5 Essential Guitar Tuning Tips

Beginning a discussion on tuning isn’t about the different techniques or tuners that we can use, it’s about understanding one key principle: For your guitar to be in tune with anything else, it must first be in tune with itself. Tuning isn’t just about adjustments on the headstock of the guitar getting your open strings tuned to pitch. It‘s about what’s happening across the length of your entire fretboard. So let’s check out five key essentials for getting in tune and staying in tune.

1) Getting Set Up

The first foundational thing in any discussion on tuning is the importance of having your guitar properly ‘set up’. For the purposes of this discussion that involves being aware of two key elements, ‘Action’ and ‘Intonation’. Action refers to the height of a string while intonation refers to the string length. Why are these adjustments important in terms of tuning? Having our strings too low against the fretboard will cause our notes to buzz and ring out poorly but having our action too high will cause us to bend our strings more than we need to when we fret a note. It is not difficult to see how this will obviously cause issues with our pitch. In terms of intonation, this is adjusted to accommodate for how the action on our guitar is set. This is about balancing the pitch on each string as we move around the fretboard. The processes isn’t overly complicated but essentially, if our string length isn’t set correctly we will find massive issues with the consistency of our pitch as we travel up the guitar neck. Even if you don’t understand the finer points of guitar ‘set up’, understanding that it is foundational to everything else really has to be our starting point.

2) Dead Strings Kill Tuning
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The second key issue to be aware of is that strings have a life expectancy. Dead strings can kill our tuning! Saying that strings have a life expectancy is not necessarily about the point at which the strings will actually break, but more so about when they become dull and lifeless. Old strings will cause issues with tuning because they develop wear and tear against frets and are also subject to corroding from being in constant contact with our skin. This is why we can feel a lot more inconsistencies in the texture across old strings as opposed to new strings which are completely smooth. These issues cause strings to begin to vibrate, resonate and sustain poorly which in turn affects their consistency with staying in tune. We can help avoid this by wiping down our strings after playing and obviously being aware of when our strings are starting to sound like they need changing.

3) New Strings Stretch
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The third thing to be aware of is that new strings take a short period of time to settle down and stretch out. The only thing worse for tuning than old strings is brand spanking new strings! We need to make sure we take this into account when we’re changing our strings, especially for a specific session or performance. We can assist this by simply playing our strings until they have properly stretched out or better still, lightly pinch stretching each string until they hold their pitch. Additionally, when changing strings, be sure to thread each string properly at the headstock. There are a few specific techniques we can use to help with this but the overall idea is that having too few rounds as well as too many can be problematic for strings slipping out of tune.  

4) Double Check Your Tuning

Although it seems like common sense, some people may not think to simply recheck their tuning. The thicker strings will cause the most tension against our guitar neck, so as a general rule of thumb we start from the low E and tune ​progressively through to our lighter strings. Because tuning is essentially changing the string tension against our guitar neck, we should always repeat this process and double check our tuning again where possible. Here we are just, quite literally, ‘fine tuning’ everything after each string is sitting roughly in place.

5) Always Tune Up
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The last thing we need to be aware of is always tuning ‘up’ to the open note, not ‘down’. This means if we overshoot and tune a note too sharp, we need to start again. Similarly, if we’re using an alternate tuning like ‘drop D’, we need to drop below the low D note and tune up to it. Some people say that ending on a de-tune action doesn’t properly take the slack out of either the string or the tuning gear, probably the main thing to avoid however, is the string slipping or catching at nut. A lot of tuning issues are actually caused at the nut of our guitar. Sometimes, as result of wear and tear on the nut or just general corrosive build up, we can even audibly hear the note slip when we are playing or tuning. Some people resort to using specialised guitar powders or lubricants in the nut to help stop the string slipping or catching. As general rule however, always tuning ‘up’ is an important step in helping things stay in pitch.

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