The importance of tuning your guitar is fairly obvious. Being out of tune is bad enough when you’re playing alone, as it can make your playing sound awkward, clumsy, and unpleasant – all the more noticeable if you’re playing with a backing track, or along to a song or video lesson.
But being out of tune when you’re playing with other musicians is even worse. Music is precisely about the pleasant harmony (or deliberate lack of it) that occurs between bandmates, and each musician being properly in tune is literally foundation number one of that process.
Tuning can often go un-discussed, as it’s fair to say it isn’t the most fun aspect of guitar playing, and often seen as a chore, or an obstacle in the way of fun. It’s important to begin to view tuning as quite the opposite – the foundation of the instrument, a tool enabling the fun of playing.
The good news is, the more you do it, the quicker and more habitual it becomes. Then before you know it, it’s second nature, like a reflex. And then, of course, the process never changes or complicates. So, get this right, and get playing!
Here are 5 things you must do when tuning your guitar:
1 – Use a guitar tuner
It doesn’t matter which kind of guitar tuner you use – and nowadays there are many, you can even tune your guitar online – the point is that you use something external, digital, and reliable.
Guitarists usually start out using guitar tuners, then as their aural skills improve, intermediate players often see tuning-by-ear as a badge of honor and skill. However, all the advanced players I’ve met in degree-level music education, studio sessions, live shows and tours, theatres and so on would never dream of tuning by ear before so much as a practice session – let alone a professional engagement.
Tuning by ear is not the badge of honor, using a guitar tuner is the badge of honor – a symbol of professionalism, dedication, diligence, and care. All of which still neglects to address the main point here, and the tuner’s strongest element – perfect accuracy every time!
2 – Double check your tuning
E, A, D, G, B, E. Tuned. Then what’s next? Hotel California? Nope. Back to E again. A chance to check that you’ve tuned up correctly, and correct any errors, or make any micro-adjustments to ensure you’re as close to perfectly in tune as possible.
Many guitar tuners have a kind of range of being ‘in-tune’ and it’s very easy to end up close to perfectly tuned without hitting that green light or chime sound to let you know you hit the nail on the head.
So, this process is checking and fine tuning. And while yes this is adding to your tuning job list, with good practice and repetition it’ll be second nature – and completed in literally seconds – in no time at all.
Any irritation at this relatively brief process is nothing compared to beginning a song on stage, realizing you’re noticeably out of tune, then having no option but to painfully complete the rest of the song creating unwanted dissonance in place of harmony. Tune, then check!
3 – Be aware what can put you out of tune
Good guitar tuning is pre-emptive. What this means is that it shouldn’t come as a response to playing out of tune and hearing the dissonance. It should be a repeated, pre-emptive, fine-tuning process. Like keeping a car’s tank topped-off rather than letting it run down to empty before ever addressing it and refilling.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to tune up between every song – although many people do, and can do so in a matter of seconds, often silently with tuners that bypass their amplifier in some way, so the audience hears nothing.
But it does mean that you need to be on top of tuning. And one key element of this is being aware what can put your guitar out of tune. It might be a change in temperature or environment, it might be repeated string bends or the use of the whammy bar, or it might be that your strings are relatively new and haven’t yet settled.
These factors – combined with an ever-developing knowledge of and relationship with your instrument – should stand out in your mind and set off a kind of I-might-need-to-tune-a-bit-more-often alarm and prompt you to do so.
4 – Have a backup tuner
This one is fairly straightforward, although often ignored and neglected. You’re unlikely to go on stage or into the studio with only one pick, or without spare strings, or a spare cable. But people often don’t have a backup tuner. This is inexcusable, especially in the modern age of online guitar tuners and tuning apps, meaning it’s easy to have more than one tuning option at your disposal.
Perhaps, again, tuning’s understandable reputation as the opposite of playing/fun/creativity is responsible for this underappreciation of tuners. However, as above, it’s time to flip that perception. Tuning is not the opposite of those things, but the foundation of them.
5 – Develop your ear to help you
So, having said all the above about why guitar tuners are far better, more efficient, more accurate, more professional and more reliable than using your aural skills alone, here’s a little bit to finish in defense of our ears!
Tuning by ear is something that you should be able to do, but also something you should understand is not your preferred option. If tuning by ear, unless you have perfect pitch (an innate ability to recognize any note by name purely from the sound of it), you’ll be tuning relatively, i.e. Once your E string is tuned, you can play it at the 5th fret to sound an ‘A’ note – from which you can tune the A string, and so on.
The only issue being, from where do you reference your initial ‘E’ note. Well, if you’re playing with other musicians (who have a tuned piano or a digitally-in-tune instrument like a keyboard) then you get it from them. If you’re on your own, then, well, you go from your best guess at an ‘E’ note and hope for the best.
Hopefully all of which combines to make the point that while aural skills are important and there’s a lot around tuning that your ear can do for you, allowing you to tune your instrument as well as a guitar tuner can is not one of those things. For that you require, unsurprisingly, a guitar tuner – or preferably two!
Alex Bruce is a writer for Guitar Tricks and 30 Day Singer
