Guitar Basics

Tuning

The first thing you need to do is tune that guitar and appreciate that it’s not going to stay in tune just because your mate tuned it for you when you bought it! You need to keep checking and tuning every time you play. I’d recommend getting another guitar player to tune it for you fist time then it will be near enough in tune for you to just tweak it when you start to practise. There are more than one set of notes we can tune the guitar to but here we will be using the Standard Tuning which is to the notes E A D G B E, starting from the 6th string (the thickest) to the 1st string (thinnest).

Electric tuners

Now relatively inexpensive, the most accurate way for most because you are not relying on the judgement of your own ears. Can be confusing for a beginner if your strings are a long way out of tune, which is why it’s useful to get another player to do a first tune up for you.

Pitch pipes

A long standing method, simply blow the correct pipe and tune the string to it.

Piano

You can tune to a piano or other keyboard or any musical instrument if you know how to produce the notes!

Relative tuning

The idea of relative tuning is to tune the strings in accordance with eachother. So if you know you have tuned your bottom E correctly, you can find A by playing the E string at the 5th fret, and tune the fifth string accordingly. You need a guide to start with or it may be good enough to just guess the first string if you are just playing on your own.