Guitar - Tuning to Perfection

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Guitar - Tuning to Perfection
By Mike Beatham

There’s an old and tired joke that “guitars are tuned at the factory” - unfortunately, wood bends and warps, strings lose tension and the forces of nature make sure your guitar needs tuning every time you pick it up. Read that last bit again, because the sooner you get into the habit of assessing your guitar’s tuning, the more rewarding your playing will be.

It doesn’t matter how dazzling you are on guitar, one strike of an unharmonious string will destroy any charisma you had.

The problem is, too many guitarists neglect tuning as though it is some 5 minute job to “get out the way” before you practice or noodle. Get out of this mindset immediately. You need to spend time tuning your guitar to make sure chords all over the neck sound in tune and harmonious.

Unfortunately, fretted instruments made of wood can never be tuned perfectly (sorry, I mislead you slightly with the title there!), but there are quick methods you can use to accurately tune your guitar to the human ear…these are just for introductory purposes…

1) 5th fret method - the classic tuning method which most beginners favour. This method simply involves fretting a string (at the 5th fret, except for the G string) and matching the note with the next open string. Your ear has to be well trained for this to be accurate, and there is an awkward exception involving the B string, which on most guitars needs to be manually adjusted to be in-tune on most chords.

2) Harmonics - tuning harmonics are a quick and accurate way to tune your guitar to itself. It involves creating a resonating harmonic on two strings at a time, and picking out what sounds like a vibrating effect between them. This “wobbling” effect is created when two naturally harmonious intervals are off-kilter, so all you need to do is tune up or down to resolve the vibration into one, straight resonating harmonic. This is a really accurate way to tune, because you’re tuning an open string to another open string, rather than a fretted string to an open string which causes natural inaccuracies. You can learn more about creating the harmonic and this great tuning technique at the end of this article.

Tweaking and double checking

3) Comparing note for note, string for string - this is basically where you find a note on your fretboard, and compare it with the same note, or its octave, on another string at another fret. E.g. comparing the G note on the E string at fret 3 with the octave G note on the D string at fret 5 - these two notes should sound the same (but of course, the octave will be higher in pitch). This is seen as a more practical method of “tweaking” your tuning because you’re comparing notes on strings that will likely appear simultaneously within chords - therefore, if they’re even slightly out of tune with each other, the chord will be ruined. More obviously…

4) Comparing double tones in chords - chords that use 4 or more strings often include double tones (e.g. the root note appears twice in the chord), and open position chords down at the first few frets (e..g E major, G major, C major etc.) double open tones with fretted tones. Try playing the E major open position chord, one of the first chords you will have learned - the A string at fret 2 should be almost perfectly harmonious with the open B string, because they are the same note, just an octave apart. You may find the notes are slightly off, so adjusting will give you a more practical compromise when it comes to tuning for chords.

General good tuning practice

There are several ways to tune your guitar, but it’s important that you tweak after you’ve tuned up (or think you have anyway!)

What I do is use a few tuning methods, like the ones detailed above, because often you’ll find you can reach a good compromise between the few methods to really get well-balanced tuning. By well-balanced, I mean that some chords (e.g. full barre chords vs floated chords that mix open strings and fretted strings) will need to be compromised to ensure any chord you play sounds acceptably harmonious.

At first, you don’t notice, but as your ear becomes trained, you begin to pick up on nuances in the tuning of your guitar. The key thing to remember is you must spend time tweaking your tuning, no matter which method you use.

Just don’t become too obsessed - remember to leave some practice time to actually play some guitar. ;o)

Mike Beatham runs a free, easy to follow and growing guitar lessons resource. You can learn more about effective guitar tuning at www.fretjam.com

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Tuning Your Guitar The Right Way

Without doing this, they can stretch and the sound will be distorted. Tuning your guitar every so often will help prevent you from looking like an idiot in front of your friends whenever you are trying to impress them with your musical skills.

There is a standard, as there always seems to be, involved in guitar tuning and it is conveniently labeled the standard guitar tuning method. The standard involves tuning the strings from the thickest to the thinnest. The order should be E, A, D, G, B, E.

This method is the easiest methods because it is the easiest for tuning the most amounts of scales and chords. The way to start this method is with the E string. The E string is the thickest, and the least likely to fall short of tuning.

The A string is the next string that you should tune. The way to adjust the A string is to place your finger on the fret, pick the fifth and sixth strings while adjusting the fifth string tuning peg until the two notes sound the same. The D string comes next in line.

The way to find the proper D string note is to find the A string that is located just behind the fifth fret. You then turn the fourth string to that note. Tune your G string to the note that rings when you put the first finger on your left hand just behind the fifth fret.

The B string should sound like when your first finger of your left hand is placed behind the forth fret. You should recognize that the tuning of the B string is the only one in the method that uses the fourth fret and not the fifth. Last is the E string which is where you place the first finger of, you guessed it, your left hand behind the fifth fret on the B string.

There are other ways to tune your guitar, but they can get more complicated. You can use an online guitar tuner. You can customize these tuners or you can use the standard method in order to hear how the note is supposed to sound. There are many sites that you can visit in order to find an online tuner, but when you find a site that you like, you should bookmark it in your favorites so that you can easily find it the next time.

If you don’t have a keen ear attuned to different pitches, you might want to invest in an electric tuner. With this device you can look at a tuning monitor to see how off-tune each string on your guitar is. Then, by following the needle on the display, you can tune each string on your guitar according to the reading given on the electric tuner.

Even if you do have a trained ear, electric tuners can come in handy if you’re trying to tune your equipment just before a gig. Noises and other distractions can keep your ear from creating just the right sound on your guitar strings.

If you’re experienced enough, you can tune your guitar by using piano notes. This is quite difficult to do though, especially if you’re not trained in tuning your guitar with this method. Experts and musicians who have been performing for years can also tune their instruments though harmonies and octaves, but this might only confuse the beginning guitar player.

If you’re unsure about your tuning abilities, it is best to just stick with the other methods, such as an electric tuner, to make sure that your strings are tuned to just the right pitch.

Mike Selvon owns a number of niche portal. Please visit our guitar portal at http://guitar.trustprofitableniche.com for more great tips on tuning your guitar the right way.

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