By Tim Vincent
Most of us rely on electronic tuners to get our guitars into tune. These are, of course, very reliable and accurate. Gone are the days of bands spending ages playing notes at each other at the start of a gig, in order to get all the instruments in tune. There is, however, an art to tuning by ear, which can also give the musician a greater appreciation of guitar notes and how they react when they are played together.
Tuning electric guitar is possible using just one reference note. If the reference note is E you should first tune the bass E string. Once this is in tune you fret the E string on the fifth fret which gives you an A note. You can then use this to tune the open A String. Once this is in tune you can fret the A string on the fifth fret to get a D note for the next string. Likewise the G string is tuned by fretting the G note on the 5th fret of the D string. You should remember that the B string has to be tuned from the B note located on the 4th fret of the G string. The high E string follows the usual pattern with the E note being on the fifth fret of the B string.
If you have no reference note you can still use this technique to tune up your guitar. This is often called tuning the guitar to itself. The guitar will play fine but will probably not be in concert pitch. Concert pitch is important if you are going to play with others in a band as other instruments such as keyboards have their tuning pretty much set. Tuning the guitar to itself is a useful technique when you are on your own and have no electronic tuners for example if you go on holiday camping or back packing.
If you are new to playing musical instruments or have always relied on electronic tuners you may find that you can’t recognise that a reference note is different to the string you are trying to tune. In this case, you can try to use some High School physics to solve the problem. This is done using a scientific idea called beats. When 2 notes are played together they react with each other. If they are the same note then all you will hear is a very smooth sound. However, if they are different the two notes will react badly together giving some surges in volume causing a duh duh duh sound. These are the beats. The further away the notes are from each other the faster the beats sound. As you adjust the machine head, of the string you want to tune, the beats will get further apart as the notes get closer to each other. When the notes are very close to each other, the sound of the 2 notes interacting together will tend to make them sound as if they are surging and swelling. In fact it will start to sound a little like a phase guitar pedal effect When they are actually in tune the beats will disappear entirely and you will just hear one very smooth note progression. The same sort of effect will be heard if you do the same to an acoustic guitar. However, the loudness of an electric guitar makes the tuning beats more obvious.
Once you have mastered this method of tuning using beats it is a good idea to do some relative pitch ear training. This involves doing some special note comparison exercises, on a regular basis, to improve your perception of relative pitch. This will also help you play guitar by ear.
Further information on how to tune a electric guitar and the things you can do to improve your perfect and relative pitch ability can be found on the setting up a guitar web site produced by the author Tim Vincent. http://www.settingupaguitar.co.uk/playguitarbyear.htm
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