Basic Guitar Tuning
Tuning a Guitar
By Shawn Bradshaw

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In this lesson we are going to take a look at something that many guitarists forget to do, TUNE! After going through this lessons, I would suggest looking at these lessons, Tuning With Harmonics, and Drop D Tuning.

There are several different methods that can be used to tune the guitar. The following is the most basic, and should be the first one that you try. With this method, you will be tuning the guitar so that it will sound in tune with itself. This is called relative tuning. That just means that your guitar will sound good when you play, even though you might not be tuned exactly to pitch.

Tune the 6th String
of the Guitar

Even though you could use the following tuning method without first tuning your 6th string, we are going to tune the guitar to standard pitch in this lesson. The 6th string is the thickest string, and sounds the lowest. Try to hear if the 6th string on your guitar sounds higher or lower than the note you are hearing below. Then try match your guitar to the note you are hearing. As you are listening to the 2 notes, try and hear the "crashing" sound that comes from the notes being out of tune. The closer you are to being in tune, the further away the notes will crash.

• To raise the pitch of a string, turn the tuning pegs that face up counter clockwise. If the tuning pegs face down then turn clockwise. Reverse the direction to lower the pitch. Never turn the tuning pegs unless the note is ringing. Otherwise, you will have no idea how far to turn the tuning peg..

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Low E Tuning Note (1K)

Click this button for the tuning notes on all 6 strings. This includes both standard tuning, all strings lowered a 1/2 step, and all strings lowered a whole step.

Page 2, Tuning the rest of the strings of the guitar

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