Tuning Up Your Guitar

You can't very well learn how to play the guitar if you're not in tune. The first thing to become familiar with is standard tuning. There are lots of ways to tune the guitar, but this is the most common and the one you'll want to learn first. The notes of the open strings in standard tuning are, from lowest to highest, E A D G B E. The highest string, the thinnest one, is referred to as the first string. B is the second string, G the third, D the fourth, A the fifth, and the lowest E string is the sixth.

You'll need something in tune that's going to give you a pitch to work from. Tuning forks and pitch pipes are inexpensive and have been used for a long time. Nowadays there are lots of guitar tuners online, such as this guitar tuner at gieson.com. A lot of players tune from a keyboard. If you have one handy, that's a great way to tune up. Best of all is a decent electronic tuner. It's a great little tool.

If you have just one string in tune you can tune up all the others. In standard tuning the interval between the strings is a perfect fourth with the exception of the second string, which is a major third above the third string. So the fifth string is a P4th higher than the sixth string, the fourth string is a P4th above the fifth, the third a P4th above the fourth, the second a M3rd above the third, and the first a P4th above the second.

Don't get all hung up on intervals, though. Not yet. You'll learn all about them soon enough. In practical terms it shows a way to tune one string by seeing it's relationship to the next lowest string. The A of the open fifth string is also located on the fifth fret of the sixth string, so you can tune the fifth string by raising or lowering the pitch to agree with the note at the fifth fret of the sixth string (assuming the sixth string is in tune). Likewise, the fourth string's D is also found at the fifth fret of the fifth string. The G of the open third string is located at the fifth fret of the fourth string . The B of the second string is found at the third string's fourth fret (a major third higher than the G instead of a perfect fourth). And the high E of the first string is located at the fifth fret of the second string.

Note that the same pitches of the higher strings are also found higher on the fretboard on the lower strings. The D of the open fourth string is located at the fifth fret of the fifth string, and also at the tenth fret of the sixth string. The open third string's G is at the fifth fret of the fourth string, the tenth fret of the fifth string, and the fifteenth fret of the sixth string. Now, these G's are the same pitch, but the different acoustic properties of the fatter strings will make the timbre a little different.

Looking at these relationships also introduces us to patterns on the fretboard. This is vital in coming to understand the instrument. Increasing you skill as a guitarist means becoming more and more familiar with the territory of the fretboard. Exploring that territory is what playing guitar is all about.