How To Tune Your Guitar

One of the most important steps of learning guitar, or any string instrument, is learning how to keep the strings in tune. An out of tune instrument sounds terrible - keeping it in tune will not only help chords and songs sound how they’re supposed to, it will also make it much easier to play with along with friends.

Strings attach to tuning pegs on the head of the guitar. Turning these pegs to the right tightens the string, and turning them to the left loosens them, moving the pitch of the string up and down. The strings tighten and loosen naturally over time and are also affected by the cold and the heat. They are most likely to lose their tune when they are first put on the instrument and therefore must be retuned a few times after you buy them.

Before the development of modern tuners and tuning apps the easiest way to tune a guitar was to match the pitch of each string with tuning forks, a pitch pipe, piano or another guitar - provided this was already in tune. Today, there are two much simpler ways - an electronic tuner or a tuning app on your phone.

1 - Tuning App

Tuning apps are the easiest way to tune up quickly, as long the microphone on your phone is enabled. The drawback is if you are in a noisy environment it can pick up other sounds and make the process harder. 

If you search for guitar tuners in the app store you will be overwhelmed with options. Some are totally free, others are free to download but require you to sign up for a paid subscription to use. 

Some are specialised to guitar, meaning they will only pick up the pitches of the six guitar strings. Others are chromatic, meaning they will recognise any pitch. Some are advertised as guitar tuners but have settings which allow you to switch between guitar, ukulele, bass guitar and more. 

We have tried out all of them to make it easier for you.

Guitar tuner - chromatic
Free to download - no subscription. Chromatic tuner.

Tuner Lite by Piascore
Free to download - no subscription. Chromatic tuner.

Smart Metronome and Tuner
Free to download - no subscription. Chromatic tuner, includes metronome.

Guitar Tuner: Bass & Ukulele
Free to download - no subscription. Specialised tuner for guitar, bass and ukulele. Includes simple chord diagrams.

2 - Electronic Tuner

There are many electronic tuners available today. Like the tuning apps they are available in specialised or chromatic. Many have settings to switch between chromatic, guitar, bass and ukulele. Tuners attach to the head of the guitar and pick up the sound as each string is plucked. They are a lot better at picking up only the string pitch and cutting out background noise.

Important Tips For Getting Started

1. Know your instrument - the six strings are tuned to six different notes. The standard tuning for guitar is E-A-D-G-B-E - from the top down. The top E, or the sixth string, is the lowest, and they move up in pitch until they reach the bottom E, or first string, which is a whole octave higher than the sixth. 

2. Start with the strings wound looser and tune up. This has a few benefits. Firstly it prevents the string from snapping. Secondly winding the strings too tight can stretch them out over time causing them to go out of tune more often and need to be replaced sooner. Finally many of the electronic tuners and tuning apps have trouble picking up the pitch when tuning down.

3. Winding a string too tight can break it, and the tension often causes the broken ends to fly up and hit you in the face or eye - this is especially dangerous when using steel strings. Most of the time the string will be close to the desired pitch. Turn the pegs in little bits at a time and observe the effect.

4. When plucking a string, let the sound resonate for as long as possible while turning the peg rather than plucking it repeatedly. The microphone will pick up the pitch more effectively this way. 

5. The hash symbol # is a sharp. It is one note higher than the main note. If the tuner reads E#, you’ve gone too high.

6. If the screen on your tuner is dim and hard to read it could need to be charged or the battery replaced.

Learning how to properly tune your guitar is the most important step in getting you up and playing, ensuring you can recreate your favourite songs as they’re meant to sound and play along with friends!