How To Use A Guitar Tuner

A guitar tuner is a very important tool for guitarists to learn how to use as soon as possible.

It allows you to keep your instrument in tune and sounding good before you start playing, which makes learning the guitar that much more manageable. 

Guitar tuners come in many different forms, the tuner seen below is simple and easy to use.

The guitar tuner plays the sound of a string that is perfectly in tune, and allows you to match the sound of your guitar string to the pitch played in the guitar tuner.

To adjust the pitch of a guitar string, you must tighten or loosen it’s tension by using the tuning pegs on your guitar. If your guitar is set up correctly, the first three strings (E, A, D) will tighten and raise their pitch by turning the pegs anti-clockwise.

To lower the pitch you simply turn them clockwise. The next three strings (G, B, E) should be the opposite, clockwise to raise the pitch, and anti-clockwise to lower the pitch. The tuner works top to bottom from the lowest note pitch to the highest (or the thickest string to the thinnest if you are looking at your guitar).

Play the first note E in the tuner and you will hear the string being played, play the E string on your guitar (the thickest, lowest sounding string) and listen to see if they sound the same.

If your guitar does not match the pitch of the guitar tuner, try to match the pitch by playing the string again along to the tuner and adjust the tuning peg to correct it.

This can take some time to learn and master if you are a beginner, or if you have never tuned your own guitar before.

It is recommended that you get assistance from your guitar teacher, you will learn much faster having someone show you what to do and help you.

Take your time, with some practice and a little assistance you will be well on your way to learning how to tune your guitar. One day you may even be able to tune perfectly without needing a tuner at all!