Tuning
Tuning is everything. You could have the best guitar in the world and could be an amazing guitar player, but if your tuning is not right, you’re not going to sound good at all. If you haven’t already tuned your guitar, chances are it probably needs to be tuned as it doesn’t take much to de-tune a guitar.
The best way to tune, whether you’re playing an electric guitar or an acoustic guitar, is to tune with a stand-alone tuner. Special guitar tuners can be found at any music store or online. This is a pretty good starter tuner that I used when I was a beginner guitarist. If you don’t want to purchase a tuner and you have an iPhone, I believe there is an application for the iPhone that acts as a tuner.
Let’s start with the highest and skinniest of the strings. Turn on your tuner (you will know it is on if any lights turn on or if any sound makes a line move on the screen). Make sure the room is completely quiet so that the tuner does not pick up any sounds other than the guitar. Pick the string and let it ring. If it is saying it is sharp, (the pitch is too high), then you will need to loosen the string by turning the tuning peg. If it is saying that it is “flat” (the pitch is too low), then you will need to tighten the string. Depending on your guitar and how the guitar was strung, you will need to play with the tuning peg to figure out if you will need to turn the peg clockwise or counterclockwise to make the note lower or higher as needed.
Once you think you’ve got the green light saying it is tuned (or close to tuned) or the line on the screen seems to stay around the middle, then you have tuned that string. Compare the note to the note on this page to make sure that you tuned it to the right note.
The highest and lowest note string should be an “E” in standard tuning, and this is what you’re aiming for. Order of the strings from highest to lowest is as follows:
Highest note —> E B G D A E <—Lowest Note
(By highest, I mean highest in terms of sound, not in terms of position on the guitar.)
Tune the rest of the strings using the same steps as before and you’re tuned and ready to play!
