How to tune a guitar
Want to know how to tune a guitar so that you can sound your best all the time?
Learning to tune your guitar is one of the most important aspects of learning how to play the guitar. It does not matter how good of a player you are. If your guitar is out of tune, it is not going to sound good.
We want to make sure that you are sounding good at all the times.
The best thing to do is purchase a guitar tuner. Tuners that can clip on to your head stock are great and fairly inexpensive. I Highly Recommend The Snark Clip On Tuner
Return to All Guitar LessonsBefore Tuning: Notes of your guitar strings
You will need to know what notes you are going to tune your guitar to. The table on the left shows you the notes of each of your guitar strings. The 6th string (the fat string closest to you) is tuned to E, the 5th, to A, the 4th to D, the 3rd to G, the 2nd to B and the 1st, (the skinniest string on the bottom of the guitar neck), to E.
You will notice that two strings are tuned to E. You can remember the notes by starting from the 1st string and saying Easter Bunnies Get Donuts At Easter.
At the top of your guitar head stock, you will have metal tuning pegs. You will turn these to adjust what note each string is tuned to.
First:
Play each string and look at your tuner.
Second:
A letter should pop up. We want to make sure it is the letter of the string you played and that the needle is pointing in the middle. In the picture to the right, the string being tuned is a D string. The needle is saying the note is too high (called sharp #) and the tuning peg will need to be turned so that the needle points in the middle. Some tuners have a light that turns green when you reach the correct tuning.
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NOTE:
Make sure the letter reads natural notes and not sharps or flats. For example if you tune your 4th string to D# instead of D, you guitar will still be out of tune.
TIPS:
You do not need to keep hitting the string. Hit it once, let it ring, then tune while it is ringing, then play the string again
So there you have it. That’s you to tune a guitar and make sure you are sounding good every time.
