Tuning Without A Tuner Part 1

The subject of this tutorial is tuning your guitar without a tuner and this been coming very handy if you forgotten your tuner one day or the bad reason for now and you still need your guitar to sound good. Melodies and chords makes a lot more sense when the strings are tuned to the right pitches relative to each other.

It's always best to tune to an electronic tuner especially if you are playing with other people because then there is a universal standard that everybody is tuning to. But when you are playing by yourself, if you tune the strings relative to each other you can sound just fine.

So the first thing we need to do is look at matching fretted notes with open notes. So if I start on the sixth string which normally rings as an E, fretting that on the 5th fret produces an A note, which is the same as the open 5th string. Then fretting that 5th string on the 5th fret produces a D note, which is the same as the open 4th string.

Fretting the 4th string on the 5th fret gives me a G, which is the open 3rd string and then when I get to the 3rd to match the pitch of the 2nd , I have to actually fret it on the 4th fret. So it's a little different there. That produces a B note. The reason for that is that all the other strings on the guitar are tuned in intervals of a 4th while the 2nd string is just tuned to 3rd above the 3rd string. So I have to scoop back one fret to accommodate that. Then when I get to the 2nd string, I am back on the 5th fret to produce an E for the open 1st string.

Now we will talk about actually matching pitches and how to get those and tune in some tricks to do that in the next segment but before we do that, it's important to mention that when you tune, it's always better to tighten the string rather than loosen it. Because when you tighten you keep tension on the string, whereas when you are loosening you can create slack that makes the string go out of tune later on when you are playing.

Another benefit is let's see that the note is maybe just a little sharp and sounds when they are real close like that, we can tell that they are out of tune, but you can't necessarily tell whether it's sharp or flat. And you can waste a lot of time trying to flatten it and sharpen it and figure out which it is but if you just go ahead and loosen the string regardless, so that you know it's flat then you know you only have one direction to go and that's to tighten the string to bring it up to pitch and then all I have to do is just tighten the string and gradually bring it up to where it matches and we look at some tips in the next segment on how to hear that and match the pitches very accurately.

G chord, C chord, A Minor and D chord make up the song. I can leave my first and second finger in place and my ring finger slides into the second fret of the third string.


Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services