Guitar Tuning

Tuning Your Guitar
Guitar Tuning Tips By Eric D. Cupler
Find Quality Guitar Tuners Here
Most new guitar players and even some experienced ones havetrouble staying and playing in tune. I'll try listing here someof the common mistakes and there solutions. When putting new strings on your guitar you must always makesure you stretch them as you tune them to pitch. I always holdthem down on the neck around the 24th fret with my left handwhile pulling them away from the guitar body with my right hand.You don't have to use too much muscle, a few firm tugs should dothe trick.Whenever you tune a string down in pitch, be sure to use thestring stretching technique described above. Remember ALWAYSTUNE UP! It's always better when tuning down, to get close tothe note, stretch the string and then tune up to the intendedpitch.You should purchase a quality tuner from a music store likezZounds.com . You don't need to spend your life's saving. Aninexpensive tuner should be fine to start out. Remember, thisthing will be traveling to gigs and jam sessions with you. Iwould recommend a good Boss tuner or Korg tuner. Both brandshave low cost tuners that will do the job just fine.If your guitar has a tremolo bridge, always remember that eachstring that you tune will go down in pitch as you tune the nextstring. One solution to this is to over tune the strings. Thatis to say, you may need to tune your low E string to an F inorder to have it be around an E note by the time you finishtuning the other strings. Over time you'll get a feel for howmuch you need to over tune each string and it will become secondnature.If you play in a band, it is a good idea to always tune to thesame pitch. Standard pitch is 440 but some bands like to tunedown to 430 or even 420 for the heavier sound or vocal reasonsor both. My point is that if you're practicing at 430 then youhave a gig and your band tunes to 440, everything will suddenlysound different, your singer might not be able hit all the noteshe or she did at practice, your solos might even sound wrong.This is because everything is now a half step higher in pitch.Make things easy on yourself, pick a pitch and stick with it, atpractice and gigs.Free online guitar lessons presented by guitarmetal.com /Digital Greys © 2004 About the author:Edward D Cupler is the owner of http://www.guitarmetal.comOffering free guitar lessons to beginners and advanced students.Ed is also the owner of http://www.digitalgreys.com
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