Before you start writing your cool guitar riffs, composing songs, or practicing your favorite tunes, you have to make sure that your guitar is properly tuned. But, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned player, you know that tuning your guitar can be a painful experience. Well, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t need to be! Using the following technique can will absolutely speed up the time you spend turning those knobs to get your guitar sounding perfect.
The techniques that I’m about to show you work especially great when you put fresh strings on your guitar. I should say, before you start this process, you should wind up the strings to get them some tension on them. Once you do that, pull each string out, about five times. You should do this around the base of the neck of your guitar. The strings will need to stretch out a little before they can hold their tuning. This should take you about 15 seconds.
All of these examples are based on standard tuning, but it can also work with any alternate tunings and different guitar types (6 strings, 7 strings, 12 strings, etc).
Here’s what the standard tuning should be (from smallest string to largest):
1st string —- E
2nd string —- B
3rd string —- G
4th string —- D
5th string —- A
6th string —- E
Also, make sure before you start either get a reference note for the low E, or have an digital tuner (you can get those super cheap everywhere!).
1. The “Balancing Tension” technique (perfect for new strings):
Personally, there is not greater feeling that when you play guitar with fresh strings. The crisp, bright texture that the strings give the guitar is something to be desired. Plus, they actually feel extremely comfortable to play with. But getting new strings to tune and hold their tuning is very difficult. As we know, once you put the strings, and you tune them once, when you go back to your first string you tuned, is completely out of tune. This happens because as you tune up the strings, they apply tension to the neck and bridge, arching them very slightly; enough to get your strings out of tune. The “Balancing Tension” technique helps to get the strings tuned up faster. Here’s the theory: Tune the opposite strings one at a time to control the tension that the tuned strings apply to the neck of the guitar. Basically tune your strings use the following order:
6th -> 1st -> 5th -> 2nd -> 4th -> 3rd.
2. Sharpen your tuning:
As you tune new strings, you will notice that the more you wind up the strings, the other strings tend to become flat. What I do is simply tune my strings a bit sharp, that way, i’m trying to anticipate the slack effect that the tension will give to the previously tuned strings. Now, you can’t just use the same amount of sharpening (is this a word?). Think about it as a slope. Sharpen more in the beginning and start decreasing the amount as you go through the process. For this example, let’s assume a scale from 1 to 5. 5 being a half step up a note and 1 being the target note. Take a look below, this shows the order and the amount of Sharp value I’m adding to the strings as I tune them.
6th string —- E -> Scale value: 5
1st string —- E -> Scale value: 4
5th string —- A -> Scale value: 3
2nd string —- B -> Scale value: 2
4th string —- D -> Scale value: 1
3rd string —- G -> Scale value: 1
3. Use your harmonics:
This is especially great when you’re tuning steps below the standard tuning. Even though it’s a great idea to tune your guitar using the open strings, because it will help develop your natural musical ear, I’m often trying to tune as fast a possible. For some reason, unknown to me, I find it easier to tune my guitar using the open, natural harmonics of the guitar. I don’t really know if there’s a technical term for these, but I call them the 12-Harmonics or the 5-Harmonics. I tend to use the 12-Harmonics more often, since they resemble the open strings the best. I’m assuming that you know how to make these harmonic sounds, but if you don’t, I plan to write an article later on about harmonics and all of the types you can create. In short, you want to hover your finger, barely touching the string on either the 12th fret or 5th fret of any particular string. Do not press the string down. The trick is to touch the string without pressing down to the fret. You should get a higher pitch sound of that particular note. And if you are using a digital tuner, it should show the right note you’re trying to tune to.
So that’s it, these techniques are things that I use personally, there may be better things out there, but these seem to work great for me! They actually cut my tuning time for more than half. Believe me, I’ve actually timed myself! Feel free to use them or come up with your own. Hopefully you’ll share them with all of us!
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