How do I tune a guitar?

Tuning the guitar is often a bigger problem than initially thought.

But if you know what should be tuned and how, then tuning a guitar is no longer such witchcraft! 🙂

Strings

The guitar (usually) has 6 strings. But there are also styles such as Metal, Djent, Doom, Progressive etc. which require 7 strings or even 8 strings on the guitar. There are also bands that have two 8-string guitars, but no bass player.

String names

If someone has problems with the chord diagram below, please read the blog post about it first -> How do I read chord diagrams and tabs? .

The strings are called; (from bottom to top)
E (the thickest, deepest sounding string)
A
D
G
B
e

The problem with: „What is up and what is down?“ I hear every day.
We agree on „below“ in the sense of: „the lowest note“.
So on the diagram above, „the lowest note“ is at the very bottom, and on the guitar, the thickest string is the one closest to your face.

Tuner

There are dozen of tuners in the App Store or Play Store. My personal favorite is: Guitar tuna
The following points are important;
– Do not play the strings briefly and then stop again.
– Let it sound for a long time (let it fade away) and tune the string while it sounds.
– Tune the tone from top to bottom. So the tone should tend to be tuned down to the right note from above, not the other way around.
– Do not hit too hard, otherwise the tone warps and becomes deeper halfway through.
– Slowly search and find the tone. Do not make a full turn first because nothing is happening. (If you turn and nothing happens, this is usually a sign that you are turning the wrong ‚tuning peg‘!)

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