Once again, I have a few questions and hopefully a few valid answers…for beginners in the playing the guitar…

Which string should I get?

If you read guitar magazines, you will see a lot of artist endorsements for any number of guitar string companies; you will also see a lot of ad copy covering what are supposed to me game changing new technologies for strings…

The fact is that for beginners (i.e. players who are not yet obsessing about their tone…) the best option is to go to the local music store and to pick up either (1) the same strings you got on your guitar, or (2) whatever the cheapest regular gauge strings they have.

Starting out on the guitar will have you dealing with a lot of details, and to add the task of having to evaluate literally hundreds of guitar strings is something which will take place over time…relax, and save a few dollars…especially at a point where it doesn’t really matter which strings you use.

How do I tune a guitar?

This is a long topic…there are a number of ways to tune a guitar. First off, especially for beginners, a digital tuner is a really important tool to get. While it is important to learn how to tune a guitar ‘relatively’ (i.e. with itself…), to start out, you need to get to standard tuning quickly and accurately.

As you progress with the guitar, one of the more important skills to develop is to be able to hear when you are starting to go out of tune. To be able to hear that the ‘G’ or ‘D’ string has started to go flat is one of the most important basic skills any guitarist can have.

So, the first step is to work to develop your ears, to hear when the guitar is in tune. You can start this by tuning the guitar with a digital tuner, and then to take to ‘listen’ to the guitar. You should be able to hear the sound of ‘consonance’ that any major chord should give you…it should ‘ring’…

So, you have a digital tuner, and you have worked to develop your ‘ears’…what’s next?

There are several ways to tune a guitar, one of the first methods given in every beginning guitar book is to tune by unisons. This means that you play a note on the 6^th string (the low E string)…in this case, on the 5^th fret, this note (A) should be the same note as the 5^th string played open (A), and so on across the guitar. There is one exception; you fret the 4^th fret on the ‘G’ string to be unison to the ‘B’ string (2^nd string). This works well enough if you play in the range that you tune (i.e. between the open guitar and the 5^th fret).

I bit broader is to tune by octaves, in this manner, in an almost reverse of the previous method, you fret the ‘A’ string at the 7^th fret to play one octave above the ‘E” string, this works across the neck as with the unison method, especially in that the open ‘G’ string will be matched an octave above with the 8^th fret on the ‘B’ string… This covers a little more area on the neck, and as such is often used in conjunction with the unison method of tuning.

Finally there are some additional methods to use to fine tune your tuning. You can try out various chords all over the neck (use chords which you are very familiar with, and ‘know’ how they are supposed to sound…here is where having good ears pays off…).

There are some harmonics based methods to tune your guitar too. The classic version is to pluck a natural harmonic on the 5^th fret of the ‘E’ string and then to pluck a matching harmonic on the 7^th fret of the ‘A’ string…they should be in unison. Once again this holds true across the neck with the exception of having to pluck a harmonic on the 4^th fret of the ‘G’ string to match the ‘B’ string’s 5^th fret…and also the high ‘E’ string’s 7^th fret.

An important aspect of this is to go from the top to the bottom, or bottom to the top (it is worthwhile to go both ways to ensure that it is in tune).

A final harmonic method is to match natural harmonics with fretted notes. Here you would pluck a 12^th fret natural harmonic on the low ‘E’ string, and match it with a 2^nd fret of the ‘D’ string. Here you are matching strings which are ‘two apart’ instead of adjacent, there is a better case that this balances the guitar’s tuning more quickly…

To continue, A string 12^th harmonic with 2^nd fret of G string, D string 12^th fret harmonic with 3^rd fret of B string, and 12^th fret G string harmonic with 3^rd fret e string…

These methods all work, and it is worthwhile to get used to all of them, in that the mere action of learning these methods is another way to help develop your ears…

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