Free Guitar Lessons: How to tune your Guitar by Ears

One of the most important aspect of sounding good while playing guitar is that your instrument should be properly tuned.Music is collection of notes , and unless your notes sound perfect , the combination of notes will also not sound good. Its only when different tunes come into proper harmony with each other , then we get a pleasing , Fuller and melodious sound. So how do you  tune your guitar?Well , lets get going.

Though there are lot of tuners available in market , as well as many apps in smartphones that help you tune your guitar ,the technique that we are going to learn today is called relative tuning by ears.This is the first method everyone should learn when they start playing guitar.This method of tuning is called ‘Relative’ because all your strings are going to be tuned in relation to the high ‘E’ string. So the only note you are ever going to need for tuning your guitar by ears is the high ‘E’ note. Listen to that on Piano repeatedly or listen it on internet, but you have to keeo the high ‘E’ note always in your mind.

Once your high ‘E’ string is tunes, rest just becomes relative in tuning your guitar.To understand it fully , lets take a look at below diagram.

So basically , when you play high e string open , you play E note , and same not can be played on B string by plucking 5th Fret. Hence they should sound same , just that they will be in different octaves.So this gives us a simple process to tune the guitar.

 

  • First , tune the top E or 6th string (thinnest) to the correct pitch.
  • Now play the 5th fret on the 2nd String(B string) and listen if its sounding higher or lower than the E.Match this note with open top ‘E’ as reference and adjust tension accordingly that open ‘E’ and 5th fret , B string sounds the same.
  • Repeat the same on “G” string , 4th fret. This note is B note which should then be played against reference open B.
  • Repeat the same on “D” string , 5th fret. This note is G note which should then be played against reference open G.
  • Repeat the same on “A” string , 5th fret. This note is D note which should then be played against reference open D.
  • Repeat the same on “E” string , 5th fret. This note is A note which should then be played against reference open A.

 

Thats it , pretty simple yeah ! Well practicing this will not only help you in training your ears to listen to correct notes, but also will improve your music grasping skills. So what are you waiting for now , get  your Guitar and start practicing!

 

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