The Skool of guitar excellence
The next step is to tune up, if you don’t do this you will never sound good. There are different ways to do this, pitch pipes, automatic tuners, but we will learn how to tune up using the 6th string as our starting point.
Ideally you need to get the 6th string (that’s the E on the thick string) in tune first. You can do this by playing the note E on a piano or keyboard.
You can still tune the guitar without this and it will sound ok until you try to play along with another instrument when you will hear how out of tune you really are!
Now lets see how well you know your string names and fret numbers!
Put your 1st finger on the 6th string E at the 5th fret.
Play this note and it should sound the same as the open 5th string A below it. If not, adjust the tuning peg to raise or lower the pitch of the open string until it does.
Take some time to understand this and play around until you get the right sound. Again don’t let this scare you at the start, it will become easier with time and practise. This is important as all the other strings will be tuned from this, so if one is wrong….then all will be wrong!
Now lets move to the other strings and we use the same pattern again for the next string
Put your 1st finger on the 5th string A at the 5th fret.
Play this note and it should sound the same as the open 4th string D below it. If not, adjust the tuning peg to raise or lower the pitch of the open string until it does.
Starting to get it?? Go slowly and be as accurate as you can because the tuning of the next string depends on it.
RockSkool: 7:Tuning the Guitar 1
