How To Tune A Guitar

Knowing how to tune a guitar is an essential step towards being able to tune your guitar confidently on your own, which in turn means you can practise whenever you want. Of course, it's also a skill you'll need if you want to perform in public or turn professional.

In this guide we'll look at some of the standard guitar tuning methods, as well as some alternate guitar tuning techniques that have become possible in recent years, such as using an online guitar tuner or a smartphone app.

Before you begin, check whether your electric guitar or amplifier has a built-in tuner, or whether you already have a tuning pedal amongst your kit. If not, clip-on tuners are the easy physical solution, while a tuner app or online guitar tuner is the digital option.

Also if you're a relative beginner, make sure you know how to hold a guitar. This will make sure you know the order of the strings and which note you are playing, so you can have more confidence that you have correctly tuned your guitar.

Use a tuner

Standard guitar tuning uses some form of tuner. Clip-on tuners are common - these clip directly on to your guitar strings and can detect the frequency when you play a note. Alternate guitar tuning tech includes smartphone tuner apps and electric guitar tuner pedals, as mentioned above.

Clip-on tuners

Clip-on tuners are sometimes called vibration-based tuners. They clip directly on to the guitar's strings and measure the frequency of the vibrations, rather than listening 'acoustically' or audibly to the note played. This can allow you to tune a guitar in a noisy place, as the tuner does not need to physically 'hear' your guitar, but only to feel its vibrations.

However, in performance situations where there is a band playing through amplified speaker systems (likely over 100 decibels!), these clip-on tuners may struggle to register the vibrations. Plus, it doesn’t look as cool appearance-wise!

Tuner apps

There are lots of useful apps for guitar, from app libraries of tabs and sheet music, to simple apps to record and play back your practice sessions, through to handy accessories like electric guitar tuner apps. These work by listening to the notes you play and measuring their frequency, and can give you simple instructions on how you need to retune the string to correct the pitch.

Tuner pedals

Tuner pedals are a great option for electric guitars, and are popular with professionals. They plug into your electric or electro-acoustic guitar via a jack and when you press the pedal, the needle will give you an indication of how accurately your guitar is tuned. Because they connect directly to your instrument's output, they can be very precise, for maximum confidence and fast tuning.

Tune to a piano

A piano is a good option if you need a reference note - assuming the piano is in tune! Even if it is slightly out of tune, you can tune your guitar to match the piano if you want to perform a duet, and the margin of error should be less noticeable.

Find correct note

It's standard guitar tuning practice to begin with your low E string. On a piano, the E-key is the white key immediately to the right of a pair of black keys. Another way to remember this is that the three white keys below a 'set' of two black keys are C D E. The four white keys below the group of three black keys are F G A and B. This is true across the entire piano keyboard, so no matter where you look, the pair of two black keys should be immediately followed by the white E-key.

Piano apps

Piano apps are an easy note reference, as you can be confident that they should always be in tune. Remember that there are guitar tuner apps available though - so if you're using a synthesised piano app to tune your guitar, you might be making the process harder than necessary.

Tune to other strings

One way to tune a guitar is to get one string in tune, and then tune the other strings using it as a reference. If you have a good ear for pitch and especially for the interval between a C and a D, or an E and an F, you might want to choose this option if you don't have a clip-on tuner or smartphone app available to work from.

Make sure lowest is in tune

It's good practice to tune the lowest note first and work your way up from there. Again, if your inner sense of pitch is good, you might find a favourite song to tune from by matching the lowest note on your guitar to a known note in the song - essentially using yourself as a reference note.

There's nothing wrong with trusting your own inner musicality. My teaching method involves a lot of learning by ear. With enough practice, most people can learn to play a song on guitar, but learning to play guitar creatively and originally means building your inner sense of the instrument too.

Tuning in a group

Remember that if you tune a guitar to its own strings, it's likely to sound OK on its own, but out of tune in a group, band or orchestra. However, you can pre-tune the guitar using itself as a reference to save time later, and then just make minor corrections during the group sound check.

Tips

No matter which method of tuning a guitar you choose, there are a few simple steps you can take to complete the process faster and more accurately, so there are no nasty surprises once you start playing.

Leave space between attacks

Don't tune to the initial spike when you play a string - there will always be some sharpness there. Let the initial vibrations settle and any harshness drop out, so you know you're tuning the 'true' pitch of the string. Crucially, let the string settle between attacks, or there's a chance you'll never hit that true note.

Tune slowly 

Take your time over the whole process. You'll naturally get faster as you become more of an expert guitar player, but even the professionals know not to rush tuning a guitar. Don't be surprised if, after tuning your last string, you find the others need to be tweaked again - it's not a perfectly linear process and you need to keep going back to double check until everything is right.

Play chord to check

When you think your guitar is tuned properly, play a chord so you can hear multiple notes together. This is a great way to spot slight imperfections and correct them so that when you play an actual song, all of the chords sound pitch-perfect, and not just the individual notes.

Beware of the downside of this method though, as open chords and barre chords may not be the best indicator that your guitar is in tune. This is because our ears are already so used to listening to intervals of 3rd in major and minor chords. Instead, try referencing notes in 4th or 5th intervals against each other. For example, press down on the 2nd fret in the middle two strings to get E and A, and play the bottom four strings so it goes E, A, E, A. You will then be able to spot any minor shifts in pitch rather than playing an open E chord.

Other tunings

Beginner guitar players are often surprised to learn that you can choose to deliberately tune your guitar to other notes. While there are certain physical limitations on this, it's a great way to set up your instrument for a specific sound that's a little different from the standard guitar tuning - as well as a handy hack to make beginners sound better!

Drop D

Drop D is a specific way to tune a six-string guitar where the sixth string is tuned down from E to D. Another way to look at this is to make what is usually the E-string a full octave lower than the D-string. Some classic songs are played in Drop D tuning, including Led Zeppelin's Moby Dick and Fleetwood Mac's Never Going Back Again.

Open tunings

Open tunings are several more alternate guitar tuning systems. Open G tuning is popular for blues guitar and involves tuning your strings to D G D G B D. By tuning the strings to the notes of a G chord, when you openly strum your guitar you automatically play a chord.

Other open tunings include the D-minor and D-major chords. For D-minor open tuning, your strings should be tuned to D A D F A D. For D-major open tuning, you just need to change the F for an F#.

Because they produce a pleasing chord-like sound when openly strumming the guitar, open tunings are popular with beginners and to help children get into just making sound with a guitar. But they're also popular with professionals and seasoned players too, and an excellent addition to your tuning arsenal when you want to produce a specific sound.

My recommendations

While there is not one certain way to tune a guitar, I recommend using a tuner unless you have perfect pitch. An out-of-tune guitar is the last thing you will ever want to hear, especially mid-song when you then have to awkwardly stop or find a quick space to hopefully fix your tuning!

Although you can find free tuner apps on your mobile phone, this is not a good option to rely on as it is inconvenient in the rehearsal room with a band - every time you tune you have to ask your bandmates to be quiet so the mic doesn’t pick up external noises!

And even though you can find cheap and affordable clip-on tuners, they are sometimes not accurate enough. Scroll back up to the section on tuning using a chord, and often you will find that strings are still slightly off. The brand and model which I have always used is the TC-Electronic Polytune.

It’s in the name - in both clip-on and pedal versions of the tuner you can strum all six strings and it will tell you which one is out of tune. This saves you a lot of time especially in between songs in a set, but apart from this feature the most important aspect of this tuner is that it is very accurate. After all, that’s what a reliable tuner needs to do!

For more helpful tips please visit my website, or feel free to contact me directly. Always happy to help!