What is the best way to tune a guitar?

[Atticus]

I find the main advantage to an electronic tuner is a perfect reference pitch, and it's about the same size as a pitch pipe anyway, so why not use the thing that can check me more accurately than my ear? Also, if you've ever tuned up in a room where the rest of the 20 piece band is warming up, being able to tune without requiring your ear is invaluable.

Should you learn to tune up without a tuner? Sure. Does that mean throwing away your tuner? Of course not.

[Buster Loaf]

all the great bands from yesteryear tuned without electronic tuners. it can be done.

[edspyhill01]

Interesting replies, but you can't refute the fact that tuning by ear is a good ear training exercise, because you have to match the note pitches.

As a bonus, by regularly tuning by ear you start making fine adjustments as you play. I don't know if you have noticed but Guitars go out of tune quickly.

Yes, I agree, if you play frequently in loud environments a tuner is needed and over a long time you go deaf.

Nuff

Ever use the Luthier tuning method?

TUNING THE D (4TH) STRING

Tune the D string with a A440 tuning fork playing the harmonic at the 7th fret. If the string is in unison with the fork one should hear no pulsating sounds, or beats.

TUNING THE B (2ND) STRING

Play the harmonic on the 4th string at the 7th fret (A). Then play A at the 10th fret of the 2nd string. When the two notes are in tune you should hear no beats. Test this by comparing the open D string to D on the 3rd fret of the second string.

TUNING THE E (1ST) STRING

Again, play the harmonic (A) on the 7th fret of the 4th string. The play A on the 5th fret of the first string. When they are in tune you will hear no pulsations. Test this by playing D at the 10th fret of the 1st string. You can also test this by comparing the open D string to the F# (2nd fret of the 1st string) where you will produce a pleasant 5 beats per second, an interval of a 10th.

TUNING THE 5TH STRING

An accurate tuning is done by playing the 7th fret harmonic (E) on the 5th string and adjusting the string to be in unison with the open tuned E (1st) string.

TUNING THE 6TH STRING

Tune the 6th string by playing the harmonic (B) at the 7th fret and compare it to the open B played on the 2nd string.

ACCEPTABLE CHORD TESTS

Use D major, E minor, and A major as test harmonies. If all three sound clean, you are ready to go. If not, retrace your tuning steps. Do not adjust the notes of the chords. Also, once the D string is adjusted to the tuning fork, do not change it.

[pauln]

Yeah! I love a tuning thread; it is so fundamental and yet so many know little about it.

In my experience tuning MUST be done by ear. A tuner will get you started, but not close enough to finish because...

1] The perception of pitch goes sharp with increasing volume level but not the same amount for high and low pitches. This means that tuning should ideally occur at stage volume with all instruments playing (like a sound check). This is why orchestras play that familiar song at the beginning of each concert that starts with the oboe and then everyone come in louder and louder playing a big giant chord for about 20 seconds.

2] The perception of pitch goes sharp at the lower frequencies and flat at the higher frequencies of the overall range. You have to slightly flatten your low end and slightly sharpen your high end to sound in tune across the whole range - this is sometimes called "sweetened tuning" - piano tuners are well aware of this phenomenon. Some of the new tuners have this feature, some can store the pitches of your perfectly sweetened tuned guitar as a tuning setting for later tuning.

3] On a guitar, the tuning of the strings (variations in string length) changes with temperature. If you tune the guitar with cold strings (even with a tuner) perfectly and then begin to play it you will go flat immediately. The guitar needs to be tuned with the strings warm (like they will be while you are playing it). A common problem is when a guitarist tunes his cold guitar and goes flat on stage. He may also tune his warm guitar after a set with a tuner (so it would be in tune for the next set when the guitar is warm) but checks it again later when it is cold and sees the guitar shows it is sharp, then corrects and it is out of warn tune again... This is a huge effect. Plug in your tuner and tune the guitar cold, then just run your hands over the fretboard and look again - you will be flat, but in a few more seconds you will be back up to pitch as the string cools. You want it to work the opposite way - in tune when warm, sharp by the tuner when cold, warm and in tune again when you play...

4] There are still guitarists trying to tune using the seventh fret harmonics. Those harmonics are Pythagorean and must NEVER be used in tuning the guitar. They don't match the equal temperament of the guitar tuning. Fifth fret harmonic does match; so does 12th fret harmonic.

So, what to do... you need a method of tuning that is fast for both verification and correction, can be done on a noisy stage even with distracting house music playing, that takes into account the variable mechanics of the guitar (the effects of string action fret distance, finger board relief curvature, and the different ways fat wound strings and plain strings relate length to pitch, etc).

5] How to tune
Tune the high E string to E (use a tuner, piano, ideally during sound check at volume
Match the other strings' E's to the high E
Match B string at 5th fret (E)
Match G string at 9th fret (E)
Match D string at 14th fret (E)
Match A string at 18th fret (E)
Match low E string at 5th fret harmonic (E)
If this results in a change to the high E string, correct and redo the cycle.
Then, you may need to flatten the low E and maybe the A just a little.
May need to sharpen the high E and maybe the B string slightly.
Throughout all of this, keep your hands running over the strings to keep them warm.
Since you are listening and matching only one pitch, noisy distractions (including background music) have little effect.
With practice you can verify tuning on stage in about two seconds, a few more seconds to make a correction.
As you can see, the tuner plays an insignificant role if any (getting started).
You should be able to tell when you are out of tune when you are playing.
If this is difficult, just wait for minor chords and listen to those; the major third is a quirky interval because of the way equal temperament works - minor chords are the easiest to tell if your tuning is going out.

5] Some bass players tune their instruments a bit sharp because they hear the sustain and decays of their notes drop slightly in pitch. This causes the attacks to sound sharp. A listening guitarist may be paying more attention to the front end of the note to quickly establish the pitch for harmonic and melodic reasons. Just something to look out for, or keep in mind. I've never found a bassist who did this that would adjust his tuning for correct attack pitch.

[matt.guitarteacher]

I'd recommend that all beginner guitarists get a tuner. They'll still learn to tune by ear (perhaps even faster if they know what an in-tune guitar should sound like) and they'll be able to spend more time playing music rather than tuning up.

Plus, I bet that if you could see how much of your life has been spent tuning, it would be quite frightening!

Absolutely. I wish I could have had all that is available now when I started. In addition to not having a tuner at all, the guitar I played had horrible intonation. I think the strings were an inch high off the fretboard at the 12th fret. You can get a better intonated guitar at walmart today than the $300 guitars we sold 15 years ago. Great days to be a beginner.

Ever use the Luthier tuning method?

TUNING THE D (4TH) STRING

Tune the D string with a A440 tuning fork playing the harmonic at the 7th fret. If the string is in unison with the fork one should hear no pulsating sounds, or beats.

That's cool, but I'm not sure if that really applies to the kind of ear training that the OP was talking about. Is "hearing the beats" really an ear-training skill whose development justifies encouraging players not to use tuners, or are we talking about recognizing pitch relationships other than the mechanical recognition of unison pitches? You could teach anyone to do that, and I don't know that it would make them a better musician.

[Gramps]

all the great bands from yesteryear tuned without electronic tuners. it can be done.

It can be done but it wasn't always done. There are parts of "The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall" where their intonation bugs me and that was Powell, Mingus and Parker. The issue could have been placement of musicians (unable to hear each other) or out of tune piano (not something they could change quickly) but some of the intonation sets my teeth on edge. I don't have the recording available to me right now so I can't tell you which songs bothered me the most intonation wise.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Ever use the Luthier tuning method?

I though tuning to harmonics (like at the 7th fret) was a bad idea because we aren't using just temperament.

[frankiemachine]

It can be done but it wasn't always done. There are parts of "The Quintet: Jazz at Massey Hall" where their intonation bugs me and that was Powell, Mingus and Parker. The issue could have been placement of musicians (unable to hear each other) or out of tune piano (not something they could change quickly) but some of the intonation sets my teeth on edge. I don't have the recording available to me right now so I can't tell you which songs bothered me the most intonation wise.

Indeed. And these were world class musicians. Live recordings of lesser bands from the pre-electronic tuner era often reveal bad tuning issues, even more so in rock/pop than in jazz. Studio editing and overdubs of live recordings to remove the most obvious problems used to be standard practice. Listen to say, Mick Taylor playing on some of the Rolling Stones live recordings to get a sense of how even a hugely talented player could get lost intonation wise.

I also started playing in in the pre-electronic tuner age, and we tuned by ear because we had to. The first time I became aware of a band using electronic tuners on stage was at a Joe Jackson gig and it was like a revelation: a loud, guitar-based band that played in tune and with perfect intonation all night. The tuners were large and presumably still expensive. Joe is a hugely gifted musician who studied composition at the Royal Academy so there's nothing wrong with his ears, but he obviously immediately spotted an advantage in electronic tuning.

Whether tuning your guitar by ear helps ear training is a moot point, but if you think it helps there's nothing preventing you practising by tuning your guitar by ear at home. If you're playing to other people most of us are still probably wise to check against an objective measuring device. You can go to a gig nowadays knowing that a band of even less than stellar musicians will at least be in tune. I have no desire to return to the days when that wasn't true.

[cosmic gumbo]

I know this much about myself. By the time evening rolls around, which is usually when rehearsals or gigs happen, my ear is too fatigued by the normal everyday sounds in my life, to be able to trust it to be precise enough to tune by ear. So while I do have the skills to tune by ear, I will use a tuner when my ears are tired. That's a reality I have to accept.

[edspyhill01]

One other reason I use electronic tuners is acoustic guitars break in and age in one tuning, concert pitch. Not sure if this applies to solid body guitars.

[mr. beaumont]

I though tuning to harmonics (like at the 7th fret) was a bad idea because we aren't using just temperament.

That's what people say, but IMHO, the AGL method works very well.

[Reg]

I'm a fan of tuners... At least it will get you close. Most of my jazz boxes change within 30 min. so unless I'm early enough to let my guitar adjust to where ever I'm playing, I tune as I play. Most of my jazz guitars aren't perfect anyway, the same with Pianos... you pretty much just go with the piano, if on gig.
If I tune my higher strings first... and there's any real adjustment to the lower strings, which changes the tension... I'll need to adjust... I usually use tuner to get open strings close and then fine tune...
I gig with horns etc... sometimes their intonations so far out... it almost doesn't matter. I'm bending strings the entire time we're playing lines together... just the way it is.
If you play all the time, your ears will be in tune, if you don't... they won't. So yea... you need both methods of tuning... Reg

[JakeAcci]

That's what people say, but IMHO, the AGL method works very well.

The 7th fret harmonics are the fifth of the open string, they work with our tuning system. It's the fourth fret (the maj3) that isn't congruent.

I wasn't sure so I just double checked with my Cleartune app. The seventh fret harmonics match the open strings.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

The 7th fret harmonics are the fifth of the open string, they work with our tuning system. It's the fourth fret (the maj3) that isn't congruent.

I wasn't sure so I just double checked with my Cleartune app. The seventh fret harmonics match the open strings.

Hmmm... In the overtone series, the harmonic at the 7th fret would be 3 times the frequency of the open string. So a fifth over the open string would be 3/2 times the open string's frequency.

In equal temperament, the ratio of two notes a half step apart is by definition the 12th root of 2, so a fifth, being 7 half steps higher will be:

2^(7/12) times the frequency of the root, and that number is approximately 1.498307

That's close to 3/2, but the question is, is it close enough? I can't trust my ears. Anyhowdy, for fans of Science, it's not exactly the same as the overtone on an ideal string.

[pauln]

Here is why you must not use the seventh harmonics for tuning the guitar...

The fifth on the low E string you want for tuning is B=123.48Hz
But using the fifth at the seventh fret harmonic gives 123.62Hz
The Pythagorean fifth is sharp... by about 2 cents (1.96).

The seventh fret harmonic is a Pythagorean fifth, but the guitar is an equal temperament instrument that uses equal temperament fifths; the harmonic at the seventh fret is not the same note as the harmonic at the fifth fret on the string next to it. In addition, if you use this method tuning from low to high strings in sequence, the 2 cent sharp error progresses with each string tuned.

The 12 pitches of Pythagorean tuning are formed by ratios of the tonic...
1:1, 256:243, 9:8, 32:27, 81:64, 4:3, 729:512, 3:2, 128:81, 27:16, 16:9, 243:128, 2:1

The equal temperament tuning uses a constant increment of 2^(1/12) or two raised to the one twelfth power = 1.05946309 ratio for each subsequent pitch to the previous one.

The Pythagorean fifth ratio of tonic to fifth is 3:2 = 1.5
The Equal temperament fifth is the seventh chromatic increment of subsequent multiplication by the constant increment, so [2^(1/12)]^7 =1.4983

To see the difference, here is an example.

The low E on the guitar is 82.41Hz

The Equal temperament fifth frequency for B is 82.41*1.4983=123.48Hz (123.475)

The Pythagorean fifth B is 82.41*1.5=123.62Hz (123.615)

[JakeAcci]

Here is why you must not use the seventh harmonics for tuning the guitar...

The fifth on the low E string you want for tuning is B=123.48Hz
But using the fifth at the seventh fret harmonic gives 123.62Hz
The Pythagorean fifth is sharp... by about 2 cents (1.96).

The seventh fret harmonic is a Pythagorean fifth, but the guitar is an equal temperament instrument that uses equal temperament fifths; the harmonic at the seventh fret is not the same note as the harmonic at the fifth fret on the string next to it. In addition, if you use this method tuning from low to high strings in sequence, the 2 cent sharp error progresses with each string tuned.

The 12 pitches of Pythagorean tuning are formed by ratios of the tonic...
1:1, 256:243, 9:8, 32:27, 81:64, 4:3, 729:512, 3:2, 128:81, 27:16, 16:9, 243:128, 2:1

The equal temperament tuning uses a constant increment of 2^(1/12) or two raised to the one twelfth power = 1.05946309 ratio for each subsequent pitch to the previous one.

The Pythagorean fifth ratio of tonic to fifth is 3:2 = 1.5
The Equal temperament fifth is the seventh chromatic increment of subsequent multiplication by the constant increment, so [2^(1/12)]^7 =1.4983

To see the difference, here is an example.

The low E on the guitar is 82.41Hz

The Equal temperament fifth frequency for B is 82.41*1.4983=123.48Hz (123.475)

The Pythagorean fifth B is 82.41*1.5=123.62Hz (123.615)

That's very interesting Paul. I noticed the two cents sharp with my app but I figured it wasn't significant. Makes a lot of sense, as I often have trouble tuning the whole guitar with harmonics. Thanks!

[derek]

Imo, tuning without some sort of tuner is like practicing without a metronome. While I can tune my guitar by ear, we all need a reference note to start of course. And while I think my internal time is solid, a metronome proves me wrong more times than I would rather admit.

Developing our internal sense of pitch and time are important, but eliminating tuners and metronomes reminds me of the panic from teachers in the 70's when they swore allowing students to have calculators would ruin them for math. Umm, no.

[Drumbler]

Tuning by ear is fine as long as you have an accurate reference pitch.

Without a reference pitch you can get your guitar in relative tune to itself but that's where it ends.

So you need some device to get that reference pitch, i.e, tuning fork, piano, pitch pipe, electronic tuner.

I do not see much ear training benefit in tuning your guitar by ear.

[Nuff Said]

I've just bought a Peterson Strobe Electronic tuner, marvellous device, I should have bought one 35 years ago when I first got a guitar, according to this tuner I've been playing out of tune all these years, interesting that nobody has noticed.

Nuff

[RayC]

If I'm in a quiet room I like to tune by listening to the 4ths. A tempered 4th in the range of a guitar should beat slowly on the high side (outside) of dead center and increase slightly as you move up in pitch. If there's noise in the room I use a tuner. I've never tried a Peterson Strobe, I'll bet they're nice.

Ray

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

On thing that wasn't mentioned so far is: the Snark clip-on tuner. It's cheap and works well, so there's no reason not to own a tuner.

[John Link]

I once worked with a guy who refused to use a turner and he was always out with the rest of the band. When the band leader finally confronted him about it the guy said to the leader that he just heard differiently than he did. The band leader walked away in perplexity.

[nakim55]

I have not read all the post's yet, but I am wondering, if your intonation is straight at the 12th fret (harmonics to open strings), & you use a tunerm for the open strings, why is it when you tune by ear at the 5th fret (comparing pitches) & use a tuner to check them, every string wants yo go a little sharp? Man, this has been perplexing me for awhile, on all 3 of my guitars.

[pauln]

nakim55, the string when open E and harmonic at 12th fret E is at a certain tension and string length.
When you depress the string at the fifth or any other fret, the tension is increased. When you compare two strings tuned perfectly when open or with 12th fret harmonics, as soon as you play any fretted note on them they go slightly sharp because of the increased tension moving from the string height action to the fret (and neck relief curvature contributes as well). If you compare the open string and the fretted string there will be a slight difference.

This is why I like the method of tuning E's fretted on all strings (5th harmonic on the low E string) using the open high E string as the reference. It takes into account some of the effects of action, relief, and so some degree the difference in the way wound strings relate pitch to string width to plain strings...

[Nuff Said]

why is it when you tune by ear at the 5th fret (comparing pitches) & use a tuner to check them, every string wants yo go a little sharp?

Like most Jazzers, I don't play many open non-fretted strings, so I tune the guitar using only fretted notes.

Nuff Said