Tuning Your Guitar

Tuning your guitar can be the easiest thing you do, and it can be the hardest thing you do. It all depends on the type of bridge your guitar has. If your guitar has a fixed bridge or a tremolo bridge that only goes up/lowers pitch, then tuning your guitar will be very easy. If you have a float tremolo bridge than things can get difficult.

In this lesson, we will assume you have a fixed or one-way tremolo bridge.

Now assuming that you are a beginner, I would suggest getting an electronic chromatic tuner. They are not very expensive. For around $20, you can get the Korg CA-30 Chromatic Tuner. If you’re willing to spend some more money (around $100) then I would suggest the Boss TU-2 Chromatic Tuner. With the boss tuner, it’s designed like a pedal so you could use it with ease in a live setting. It also has a great bypass feature.

One thing you have to consider before you completely tune your guitar is to make sure the strings fully stretched. Or else the strings will keep going out of tune because every time you bend the string, it will stretch the string and loosen the tension, which will cause a change in pitch.

Assuming you are using an electric tuner, let’s tune the guitar:

Step 1:

Plugin the guitar to the tuner, and make sure you have it set to the guitar tuner. Next, make sure that it’s set to the chromatic setting. Hit a string to see if the needle moves.

Step 2:

First tune the low E string (the thickest string). Hit the string, and turn the tuning peg. Now hit the string and see what pitch the string is in. Keep doing this until the tuner reads ‘E’. Now to make sure the note is not flat or sharp you are going to want to make sure the needle is pointing 90 degrees (straight up). Some tuners have a color displays. The display will go green when the needle is 90 degrees.

Step 3:

Repeat step 2 for the 5 other strings. The notes for the strings are as follows:

(6 being lowest/thickest string, and 1 being thinnest/highest string)

6- E

5- A

4- D

3- G

2- B

1- E