Often, new guitarists will have a hard time tuning their guitar. Learning to listen to pitches very closely, then fine-tune them, is a skill that takes practice. One of the reasons why most new guitarists sound bad is because their instrument isn't in tune. Knowing how to tune your guitar is simply a MUST for guitarists.
Every time I pick up my guitar, the first thing that I will do is to tune it. It's just like brushing your teeth after you wake up. You don't want to put someone off because of bad breath. Similarly, you don't want to sound out of tune when you play your instrument. Tuning is a necessary activity that should become a part of your daily routine as a guitarist. Most guitars, particularly the cheaper ones, tend to go out of tune quickly. That's why you need to constantly check your tuning even when you are just practicing.
When I started learning to play the guitar, I was frequently reminded by my father to get my instrument in tune. I had a hard time learning this skill because I cannot easily distinguish which string is out of tune. It was very frustrating. It took me about 30 minutes or so the first time I tried tuning my guitar. Way back then, I didn't even know that electric tuners did exist. I was just using our good-old piano as a reference. But, because of regular practice, I was able to develop my musical ear and now I can easily notice when my guitar is off-tune and I can quickly tune it correctly in less than a minute.
My mom once hired a professional to tune our very old piano. When he opened it, i saw the numerous strings inside. It numbered to a couple of hundred strings. I gulped and said to myself that I was very fortunate to only have 6 strings to tune. Also, it is very encouraging to know that you can actually use several different methods to get your guitar in tune.
For beginners, I would recommend using electric tuners but not for long so that you can develop your musical ear.
Speaking of the different methods, you can use any of the following:
- Relative tuning (Fifth fret method and the Seventh fret method)
- Fixed source reference (Pitch pipe, Tuning fork, Piano)
- Electronic Tuner
- Using this blog
Let's talk about Relative Tuning in my next blog post.
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