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!

An Old Modern Time by Muris Varajic

I’ve been following this guitar player for a while, and I’m always presently surprised with the things he comes up with. In this video, Muris shows an interesting blend of Zappa like craziness while keeping a fun and interesting melody.

Awesome job!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHqDoDv-K5A

So, I’m experimenting with picking and faster licks. The challenge here was to get the slide back to the first not of the riff. It took me a while, and I still don’t think it’s 100% clean! But I’ll keep trying.

This is a quick riff I had for a long time, but never really solidified the loop. Well, I tried different combinations and finally settled on this. Hope you like it!

I was just wondering what people out there would like to hear? Longer riffs? Songs? Loops? With drums? Don’t care?

Let me know!

Not that I’m a professional player, in fact, far from it. But people still come around and ask me how do I write songs, or music. Well, I’m here to say that I have no magic formula, or incredible secret. It’s actually easier than most people image. The way that I see it, I just have to be open to inspiration, and inspiration can come from pretty much anywhere!

There are several ways I get ideas for riffs, I’ll try to outline them in a way that they make sense, bear with me if it doesn’t.

1. Imagining: I would say this is about 70% percent of my ideas. Any time I’m doing any type of activity that requires little attention, like walking my dog, going to the supermarket, showering, commuting (not when I drive), I find myself thinking about musical riffs, or songs. I try to think as much as I can on how the riff would evolve into a real song. As stupid as it may sound, I even imagine myself playing it in front of millions of people. But it’s all about making as vivid in my head as possible. And believe me, it works.
2. Hearing: I would be a hypocrite and a liar if I didn’t say that I don’t get inspired and borderline copy stuff that I hear. Of course I do, however, what I don’t do is copy it verbatim. As any musician out there, I’m constantly listening to new music, and getting inspired by music you hear… I feel, it’s a natural progression. But oddly enough, I get more inspiration from the other instruments, not the guitar. I normally hear the drums (frustrated drummer), or the keyboard, or some other instrument. Then I try to emulate what I heard, like the beat, or something similar. I feel this adds a new dimension to what I come up with.
3. Practicing: Another way to come up with new stuff is just by simply playing, playing and playing. Just by simply sitting in front of the TV with my guitar in my lap, I find myself playing stuff subconsciously. Even practicing scales, not that I do that a lot, but sometimes I find note combinations that I like. Once I hear something I cool, I record it. Which brings me to my next point…
4. Recording: If you’re going to take something from this post is: RECORD EVERYTHING YOU PLAY! I can’t stress this enough, even if you’re just messing around. Buy a voice recorder, use your phone (this is what I do), use your computer, whatever it takes. You will be amazed on how much cool stuff you can actually review. While we’re on the same page, I often hum melodies into the recorder. I sound like a crazy person sometimes, but it works. When I go back to review what I’ve recorded, I remember how the song went.

As you can see, not a big secret, nothing really special. Hope it helps someone.

Later!

So I decided to continue pursuing this project… Here’s a cool little short riff that could be use for a detail on a song, or even an intro. I hope you enjoy it!

I just like the clean sound. I’m combining a regular clean sound and a bit of acustic in the back.

This one reminds me of one of those times when you just want get on your car, and push it to its max. Carefully of course

Sometimes I underestimate some wonderful guitar effects. In this guitar riff, I’m using a simple chorus with some reverb to add a little bit of body to an otherwise simple clean guitar. Less is more.