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How to Tune Your Guitar by Ear

By Mike Hayes | June 10, 2010

Learning to tune by ear is a necessary skill for every aspiring
guitarist, you may wonder why I say this with all the electronic
tuning devices around why would someone bother to learn to tune
their guitar by ear.

The answer is simple, music is a auditory art form not a visual
medium, translated it means that your eyes can’t hear and they
never will! In a world where music is marketed 90+% by all sorts
visual stimulation it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that music
is and always will be AUDIO (sound) not visual.

Musicians rely on their ears to (a) learn to identify and re-
create sounds on their instruments that they hear on recordings;
(b) to make subtle changes in their instruments tuning should
intonation problems arise during performance (due to temperature
changes caused by on-stage lighting etc); and (c) constantly
manipulate the pitch of each note (using finger vibrato
techniques etc.,) so that their instrument will blend with other
instruments such as flute, piano and voice.

You probably though it was just a matter of plugging your
instrument in, watch the dial and you’re done! Definitely not!!!

The truth is the perfect guitar has never been built and neither
has the perfect saxophone, clarinet or bass our entire music
system relies on the skilled musicians ‘ear’ to overcome the
various intonation problems inherent with each musical
instrument.

Like everything else the more you practice anything the better
you get; and learning to tune by ear simply takes practice …
practice at listening to the sounds you are making and the more
you train yourself to listen to the sound(s) you are making the
better the musician you will be!

Step 1. Have an (1) experienced player tune your guitar for
you, (b) if you don’t know any good guitarists go to a music
store and have them tune your guitar for you or (c) use an
electronic tuner to tune your open strings to the correct pitch
… then turn the tuner off and use your ears!

Step 2 . Record the sound of each open string identifying each
string before you play it, like this …

String 6 – E … (play note – slowly three times); then repeat
the process: string 6 – E … (play note – slowly three times);
do this for each string, identify each note and play the open
string slowly.

In case you don’t know the names of the open strings of the
guitar here they are:

E–0— string 1
B–0— string 2
G–0— string 3
D–0— string 4
A–0— string 5
E–0— string 6

The first string is the string closest to the floor when you are
playing.

What we want to have is a recording of the “sound” of the open
strings of ‘your’ guitar that we will use as a reference “sound”
and “pitch” to tune your guitar with in future practice sessions.

Each guitar has a different sound, no two guitars sound exactly
the same; even guitars of the same brand and model will sound
different so we want to become aware of the tone of your guitar
as well as the pitch.

Listening to a recorded guitar sound is also very helpful for
developing your musical ‘ear’, after all that’s how you hear
guitars and other instruments from a recording with the sounds
coming back to you via the playback speakers; as you improve
your listening skills it will becomes easier for you to work out
music by ear and that can’t be a bad thing!

The idea is to remember and recall the sound of each of your open
strings, this takes time, be patient with yourself, remember the
more you practice this type of intensive, concentrated listening
the better you will become and the easier it will be for you to
identify each tone.

The key is to practice everything s-l-o-w-l-y!

There are a number of ways you can learn to tune your guitar by
ear however, I find this method the best place to start, the
important thing is to practice listening and tuning by ear
every time you practice your guitar.

Topics: Beginner Guitar Lesson, Guitar Tips | No Comments »

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