Tuning The Guitar
Tuning The Guitar
Tuning The Guitar
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Advances in guitar manufacturing have solved many of the tuning problems associated with the budget guitars of yesteryear. The entry level models available from major manufacturers such as Yamaha and Fender are
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entirely suitable for beginners and when tuned are stable throughout the three octaves. All guitar stores sell tuning forks and electronic tuners. A tuning fork provides a single reference note for tuning and for this reason
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When new strings have been put on a guitar they often fall out of tune very easily. New strings will stretch until they reach a point where their elasticity diminishes and then they will remain at the correct tension and
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frequency. Strings need to be broken in. It will take time to work all the slack out of the strings but the process can be sped up. Put on new strings and tune to just below concert pitch using an electronic guitar tuner. Then
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pull each string an inch away from the fretboard and this will instantly put them out of tune. Use your electronic guitar tuner to retune the strings to just below concert pitch and repeat the process. After a while the slack
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should be gone from the strings and the guitar can be tuned to concert pitch and should stay in tune.
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Contents [hide]
1 Tuning the Guitar
1.1 Regular Tuning
1.2 Harmonic tuning
1.3 Alternative Tuning
1.4 Problems with Tuning
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Sound is created by the disturbance of particles in the air. The vibrations of a struck string causes the air particles to moves in waves which the ear receives and reproduces. When a string is attached to two points, as the
strings on a guitar are, then striking it causes a sound to be produced at a certain frequency. The length, thickness and tension of the string determines the pitch of the note it produces. If you had a string of a certain
length and tension stretched across a wooden board which produced a known frequency (sound) and you wished to double the frequency to produce the note an octave above - you simply halve the distance that it is
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stretched across and keep the same tension. That is exactly what happens on a guitar when you fret any of the open strings at the twelfth fret.
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There are many different tunings for the open strings of the guitar but the most common is known as standard tuning or E tuning. In standard tuning the open strings should be tuned to the notes E A D G B e.
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The diagram below illustrates standard tuning. Note that the upper case E represents the thickest string and the lower case e represents the thinnest string. The diagram is oriented towards the player's view.
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e|-----------------------|
B|-----------------------|
G|-----------------------|
D|-----------------------|
A|-----------------------|
E|-----------------------|
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Each fret on the guitar is a half-tone. In an octave there are twelve half-tones. To find the octave of any note on the same string, move up 12 frets. Two notes are called an interval and we use intervals to tune the guitar.
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Step 1
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Step 3
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Step 4
Step 5
Step 6
It is recommended when tuning to bring the string up to its correct pitch. By tuning down to a pitch, you introduce slack into the string and it goes out of tune much faster. If the string is too high, it is best to tune it very low
and then bring it back up to the correct pitch. The 4-5 Method of tuning has the disadvantage of increasing inaccuracies by the accumulation of mistakes.
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It is also to be noted that this method will not provide a perfect equal temperament tuning. It is extremely similar but many guitar players prefer the previous technique.
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