Guitar Tuning For Success

While the majority of new guitar players can quickly learn a new tune or one of the pentatonic guitar scales a lot of them have problems with tuning the instrument. Learning to tune and keep your guitar in tune is paramount to your musical success.

When replacing the strings on your guitar keep in mind that they will stretch a bit before really starting to hold their pitch. Several tunings maybe in order before the guitar will maintain it’s pitch. It’s a good habit to get into the routine of stretching new strings by pulling on them before placing them on your guitar to eliminate some of the extra tuning once they’re in place.

As you get better on the guitar and your ear develops you’ll be able to tune your guitar with ease. In the meanwhile you may want to invest in a quality tuner. This is in no way a replacement in lieu of developing your ear. This will speed up the process of tuning in the beginning so you can move on to more important things like practicing.

A tremolo bridge is good for bending the pitch of the guitar but it must be consider in tuning your guitar as well. With this bridge the pitch you just tuned you guitar to will go down in pitch as you move on to the next string. To compensate for this you may want to tune your strings a half pitch up to make up for the natural tendency for it to go down a half tone. This will come with time and of course the development of your ear. An inexpensive tuner can help with this in the beginning phases of your training.

Last but now least, when you’re ready you will probably want to play with others or in a group. This facilitates your learning and helps you to get a feel of where and how your instrument fits into the overall musical picture. You will hear people talk about standard pitch in your musical training. Don’t let it confuse you. It’s simply a unit of measurement to get everyone in tune and on the same sheet of music. Standard pitch is A440 or Concert A. It’s the A above middle C on the piano and is tuned to 440 hertz or vibrations per second. Some bands like to experiment with this sound and I would recommend that you stay away from these types of groups in the beginning of your training. It can be a big disappointment to tune your guitar at standard pitch and then join a band that insist on playing at 430 or 420. It may not seem like a big deal on paper but after you’ve become proficient on your pentatonic guitar scales and try to solo with these bands you’ll stand out as the one who sounds like crap and it even isn’t you. So tune you guitar properly using the Standard 440 pitch and you’ll make great leaps and bounds in your guitar development.