Tuning the Guitar

Your guitar will need to be tuned before playing. Tuning involves tightening or loosening the strings to raise or lower the pitch to match a constant pitch. There are three main ways to tune your guitar. You can tune your guitar by using an electronic tuner, or you can tune by “ear” using the other strings of the guitar, or you can tune to a keyboard.

Tuning with an Electric Tuner

Tuning with an Electric Tuner

Many electric tuners come with a built in microphone for use with an acoustic guitar.
If you are using an electric guitar you can plug your instrument cable directly into the tuner. According to the directions of your specific tuner, it will display whether you need to tighten or loosen the string in order to be in tune. Electric tuners are an easy to use, fast, and accurate way to tune your guitar.

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Tuning by Ear

You can also tune your guitar by listening carefully to the other strings and tuning each string to the others. Here is the process.
· Put your finger on the fifth fret of the sixth string. Now, play the sixth string and the open fifth string. Listen to the two pitches. If the open fifth string sounds lower than the sixth string then tighten the fifth string tuning key until the two notes match. If the open fifth string sounds higher than the first note then loosen the fifth string tuning key.
You always adjust the tuning keys of the open string, not the string that you are fretting.
· Next, play the fifth fret on the fifth string and the open fourth string underneath it. Listen to the two pitches carefully and adjust the open fourth string accordingly.

• Play the fourth string at the fifth fret. Listen and tune the open third string to it.
• To tune the second string, play the third string at the fourth fret and tune the open second string to it. This is the only string that does not use the fifth fret as the reference.
• Lastly, play the second string fingered back at the fifth fret and tune the open first string to it.

Tuning by Ear

Tuning to a Keyboard

Tuning to a Keyboard

You can also tune your guitar to a keyboard or piano.

The open strings of a guitar correspond to certain notes on a keyboard.