifth fret on the B string. That’s the E note.

After tuning your guitar, use the interactive reference pitch provider on the website and check if you got the correct pitch and adjust accordingly.

You’re done tuning... well done!

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