Tuning without a tuner
Tutorial: Part 2
So we have just looked at how to match fretted notes to open strings in order to match those pitches and get your guitar in tune. Now let's talk about some tricks for actually matching the pitches.
If I take this E string on the first string and loosen it so its out of tune, what we are wanting to do is listen for waves between the notes, that's how we hear if something is in tune or not. So when I play these two out of tune notes, they are fairly close together but just out of tune, you can hear that, there is waves that happen in there that tell us that it's out of tune.
As I get closer and closer to being in pitch that wave is going to become shallower, and what I want to do is get rid of it altogether, and that's going to show me that I am in tune.
So you can hear it's trying to get shallower as we go. It's almost gone, which means I am getting close, so I am going to start turning the tuner a little less each time, the tuning peg. Almost there, it's almost gone, just a little bit further.
Once I get to the point where there is no dissidence whatsoever and I can't detect any wave at all, I am in tune. So that's the most accurate way to match two pitches together.
If you ever shoot and you end up tightening the string too much and you go sharp, just loosen it back a little bit and keep going until you match it. So it's not the end of the world if you ever shoot just a little, just turn it back, just slightly, and keep going till those waves are gone.
So what we could do is treat the sixth string as the standard and fret that on the fifth fret, match those two pitches. Then match the next ones. Match the next ones. Then the three and two, and then finally two and one. That would be a way to use that fifth fret and the fourth on the third string to match all your pitches and get the guitar in tune.
Well, there is one other trick that you can use on the lower string. Sometimes when you have these notes that are kind of in the basement, it's a little harder to hear those pitches. So one trick for tuning your guitar a little faster is to use harmonics. If I hit the sixth string on the fifth fret, and then the fifth string on the seventh fret, that produces the same note, and that makes it a little easier to tune those strings.
So you can match those pitches, and then go up to the third string, and at that point the notes are high enough where you can then just fret the remaining notes to do it.
Now, that's also a way if your sixth string is out of tune, that you can tune it to match the fifth string. There we can hear that those two harmonics match. So that's how to tune your guitar without a tuner.
G chord, C chord, A minor, and D chord, make up a song. I could leave my first and second finger in place, my ring finger slides into the second fret of the third string.
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