How to Instantly Tune Your Guitar to Perfection Every Single Time
Today’s Question:
Hi Jeff,
So a year ago I bought an acoustic guitar with the intentions of learning how to play country music. Long story short, I haven’t really played much at all until recently when I decided I would get back into it.
When I found your site, I’ve been looking through the lessons you have learning about warm-ups and tabs and chords. But one of my main problems is knowing whether my guitar is in tune correctly or not. I have a tuner but I don’t know how to use it correctly.
My question is….. can you teach me how to tune the guitar by ear somehow using a tuner or something else? Can you give me your method for keeping the guitar in tune?
Thanks again,
Carol M.
My Comments:
First of all, I think it’s great that you’ve purchased a guitar and decided that you want to learn country.
To address your question, I’m going to give you my exact process for tuning the guitar. This is one of the very first steps that should be learned for anybody interested in playing the guitar.
The process of tuning the guitar is not a difficult one as long as you have access to an accurate tuner and I’ll show you exactly how to do this.
First of all, you need to make sure that your tuning to the CORRECT PITCH. If all 6 of the strings on your guitar are matched to perfect tuning but your guitar is tuned to the wrong pitch, your still going to SOUND out of tune.
This is the most common problem that guitar players have, even the good ones. They tune to an INCORRECT pitch and everything sounds way off.
So how do you tune to the RIGHT PITCH?
You need to use a tuner that has the correct pitch. And these aren’t hard to find at all. Just a simple search in Google for an ONLINE GUITAR TUNER will bring dozens of websites that offer guitar tuners. I’d recommend you do that now while leaving this page open so you can follow along as I teach you.
(I’m looking at adding a guitar tuner to this website to make the process easier, but for now you’ll have to depend on other sources).
You can also visit your local guitar store and buy a tuner that has correct pitch.
Once you’ve got your hands on a tuner with CORRECT pitch, you can then begin tuning all of your strings to the correct sound.
It’s important to note that all you need is 1 string to be correct for the tuning process. I usually start with the 1st string, or the HIGH E string. The skinny one closest to the floor.
I set the tuner to E and I match the pitch of that string to the pitch of the tuner.
You’ll be able to tell when they’re in tune with each other because your guitar string will sound EXACTLY the same as the pitch coming from the tuner. It’s important to get the string as close as POSSIBLE to the pitch.
Once you have the string tuned, you can then begin to tune all of the other strings to your high E string.
To do this, you move down each string.
For example, to tune the next string up (the 2nd string) you HOLD DOWN the 2nd string on the 5TH FRET and when you pluck this string, it should sound the same as the 1st string that you just tuned with the tuner.
Keep plucking away at the 2nd string while you hold it down on the 5th fret until it sounds EXACTLY THE SAME as the 1st string.
You are NOT pressing anything on the 1st string. It remains ‘open’. This is important.
You’re basically playing an E note on the 2nd string. It should sound the same as the 1st string because it’s the E string. I hope this makes sense 
Once you have the 2nd string in tune correctly, it’s time to move to the 3rd string. This string is different in that you need to press it down on the 4TH FRET instead of the 5th fret like before. So follow the same process: hold the 4th fret, pluck the string and get it to sound the same as the 2nd string.
You do NOT press anything on the 2nd string this time. Do you see the pattern now? You press 1 string down while the next remains open. You do this for each string until they are all in tune.
Repeat this with the 4th string. Press it down on the 5TH FRET this time and leave the 3rd string open. Get the 4th string to sound the same as the open 3rd string.
Then move to the 2nd string and press down the 5TH FRET and repeat process.
Move to 1st (fattest) string and press down 5TH FRET.
This is the easiest and fastest way to tune a guitar and this tuning works perfectly for country music. If you have more questions and problems with your guitar, then let me help you fix your mistakes. Let me show you how to get the RESULTS that you’re looking for.
You’ll succeed where others fail due to proper training.
Visit Guitar Tricks now for more free lessons like this one.
Jeff
