How to Tune a
Guitar
Guitar Tuning
Method
You've spent a few years learning how
to read sheet music and now you are ready to advance to a
stringed instrument.
To do so, it is absolutely essential
for any aspiring pro guitarist or future gospel star to
learn how to tune a guitar. One of the most important
prerequisites to creating awesome, tolerable music is making
sure that you’re playing in tune. Singing tips abound
and you can also find some great tuning methods online with
a little searching.
Music is called “music” for
a reason—calling it such separates it from the
uncivilized species of noise, discordance, and just about
anything else you can think of that punishes the ears.
Give your audience a break. Learn how
to tune a guitar. Using a tuner (aptly named) is usually the
method of choice for getting the instrument to produce the
sound it was meant to.
If Money is Tight - Buy a Cheap
Electronic Tuner
Not having hit the big time just yet,
you’ll probably find yourself on a budget. A cheap
basic tuner will emit the correct E, A, D, G, B and E
pitches, allowing you to adjust the pitch of your guitar
strings according to an electronic authority.
If you’re more of a perfectionist
performer, you might spring for a slightly more
sophisticated tuner with a needle that detects how far from
perfect pitch you are. The idea is to get the needle to
point directly in the middle: a needle straying left
indicates that you are sounding flat, and a needle hanging
out on the right reads sharp. Some fancier tuners will
combine both pitch emission and a needle to ensure
accuracy.
The above teaches you how to tune a
guitar through more conventional means. Nowadays in the
technological age you can find tuners online, and for free
no less. But until technology provides pre-tuned cyberspace
guitars at your disposal, you’ll probably have to
figure out how to tune your guitar through old-fashioned
real world techniques. That's how real rock stars do
it.
Traversing the musical world or more
domestically, your own social circle, you might be lucky
enough to encounter a fascinating and rare oddity: the human
pitch pipe. The more technical term for these individuals is
“people who have perfect/absolute pitch.”
They are blessed with the ability to
recognize and produce pitch without external reference. When
learning how to tune a guitar, perfect pitch people need
only concern themselves with the physical mechanics of the
guitar because they’ve got the rest of tuning covered.
The rest of us mere musical mortals
are left to our own devices, but we have the option of
consulting an expert. Perfect pitch people are like tuners
you can have human interaction with, and most of them are
only too happy to help the less fortunate; in doing so, they
synthesize an ego-boost and a charitable deed into one. In
any case, when utilizing the human pitch pipe, make sure to
pick one that has plenty of patience and lung capacity.
Perfect pitch is almost always the
focus of tuning, but there’s somewhat of a cheat around
it. The most important aspect of tuning is the relation of
pitches rather than the pitch itself. As long all pitches
are in tune with each other, things will sound fine.
Basically, when everyone is wrong to the same degree it
becomes right. This can produce havoc with singing as the
scales will not be "standard". So, if you plan to make the
effort anyway, you might as well try to be right in the
first place.
Whichever route you take, remember
that tune is of the utmost important and the key to making
good music that people can listen to and appreciate.
Practice makes perfect no matter if you are going to junior
auditions or applying for a major gig, tune keeps your
guitar tolerable and sounding good.
More Musical Info about Electric and Acoustic
Guitars
buy
a cheap electric guitar
and learn
how to tune a guitar
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