Do you want your Guitar to last long and keep sounding great every time you play?
If yes, then you’re in the right place. Here’s 9 very simple and time tested guitar tuning tips you should apply right away to keep your Guitar in tune for years.
Guitar tuning is always an after thought for self-taught guitarists. We’re too excited to learn our favorite songs and there’s no one to tell us why you must first tune your Guitar every time you pick it up.
I’m guilty of it myself when I started.
Guitar tuning is an essential skill that all guitarists must learn in order to get the best sound out of their instrument. In this guide I’ll show you how.
And as a bonus, I’ll share a tip that’ll make learning barre chords a breeze.
Let’s begin.
Contents
1. Begin with a Proper Guitar Setup
A good Guitar setup ensures better and long lasting tuning for your instrument. Ideally, you need to get the setup done at the time of purchase but if you’ve bought online you can take your Guitar to a nearby store and have them set it up for you.
But how do you check if you’re Guitar is setup right?
A simple test is to check for intonation. Open your guitar tuner and Play each string open (without pressing any fret) and then play the same string while pressing the 12th fret. If the tuner shows the same note – you’re Guitar is set up just right. If not, take it to your nearby store and have them set it up for you.
2. Use a Guitar Tuner
As a beginner start by using a guitar tuner. In the interest of simplicity, I’ll limit to two types of tuners among all available in the market – clip on tuners and tuning app. If you own a smartphone, I recommend you avoid spending any money and start with a guitar tuning app. I use the Fender Tuner app.
As beginners it’s advisable to use a guitar tuner because it provides a visual indication of how close the string is to its desired pitch. And in the process you also start training your ear to hear the correct pitch of each open string.
3. Tune Before You Play
Tune your Guitar every time you pick it up to play – for practice or a jam session with your mates. It’s one of those ‘good habits’ you develop early on that’ll stay with you forever.
Through regular use, strings have a tendency to drop out of tune and if left unchecked can cause mild discrepancies between pitches which when amplified can be really embarrassing.
Simple tasks like switching tuning keys or springing forth into new sections of a song can suddenly sound off and throw off your entire groove.
In order to guarantee that something like this doesn’t happen during an important performance or jam session, consistently tuning your instrument will get rid of all possible complications with accuracy.
4. Always Tune Up
Now that we’ve established ‘always be tuning’ to be a good habit, make sure you always tune up.
As self-taught guitarist we tend to miss out on finer details of working our instrument. One of them is the ‘tuning direction’. In other words, which way to turn the tuning key (tuning peg) to tune your Guitar.
The recommended method for tuning a string is to always tune up. If a string is too high in pitch, it’s best to tune downwards to the pitch below and gradually tighten it back up until it’s in tune.
Begin by lowering the pitch and gradually tighten the string with the tuning key. Avoid over-tightening, as this can cause the string to become slack and affect the tension and pitch.
5. Tune With Your Ear
As I mentioned earlier, use a tuner when in your early days. But after a few months I highly recommend you learn to tune with your ear.
We’ve already established the importance of ear training for guitarists in our earlier article. Tuning your Guitar using your ear is a good first step on giving yourself a musician’s ear.
The process is fairly simple. Remember how low E string (6th string) sounds in open position (without pressing any fret). In the beginning you can use a tuner for this.
Once you’ve correctly tuned the low E string, now play the note on the 5th fret of each string and use the sound of the note to tune the open string.
Follow the process with each string except B. For tuning the B string you need to press the 4th fret on the G string (3rd string).
The skill to tune with your ear can be a life saver in situations when your tuner decides to take a break!
6. Change Strings Often
Guitar strings are always under tension and as you play the continuous picking, bending, pulling of strings can wear down the strings and affect intonation.
Over time the strings do tend to keep slipping off the machine heads and get easily out of tune. Oxidation can also be a factor in tuning.
Though wiping strings with a cloth before and after play and an occasional rub of string lubricant may help extend the life a bit, it’s good practice to change strings often.
In my experience, the string change routine depends on the quality of the strings and time spend on the instrument. It could be 3-4 weeks for performers and 4-6 months for beginner students.
7. Look Out for the Weather
Acoustic Guitars need the extra care to protect them from extreme weather effects. Continuous exposure to extreme weather conditions can damage your Guitar’s intonation and tuning stability.
Most manufacturer’s today make use of tone woods that can withstand moderate changes to weather conditions. Having said that it’s always better to put in a bit of extra care for your six string buddy.
If you live in area that doesn’t witness extreme weather change, keeping your Guitar stored in a cool place, preferably in a guitar case or gig bag, should do the job.
Humidity is another important factor to remember. During low humidity you can use a sound hole humidifier. And if gets too humid any dehumidifier should suffice.
8. Consider Detuning Guitar Strings
Detuning or loosening your Guitar strings is not required only during specific situations – such as flying to another city for a gig or leaving your Guitar at home while taking a long vacation.
It’s best to loosen your Guitar strings during travel because it can help prevent the strings from breaking. Loosening the strings also gives them a bit of slack that helps prevent them from going out of tune.
If you’re travelling with your guitar for an extended period of time, it’s also a good idea to keep a few spare strings on hand just in case one breaks.
If you’re going away leaving your Guitar back home, it’s a good practice to down tune your Guitar. Just loosen each string by turning the tuning key a couple of times.
Detuning allows a guitar to adjust to any alterations in the weather conditions and protects the neck from the extra tension for a prolonged period of time.
9. Use Alternate Tuning to Make Learning Barr Chords Easy
Ok, so this a cool trick I learned from a friend and I must include it for those of my beginner mates keeping off learning barr chords.
I agree barr chords are one of the most frustrating and painful experience in your Guitar journey. The following hack should help those just starting out.
Here’s how you do it.
De tune each string by a semi-tone such that the new tuning starting from the sixth string is E♭, A♭, D♭, G♭, B♭, E♭.
Now put a capo on the first fret and voila, you can suddenly play F Major!
The detuning releases the string tension a bit and the capo helps guitar back to standard tuning. Of course, each chord will now be one fret up. That is, you’ll play the G Major barre chord on the 4th fret on the 3rd fret.
Bear in mind this is just for a couple of week until you develop the strength in your fretting hand. You must return to playing barre chords without the capo and standard tuning.
Conclusion
As a self-taught guitarist its easy to forget about keeping your Guitar in tune or the care and maintenance required so that it stays in tune. Hope you enjoyed learning the basics with these simple guitar tuning tips and shall follow them as and when the need arises.
Happy playing.
