<html> <p>The art of tuning a guitar by ear is somewhat lost in our digital age with all the devices available to perfectly tune your instrument. Digital tuners come in many forms; they can be bought as separate compact devices, most acoustic/electric guitars have built-in tuners, most effects pedals come standard with a tuner and you can even download mobile apps to tune your guitar. None of this, however, means that guitarists should not be able to tune their guitars by ear and that's why I decided to write this article. So, to all the beginner guitarists out there, and perhaps even seasoned guitarists that still don't know how to tune a guitar by ear, please take the time to read this article in which I'll not only explain how to tune your guitar by ear, but also by feeling. Do you think that sounds far fetched? Well, read on and find out for yourself.</p> <h2>Finding the right pitch</h2> <p>First you need a pitch to begin with, meaning at least one of the strings (usually the 6th string - the thickest string) needs to be in tune. This is not extremely important if you're playing by yourself or tuning two or more guitars to the pitch of one guitar, but just be careful that you don't tune your strings too tight as it might snap or too loose as it will vibrate on the fretbars (unless of course that's the sound you're looking for). For the purpose of this tutorial we will be tuning the guitar to standard E tuning. When I started playing guitar in 1997 I would play the song Nothing Else Matters by Metallica on my tapedeck to get the pitch of an open E 6th string since the song starts on this note. These days I simply search for a "standard e tuning guitar" video on youtube to find the right pitch for one string and tune the rest of my strings myself from there.</p> <h2>Tuning your strings by ear</h2> <p>Play the 5th fret on the 6th string and shortly after the open 5th string. Let the two strings ring and listen carefully to the difference in the pitch. Now tune the 5th string until the pitch matches that of the 6th string played on the 5th fret. Keep tuning the 5th string until you can hardly hear any difference in pitch between the two strings. The reason you are doing this is beacuse the 5th string should be tuned to the note A and the 6th string played on the 5th fret is the note A. Therefor you are actually matching notes. It's that easy and the best thing is you simply repeat this for the rest of the strings with only one exception, to tune the second string you have to play the 3rd string on the 4th fret instead. Take a look at the below illustrations for guidance.</p> <p><img src="http://lannonharms.co.za/steemit/guitar-tuning/fret-board-1.jpg" width="2000" height="820"/></p> <h2>Tuning your strings by feeling</h2> <p>Now on to the exciting part. When you let the notes ring together and they are not entirely on the same pitch you can actually hear the sound making waves if you listen very, very carefully. If the pitch of the two notes are very far off it will be hard to hear the waves, the closer together the pitch gets, the further apart the waves are until you can't hear waves anymore. That is when the two notes are perfectly in tune with each other. So you get a sort of vibrating sound when the pitch is far off which turns into a "wha wha wha wha" sound as it gets closer and a "whoooaaaaaaoooohhh whoooaaaaaaoooohhh" sound as it gets even closer until all you can hear is "whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa" infinitely. Does that make sense? If not, simply post a comment and I'll try to explain a bit further.</p> <p>By now you might be asking yourself what this has to do with feeling. Well, these waves are vibrations which you can feel in the body of the guitar, if you feel very, very carefully. When feeling these waves in the vibrations you simply follow the same principal, tune the strings until the vibrations are constant and not in waves. If you play on an electric guitar and you have access to a distortion effect, go ahead and switch that on when tuning, because you can feel the vibration waves even better then as the distortion amplifies the vibrations.</p> <p><strong>Illustrations by @begtodiffer</strong></p> </html>
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