Tuning Your Guitar

In order to play guitar, it has to be in tune. All this means is that the strings have to be the correct "tightness." If a guitar has been sitting around for a while, it will most likely be out of tune as the strings have loosened and you need to tighten them. Contrarily, sometimes your strings will be too tight, and you will need to loosen them. To tighten or loosen the strings, you have to turn the "tuners" found on the guitar's "head" (see the logo above for the different guitar parts) to tighten up the strings.

Here's the direction we will need to turn the tuning pegs (if guitar is stringed properly):

For strings 6, 5, and 4:

-turn tuning peg right to make string looser and give it a deeper/lower sound

-turn tuning peg left to make string tighter and give it a higher sound

For strings 3, 2, and 1:

-turn tuning peg right to make string tighter and give it a higher sound

-turn tuning peg left to make string looser and give it a deeper/lower sound

By far the most popular tuning on the guitar is called Standard Tuning. This is the tuning we are going to show you.

We are going to show you 3 ways to tune your guitar. Firstly, we recommend using an electronic guitar tuner. If you don't have one, we recommend reading through Part 2 (Using an online guitar tuner) and Part 3 (Using the 5th fret method) .

1. Using an electronic guitar tuner- these can be purchased at any music store. You simply strike the string and a green light will show on the tuner if the string is in tune. If a red light shows, you will either need to loosen or tighten the string. When tuning a guitar using an electronic tuner, you will need to tune the strings to different notes:

6th String – Tune to E

5th String – Tune to A

4th String – Tune to D

3rd String – Tune to G

2nd String – Tune to B

1st String – Tune to E (same note as 6th string, only higher)

2. Using an online guitar tuner- there are many sites that have online tuners which tell you what pitch your strings should be in. Online guitar tuners can be found at these sites:

Guitar For Beginners Online Tuner

Gieson Online Tuner

3. Using the "5th Fret Method"- this method is a very accurate way of tuning your guitar. Follow these 11 steps:

Step 1: make sure your 6th (E) string is in tune (you can use the online tuner to make sure it is)

Step 2: hold the 5th fret on the 6th string and strike it

Step 3: make sure the 5th string sounds like what you just striked

Step 4: hold the 5th fret on the 5th string and strike it

Step 5: make sure the 4th string sounds like what you just striked

Step 6: hold the 5th fret on the 4th string and strike it

Step 7: make sure the 3rd string sounds like what you just striked

Step 8: hold the 4th fret (not the 5th fret this time) on the 3rd string

Step 9: make sure the 2nd string sounds like what you just striked

Step 10: hold the 4th fret on the 2nd string and strike it

Step 11: make sure the 1st string sounds like what you just striked

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The secret to learning the guitar as fast as possible: consistency. Don't confuse consistency with thinking this means you need all the free time in the world for guitar lessons. Practising the material I teach you for just 10 minutes per day will be far more beneficial to you than practising once a month for 6 hours in one sitting.

About Us

Contact us at stupideasyguitar [at] gmail.com. The goal of this site is to teach people how to play the guitar as quickly and easily as possible. From what I've found, guitar teachers and instructors often don't teach their students things that will help them learn the instrument as fast as possible. Why? Well, a lot of guitar teachers are classically trained so they will teach their students things like how to read music which can be very time consuming, frustrating and boring for beginner guitarists. While there is nothing wrong with learning how to read music, this should never be taught at the beginning of the guitar learning process because its gets in the way of teaching students things that are much easier to learn so they can get playing recognizable riffs, chords and songs on the guitar as soon as possible. The more students aren't learning the simple and easy things first, the greater the chance there is of them quitting and giving up on the guitar altogether.