Facts You Never Knew About How To Tune An Acoustic Guitar

February 2, 2018
/ By Marilyn

Guitar is the most fashionable and sometimes essential musical instrument now-a-days. We can play almost all the songs of any culture through a guitar. So, we can feel its importance in the world of music. When we talk about a guitar, the first and the common problem we face is tuning a guitar. Now the question will appear why do we need to tune a guitar? Different things can affect your guitar’s tuning. For some example temperature changes, humidity changes, if the guitar is placed outside of the bag or sometimes people change the strings without having any kind of knowledge. When you can’t get your expected sound/tune from your guitar, you need to tune it for better sound quality.

Now, you are here because you might face the problem of tuning a guitar or you just come to gathering some knowledge. Don’t worry you get both in here. So, let’s start our journey.

Basic Tutorial

Here we try to give you information to tune a guitar. Our main focus here will give you information about tuning a guitar and help you to tune your guitar. We will discuss what are the things you are going to need and then provide you the tutorial step by step. Hope this will help you to tune a guitar perfectly.

Before starting the tutorial you need to know some basic things. This will help you to understand the tutorial properly.

Things You Need to Know

The first thing you should need to know is how the strings are arranged in an acoustic guitar. Strings of the guitar are arranged in ascending order from thickest to the thinnest one. We are named these strings as E-A-D-G-B-E. It’s good to start the string tuning from the sixth string.

Another this we should know before starting is Flats and Sharps.

Flats

Sharps

So, these are the things we should learn before going to the field. If you complete the above, we are now good to go.

Things You Might Need

An acoustic guitar of six strings.
A pick.
A Tuner/Tuner apps.
A peaceful environment.

Tuning a Guitar with a Pitch Tuner

By this tuning method, you need to tune the guitar with the help of your ear. So, let’s discuss how a pitch tuner works. Pitch tuners work as playing a pitch of each string and you have to match each note with your ear. So, it’s very important to have the concentration on each note you are playing. Now, you should take a chair and sit with your guitar because we are now going to tell you how to tune your guitar with a pitch tuner step by step.

Step - 1: At first, take a sound environment and sit with your guitar for tuning it. Take your pitch tuner and play it.

Step - 2: You should start tuning your guitar from the thickest strings of all which is the string E. Now, your main work is began. Strike the string open and match with the pitch tuner as a reference note. Listen very clearly the pitch tuner and match the note of your string by striking your string again and again.

Step - 3: If you find out that your string is flat then turn it up and if it’s in sharp then turn it down a little bit.

Step - 4: When you perfectly tuning the string E then you are good to go to the next string which is A. Play the A note in the pitch tuner and revise step 3.

Step - 5: After finishing string A, start to plucking 4th string D. Then revise the step 3 again.

Step - 6: When string D is perfectly tuned then starting to strike 3rd string G. And by revising step 3 tune the string perfectly.

Step - 7: Now starting to strike 2nd string B. Tuning it by following step 3.

Step - 8: Finally strike the thinnest string E and tuning it following step 3. Now strike all the strings and match them again with the note that pitch tuner plays.

Tuning a Guitar with Mobile Apps

Now-a-days it is a lot easier to tune a guitar by the grace of our technology. We can simply strike the string and the app will show us that in which position our string is now. If the string is flat then we need to tune up the pitch and if the string is in sharp then we need to tune down the pitch. So, let’s have a look how we can tune a guitar by a mobile application.

Step 1: Get tuning apps from the play store or whatever you use. There are a lot more tuning apps are available. You just need to search them and get them. There are also free apps in the store which are also good at tuning.

Step 2: Get your guitar and play the apps. When you are starting to strike the string of the guitar, the app will show your current tuning position of your string.

Step 3: Now if the app is showing flat then turn the pitch up and if the app show sharp then turn the pitch down.

Step 4: Revise the step 3 for string E,A,D,G,B,E. When all the strings are showing tuned in the apps then you are good to go.

The best way to tune your guitar is by apps. It will show you the approximate results.

Special Tips

Things to Consider

Tuning a guitar you should consider some consequences. Take a peaceful environment while tuning a guitar. Otherwise, it will disturb you while tuning.

Don’t tighten the string too much. Because it may cause a damage to your string as well as your guitar.

Final Words

Guitar is always a pleasant musical instrument to all of us. Almost all the music festival/concert comes with a guitar. But tuning a guitar is very important to get the desired sound. For beginners, I will suggest you use a tuning app for tuning a guitar. Because only a specialist can perfectly tune a guitar by listening the pitches by ear. So, you just need to get an app and start to tune your guitar. Have fun! Good luck!