Confessions on the Fretboard: Confession #2

Do you ever pick up your guitar, start playing and think to yourself, "Boy, I sound terrible today". There's two possibilities One, you are in fact having a bad day. Two, your guitar is out of tune. You can quickly eliminate the second possibility by checking if your guitar is in tune.

RELATIVE TUNE

Your first option is to check that your guitar is in relative tune. That is, are the strings at the correct pitch relative to each other?

A quick and dirty way to check relative tuning is to pick a particular open chord, like E or G. Then strum it slowly, pausing momentarily after each note. Does it sound musical? If not, your guitar is probably our of relative tune.

Tip: Get in the habit of doing this every time you pick up your guitar. Use the same chord every time so that your ear gets used to the sound of that chord. Once your ear gets used to that sound, this quick test will tell you if things are to far out of tune to play.

The other way to check relative tuning is to play the E at the 5th fret of the second string and compare it to the open E on the first string. They should sound the same, and played simultaneously should make a nice pleasing ringing sound. If it sounds bad or pulses, then the two strings are not in relative tune with each other. You can check the whole guitar this way. In order:

play the E at the 5th fret of the second string and compare it to the open E on the first string
play the B at the 4th fret of the third string and compare it to the open B on the second string
play the G at the 5th fret of the fourth string and compare it to the open G on the third string
play the D at the 5th fret of the fifth string and compare it to the open D on the fourth string
play the A at the 5th fret of the sixth string and compare it to the open A on the fifth string

ABSOLUTE TUNE

Getting your guitar in relative tune is fine if its just you playing on your own, possibly with a drum machine. But if you want to play along with a record, or play in a band, your guitar needs to be in absolute tune. This means that your guitar is in tune with a reference pitch (generally A = 440Hz). For this you'll need an electronic tuner. I have the Korg CA-1 chromatic tuner. It'll only set you back $20 and save you a lot of frustration. I strongly recommend that you get a tuner.

Korg CA-1 Chromatic Tuner

Tip: If the string is sharp, adjust the tuning gear until the string is flat, then tune up to the correct pitch. If you just tune a sharp string down to the correct pitch, you won't have taken up the freeplay in the tuning gears. Thus, the string will likely go flat after a short while.