Tuning The Guitar

Tuning a guitar takes practice and a good ear. Since playing the guitar out of tune is no fun, an electronic tuner is an essential purchase. The QwikTune QT-11 is cheap and works reasonably well. If you can afford to spend more Boss, Korg and Peterson make very good tuners.

Follow these steps to tune the guitar by ear:

To tune the guitar without a tuner it helps to have reference pitch. Tune the low E (6th) string (the thickest wound string) to sound like e6.mp3.

Hold down the 6th string at the 5th fret and tune the 5th string until it sounds the same. The 5th (A) string should now sound like a5.mp3.

Hold down the 5th string at the 5th fret and tune the 4th string until it sounds the same. The 4th (D) string should now sound like d4.mp3.

Hold down the 4th string at the 5th fret and tune the 3rd string until it sounds the same. The 3rd (G) string should now sound like g3.mp3.

Hold down the 3rd string at the 4th fret and tune the 2nd string until it sounds the same. The 2nd (B) string should now sound like b2.mp3.

Hold down the 2nd string at the 5th fret and tune the 1st string until it sounds the same. The 1st (E) string should now sound like e1.mp3.

Notice that each pair of strings is tuned the same distance (interval) apart, except for the 3rd (G) and 2nd (B) strings.

The interval between each pair of strings is called a 4th (4 steps up a major scale). The interval between the G and B strings is a 3rd (3 steps up a major scale).