Stop 4 of 6
Tuning your guitar
Standard tuning, using a tuner, relative tuning and why it matters.
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Stop 4 of 6
Standard tuning, using a tuner, relative tuning and why it matters.
An out-of-tune guitar sounds wrong even when you play perfectly, and worse, it trains your ear badly: practise every day with crooked notes and you'll end up accepting them as normal. Tuning is the first move of every session, like checking your compass before setting off. At this stop you'll learn standard tuning, how to use a tuner, how to tune by ear by comparing strings and why guitars go out of tune.
This is what a well-tuned guitar sounds like when you strum the six open strings:
When two notes that should match are slightly out of tune, you don't hear "two different notes" but a single note that wobbles, as if it were trembling: these are beats. The further out they are, the faster they wobble; when they're perfectly in tune, the wobble disappears. Compare a note with itself, and then with another one a semitone higher (an exaggerated case, so you can hear it):
In practice, tuning errors are much smaller than a semitone, which is why you'll need a tuner at first. Over time your ear will learn to catch those slow beats on its own.
Before tuning you need to be able to answer one question: is this note higher or lower than the one I want? A high note sounds "thinner", like a bird; a low note sounds "thicker", like thunder. Listen to these pairs and try to say whether the second note goes up or down:
(Pair 1: up. Pair 2: down. Pair 3: up just a little, a single fret.)
To raise a note you tighten the string; to lower it, you loosen it. Which way each peg turns depends on the guitar, so don't memorise "left" or "right": play the string, turn the peg a tiny bit and listen (or watch the tuner). If the note goes up, you're tightening.
is the one used by almost every song, method and tab. From the 6th string to the 1st:
String 6, Open: E2 · 1 · Scale tone
In notation, guitar is written one octave higher than it sounds, so the open strings look like this:
Look at the distance between neighbouring strings. The note of each open string can be found on the previous (lower) string a few frets up:
| From string… | …to string | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| 6th (E) | 5th (A) | 5 frets |
| 5th (A) | 4th (D) | 5 frets |
| 4th (D) | 3rd (G) | 5 frets |
| 3rd (G) | 2nd (B) | 4 frets |
| 2nd (B) | 1st (E) | 5 frets |
That exception between the 3rd and 2nd strings really matters: you'll use it to tune by ear, and it will turn up throughout the journey every time a scale or chord shape crosses those two strings.
Five frets are five semitones, an interval called a perfect fourth; four frets make a major third. If every pair of strings were a fourth apart, the 1st string would be an F, not an E, and the two outer strings would no longer match. With a major third between the 3rd and 2nd, the strings span exactly two octaves (from E2 to E4) and the most common open chords fall under the fingers in comfortable shapes. The five-course baroque guitar was already tuned A D G B E, with that same third; when a sixth, low E string was added in the late 18th century, the tuning settled into the one we use today.
A listens to the note you play and tells you which note it is and how far off it is. There are several kinds:
Clip-on
Clips onto the headstock and senses the vibration of the wood, not the sound in the air. It works even with noise around. The most practical one to start with.
App or microphone
Uses your phone's or computer's microphone, like the portal's tuner. Works very well in a quiet room; background noise confuses it.
Pedal
For electric guitar: it sits on the cable between guitar and amp and reads the signal directly. Very accurate, even on stage.
Almost all of them show the same things:
This is the most important rule of the whole stop: reach the note from below. If you overshoot, drop clearly below it and come back up.
Why? When you loosen a string to reach the note, a little slack is left in the peg's gears and the string can stay "caught" in its nut slot. As you play, that slack releases and the string drops a little: it goes out of tune within minutes. Coming up from below leaves the string tight against the gears, so it stays put.
Go through the six strings with this routine. Each step shows the string and lets you hear the target note:
Step 1 of 6 · 6th string: E
String 6, Open: E2 · 1 · Root
What if you don't have a tuner? You can tune the strings to each other: that's . It's based on the table above: the note of each open string lives on the previous string at the 5th fret (the 4th fret when going from the 3rd string to the 2nd).
Step 1 of 5 · 6th to 5th
String 6, Fret 5: A2 · 1 · Root
Play the fretted note first, then the open string, then both together. Listen to the beats: if the wobble speeds up as you turn, you're going the wrong way; if it slows down until it vanishes, you're getting there.
Two notes with similar frequencies alternately reinforce and cancel each other: the volume rises and falls as many times per second as the difference between their frequencies. If one string sounds at 110 Hz and the other at 112 Hz, you'll hear 2 wobbles per second. At 111 Hz, one. At 110 Hz, none. That's why, once the beats get very slow, you're only a few cents away.
The relative method has one weak spot: errors add up. If the 5th string ends up slightly flat, so will the 4th, and so on down to the 1st. Always finish by checking the two E strings: the open 1st should sound exactly two octaves above the 6th.
A reference tone is a fixed, in-tune note you compare a string against. Switch this one on and tune the 6th string to it, listening for the beats:
It isn't your fault: every guitar drifts out of tune. These are the usual causes:
| Cause | What happens | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| New strings | They stretch during the first days and go flat on their own | Stretch them gently and retune several times |
| Temperature and humidity | Wood and metal expand or contract | Let the guitar acclimatise for a few minutes before tuning |
| Playing hard or bending | Strings stretch and shift in the nut | Check your tuning every so often |
| Old strings | They lose elasticity and brightness; they won't hold pitch | Change them |
| Knocks or travel | The pegs can turn | Always tune when you take it out of the case |
After changing strings, tune them and then gently stretch each one: pull it up a few centimetres, along its whole length, with two or three fingers. The note will drop. Retune and repeat three or four times, until stretching barely moves it. Nylon strings take longer: they may need a day or two of frequent retuning.
Goal: Get all six strings within ±5 cents, always coming up from below, in under three minutes.
Goal: Tune strings 5 to 1 with the 5th-fret method and have the tuner confirm afterwards that each one is within ±10 cents.
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