The ultimate secret to tuning a guitar is of MOST benefit to beginners, but all guitarists can benefit.
The secret? Tune your guitar every day.
I know this is a pain, but if you do this there are several benefits:
- Your guitar always sounds good
- You learn how to handle your guitar faster than those who ‘just want to sit down and play’
- You train your ear to know where each string sits in pitch–this is a critical skillset–much more important than learning frets at the beginning.
It may take you 20 minutes to tune your guitar at the beginning, it will be frustrating, but each day you get faster. By week 2, you should be pretty fast at it. You are accruing all of the benefits above.
We recommend using a contact tuner. A contact tuner clips to your guitar and picks up the vibration of the strings. You can also use a phone app, but it will pick up background noise and can make tuning the guitar a little more difficult. Here is a link to an example of a contact tuner (we are not affiliated with Amazon).
When you are tuning your guitar, be aware of the the sharp (#) and flat (b) symbols. For example, if you are tuning your guitar and your tuner says G#, that is a different note than G. That is a higher pitch than G, so you will need to loosen the string just a bit to get it to G. If it says Gb, then that is a lower pitch than G, so you will need to loosen the string just a bit to get it to G. Be patient – you’ll be a pro at this about a week or so.
To tune your guitar, you need to know the name of each of the strings:
The first thing you need to do is to learn the names of the strings. A guitar has 6 strings and each one of them is tuned to a particular note.
- String 1 (thinnest string) is tuned to the note E
- String 2 is tuned to the note B
- String 3 is tuned to the note G
- String 4 is tuned to the note D
- String 5is tuned to the note A
- String 6 (thickest string) is tuned to the note E
Starting with the thickest string, the order of the string notes goes: E A D G B E
A way to remember is the first letter of each of these words – again, starting with the thickest string:
Eddie Ate Dynamite Good Bye Eddie
Check out the video below where Jeff shows you how to tune a guitar.
Electric and acoustic guitarists in Albany, Troy, Schenectady, Latham, Clifton Park, Cohoes, Watervliet, Niskayuna and surrounding communities can learn much more about how to play guitar at Peak Music Studios – the best guitar lessons in the Capital District!
