Estimated reading time 4 minutes
Table of Contents
Introduction
What common mistakes do people make when tuning their guitars? We’ll discuss the three most important tuning tips plus three bonus tips. Read more to fix the three most common mistakes that people make when tuning their guitars.
This post uses musical terms. For definitions, see the Glossary at the end of the article.
What Common Mistakes Do People Make When Tuning Their Guitars #1
What common mistakes do people make when tuning their guitars? First, not bothering to tune often enough.
Guitarists often get lazy about tuning. However, this is bad for your ear. If your notes don’t stay relatively consistent, you’ll never build up an accurate melodic pitch template in your memory. Tune every single time you play.
What Common Mistakes Do People Make When Tuning Their Guitars #2
What common mistakes do people make when tuning their guitars? Not changing their strings.
You might say, “What? I thought this was a tuning tip?” Simply put, it affects your ability to get your guitar in tune.
According to Jim Ferguson, the harmonics on old strings start to go bad (become inharmonic) when dirt and oils from your hand coat the strings. Plus, the frets dent the strings, making them asymmetrical, also leading to inharmonicity.
Check your intonation at the 12th fret by first playing the fretted note then playing the 12th fret harmonic for each string. (See the harmonics video below.)
“The fretted tone should be exactly the same pitch as the harmonic tone. Usually, in the case of old strings, the fretted tone will be flat – just how flat is one method for determining how bad the strings are.
“A noticeable difference should prompt a change in strings. A quarter-step is intolerable to most musicians, and anything beyond that could affect your ear for true tones” (The Guitar Player Book 381).
When the string’s harmonics become “inharmonic,” it makes it impossible to get all the different chord voicings on your guitar in tune. You may get one or two chords in tune, but the rest will be out of tune. This’ll also be bad for your ear.
Harmonics Video
What Common Mistakes Do People Make When Tuning Their Guitars #3
What common mistakes do people make when tuning their guitars? Tuning only using the frets or an electronic tuner.
Many rock guitarists tune without using either an electronic tuner or fret references. So, if you want to get the sound of classic rock guitar, you need to tune without frets or tuners to aid you. How do you do this?
Read the following posts to learn how to use harmonics and open strings to tune open tunings. Also, check out the last link to learn how to use a strobe tuner to tune a rock version of standard tuning:
Concluding Thoughts to “What Common Mistakes Do People Make When Tuning Their Guitars?”
What common mistakes do people make when tuning their guitars? We just discussed three common issues, but it’d be easy to find more. For example:
- Forgetting to damp the other five strings (by touching them) when using an electronic tuner. It confuses your tuner, so don’t do that.
- Having all the guitarists tune their own guitars using separate electronic tuners. How hard you pluck the string, and how quickly you tune after doing so, will affect the tuning. Therefore, it’s best to have one guitarist tune all the guitars. Do this and your band will sound better.
- Only tuning with an electronic tuner. Your guitar will sound better when you tune by ear.
There you go! You now have the three most common mistakes that people make when tuning their guitars, plus three bonus tuning tips. Have fun playing!
© 2023 Geoffrey Keith
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Glossary
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