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How To Tune Your Guitar (Standard Tuning)

Playing in tune is vital. No matter what level your playing may be at, you will sound HORRIBLE if your not in tune. It truly is the reason why most guitarists sound bad, not because they are bad, but because they are out of tune.

guitar out of tune


This alone shows how important tuning your guitar is. For new guitarists tuning your guitar is hard and in some cases, will discourage an individual enough to quit playing guitar. But if you stick with it, you will quickly find how easy it is to tune.

In fact, once you learn the following method, you could tune your guitar in as little as 30 seconds... or less! Before you start tuning all your friends guitars though, you have to start with the basics.

The Strings On The Guitar - EADGBE


A standard guitar has six strings. Each string having its own individual "thickness or roundness" and default note. Notice that when you buy a set of guitar strings, the package indicates which string belongs to which note.

The notes of these six guitar strings are E, A, D, G, B and E (from the lowest pitched and fattest string, to the highest pitched and skinniest string). The strings are placed in the guitar in order from lowest pitched to highest pitched. If you were to point the guitar to the sky and have the strings face you, the lowest pitched would be the left most string and the highest pitched should be the right most string.

There are two ways of naming the strings on the guitar. The first way is to name them by their pitches as explained above. For example, someone could refer to "the B string". The second way is to number the strings on the guitar sequentially.

Just as the strings are named E, A, D, G, B and E from lowest pitched to the highest pitched, the strings are numbered 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 from the lowest pitched to the highest pitched. Therefore, the B string and the 2nd string are the same string, just as the A string and the 5th string are the same string. The following diagram should help illustrate all this.

Remember, the diagram is shown as if you had the guitar pointing to the sky with the strings facing you.

standard tuning neckmap

Part II - Tuning The Low E String

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