A well-tuned guitar is a guitar you will actually like to pick up and play.
Tuning is the first skill every guitarist needs to learn. Beginner learners hit the same wall in the first week or two when their guitar sounds a little off. Guitar tuning is a simple skill once you understand the basics, and it takes only a few minutes once you get the hang of it.
Let’s learn how to tune a guitar!
Pick up your guitar, use a clip-on tuner or a free tuning app, and sit in a quiet room so you can actually hear each note.
1. Know Your Strings
Standard guitar tuning uses 6 strings, each set to a specific pitch. From the thickest string to the thinnest, those notes are E, A, D, G, B, and E again. A common trick to memorize this order is “Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie”.
The thickest string sits closest to the upper edge when you hold the guitar upright, and the strings get thinner as you move down toward the bottom edge. Learning this order now will make everything else about playing guitar easier, since chord diagrams and tabs assume you already know it.
2. Set Up Your Tuner
Clip the tuner onto the headstock, or open a tuning app and let it listen through your phone’s microphone. Either option works fine for a beginner. Pluck one string at a time and watch the display. Most tuners show whether a string is flat, sharp, or right on pitch, usually with a needle or a colored light that shifts as you play.
3. Tune Each String
Tighten or loosen the strings one at a time, starting with the thinnest E string. If a string reads flat, turn its tuning peg to raise the pitch. If it reads sharp, turn the peg the other way to bring the pitch down. Recheck the string after every small turn, since large turns are easy to overshoot. Once you have been through all six strings, check through them a second time. Tightening one string slightly changes the tension on the others, so a second pass usually catches a few that drifted.
Useful Tips
It is possible to snap a string if you tighten it too far past its correct pitch, so always turn slowly and in small steps. If a string still sounds far off after a few turns, stop and double-check that you are tuning to the right note. A string tuned an entire octave too high can feel dangerously tight before it ever reaches the correct pitch, and that tightness is usually a sign something is wrong.
Worth Knowing
- Tune before every practice session, not just when something sounds wrong.
- New strings stretch and slip out of tune constantly for their first few days.
- Temperature and humidity can pull strings out of tune even if the guitar has not been touched.
- Approach each note from slightly flat and tune upward, rather than tuning down into pitch, since this keeps tension on the string more even.
Once tuning becomes routine, it takes less time than it took to read this guide. Do it before every session, and the rest of your practice starts on the right note.
