Estimated reading time 3 minutes
Table of Contents
Introduction
“Why does my guitar sound out of tune even after I’ve tuned it? Is it possible to tune a guitar perfectly?” Yes, it is possible to tune a guitar perfectly, and it’ll give your sound a boost! Read more to find out how it works.
Tuning your instrument is an essential step before playing:
- Why does your guitar sound out of tune even after you’ve tuned it? Because equal temperament ruins the sound of the guitar’s tuning.
- However, you can tune a single guitar barre chord form perfectly, which some rock stars do.
- When I say, “tune a guitar perfectly,” I mean that the barre chords will be beatless and will sound great.
- Today, we’ll talk about open tunings and “tweaked standard tunings.” Also, we’ll discuss the trade-offs involved with making some chords sound better than others.
This article uses musical terms. For definitions, see the Glossary at the end of the post.
The Impact of Tuning a Guitar Barre Chord Perfectly
Yes, it is in fact possible to tune a guitar perfectly. However, you need to understand that tuning one barre chord form perfectly will affect the playing style.
In a previous post, I talked about how you can use harmonics to perfectly tune the open strings in open G tuning. The post shows you how to play a riff using that tuning:
Barre Chord Centered Riff Style (slightly delayed intro):
This doesn’t mean you can’t play other chord voicings, just that your choices will be limited. To learn Rolling Stones style chord voicings, read:
Open G Chord Voicings (slightly delayed intro):
Balancing Having a Perfectly Tuned Guitar Barre Chord with More Chord Options
Mobile users: for best results reading the example, tilt your screen 90o to the right.
“How is it possible to tune a guitar perfectly?” In addition to open tunings, you can tweak standard tuning to favor one chord voicing over another:
- In standard tuning you can tune the open E major chord to sound great:
- Follow this link for instructions on how to use a strobe tuner. But tune the third string to -14 cents offset, the second and fifth strings to +2 cents offset, and the other strings to 0 cents offset.
- The moveable E-form barre chords will now be perfectly in tune.
- However, the other open chords (such as A, D, C, and G) will sound out of tune.
- This means the open E major/E-form barre chords will sound good at the expense of the other open chords and their barre forms.
Dock of the Bay sounds awesome when the tuning favors the E-form barre chords. (See the first song in the video below for playing instructions.)
Conversely, you can strike a balance between tuning the different open chords to give you more options.
- You can adjust the tuning so that it somewhat favors one open chord over the others while still retaining relative tuning accuracy.
- To learn how: click here.
- When you do this, the tweaked standard tuning will no longer be perfect, but will still sound good.
- At the very least, it’ll be better than having it tuned to equal temperament.
- This allows you to have a greater selection of usable open chords without sacrificing the tuning quality too much.
Video: Dock of the Bay
Final Thoughts to “Yes, it is Possible to Tune a Guitar Perfectly”
Yes, it is possible to tune a guitar perfectly, but it comes with certain trade-offs.
This means you need to make some decisions:
- Will your song need perfectly tuned chords to help complement other parts such as backing vocals or brass parts? If you have a riff-based song, you should consider adjusting the tuning to make one major-chord voicing sound perfect.
- Does your song need just a few simple chords? If yes, you should consider using a more balanced tuning.
- Will you be playing in a chromatic style with a lot of complex chords, such as jazz? If so, just stick to the equal tempered tuned standard tuning.
Try tuning your chords using the instructions in How to Use an Extremely Accurate Guitar Strobe Tuner (click here for the right section).
Once you’ve tuned up, you can adjust the tuning on your synths to work with your tweaked guitars:
- How to Micro Tune the Keyboard to make the Chords Sound Awesome
- Learn How to Get a Killer Sound for Your Band
- Jam Like a Rock Star with Open E Tuning
© 2023 Geoffrey Keith
Join me for in-person or online lessons today!
Glossary
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