Acoustic Guitars - The Best Tuners

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The challenge of tuning your acoustic guitar

Tuning your acoustic guitar is the first step in your guitar playing career. Whether by skill, talent or technology, you must be able to get your guitar into tune. One common obstacle to learning to tune a guitar is a certain natural resistance to acquiring new knowledge. This reluctance is present in everybody to some degree. The prospect of learning to tune a guitar by ear is venturing into unfamiliar territory which can fill the novice acoustic guitarist with a feeling of dread.

Guitar Tunings on Wikipedia 

You can tune your acoustic guitar in many ways

Guitar tunings are differing pitch arrangements of open (unfretted) strings used for the guitar. Many arrangements are possible, some of the most popular are detailed below.

Tuning the guitar strings 

Before we start to tackle the job of tuning, we need to get straight which string is which.

The first string is the narrow string nearest your knee as you sit with the guitar in playing position. The sixth string is the widest string, and it is closest to your chin.

And the tuning goes like this:
1st string is "E"
2nd string is "B"
3rd string is "G"
4th string is "D"
5th string is "A"
6th string is "E"

Acoustic guitar tuners on Amazon 

Korg GA-30 Guitar Bass Tuner

Amazon Price: $41.99 (as of 12/24/2009) Buy Now

First Act Guitar Tuner - White (AL090)

Amazon Price: $19.29 (as of 12/24/2009) Buy Now

Profile PT-500 - Silver Digital Guitar Tuner and Pick Holder

Amazon Price: $14.95 (as of 12/24/2009) Buy Now

The variety of guitar tuners 

All acoustic guitar tuners are created equal - to suit different players

Now to the nitty-gritty of tuning an acoustic guitar. There are a number of ways to do it, none of them particularly difficult. There are what you might call old fashioned ways which rely on a tuning instrument like a pitch pipe or tuning fork which is permanently tuned to the correct pitch for your guitar. Using these tuners to get your acoustic guitar into tune needs you to develop your ear so you can compare the tuner to your guitar by listening. Do not shy away from this method without trying it because you might think you have no ear but you will not know for sure until you try.
The guitar pitch pipe plays the notes when you blow into it so you can compare the sounds with your guitar. A tuning fork, when you bang it on your knee and hold it on the body of your guitar, sounds the note you get when you play the harmonic at the fifth fret of the fifth string. Once you get this note right, you tune the rest of the strings to the fifth string. Some free online guitar tuners also use the same principal, playing the notes to you, as you use your ear to see if your guitar is in tune.

Acoustic Guitar Photos 

The shape of things acoustic

People all have their own attitude to the acoustic guitar

guitar by sethstoll

guitar

Day 48, Project 365 - 12.7.09 by WiLLGT09

Day 48, Project 365...

IMG_6110 by Kartoffelmeister

IMG_6110

Toque violão e cante com as músicas dos Beatles by Christian Sisson

Toque violão e cant...

Rehearsal (i) by allaboutgeorge

Rehearsal (i)

Acoustic Unleashed by merfam

Acoustic Unleashed

Fender Newporter c.1993 by FredMikeRudy

Fender Newporter c.1...

Rehearsal (ii) by allaboutgeorge

Rehearsal (ii)

The Murder Clues by Oxan@

The Murder Clues

Broken Dreams by Satterwhite.B

Broken Dreams

automatically generated by Flickr

Still having trouble tuning your acoustic guitar? 

There's still hope if your musical ear is out to lunch

If you have tried the methods of tuning your acoustic guitar using a pitch pipe or tuning fork, and still feel less than confident in your guitar tuning abilities, then you could think about acquiring a tuner that has a visual aid to tuning. The electronic guitar tuner is the simplest way of tuning your acoustic guitar. You pluck your guitar string and watch the indicator on the tuner to see how close you are to the correct note. There are guitar tuners you can get for free on the internet that work the same way.
After using these tuners for a while, you can always test your skill from time to time by tuning your guitar without the tuner, and seeing how accurate you have become.

Learn more about guitars and tuning 

Learn To Play A Guitar For Free

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Acoustic guitar tuning video on YouTube 

Tuning Guitar(Standard Tuning and for both Aco. and Ele.

Are you pissed that every CD that has a tuning track for guitars that only plays each string only like three times? If you don't have a guitar tuner or anything like that, try this. This plays every string nine times so you have more time to tune each string on the guitar.(This was made with a CD that played each string three times(for electric and acoustic) so I edit it. Might not be so good but it helps me...used to. Haha.) --- poepiebanaan : if you click over 1:30 you'll skip to D an ...

Runtime: 3:45 | 2453096 views | 4399 Comments

 

automatically generated by YouTube

Use a keyboard to tune your guitar 

A piano or electronic keyboard can be your guitar tuner

You can also use a keyboard instrument to tune your guitar to. Start by finding on the keyboard the E note below Middle C. Then GO DOWN ANOTHER OCTAVE to tune the sixth string on the guitar. This is because the guitar's music is written an octave higher than it actually sounds compared to a piano!

Alternate acoustic guitar tuning YouTube video 

A short clip of some alternate tuning stuff on an acoustic guitar. tuned to DGCEGD.

Acoustic guitar DGCEGD open tuning clip

A short clip of some alternate tuning stuff on an acoustic guitar. tuned to DGCEGD.

Runtime: 52
17605 views
9 Comments:

curated content from YouTube

More articles on acoustic guitar 

There's more to the acoustic guitar than getting it in tune!

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Blog posts on guitar tuning 

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Guitar How-To 

How-to tutorials, hints, tips and tricks for the serious acoustic or electric guitar player.

If you want to learn how to play bar chords, read tabs or improve your guitar playing, you will find the answer here.

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Acoustic Guitar Tabs 

Learning to play acoustic guitar is a great adventure which is sometimes spoilt by having to learn to read music. But for most acoustic guitar players, learning all the symbols and theory connected with musical notation is not necessary.
Acoustic Guitar Tabs

by Jaybuchet

My name is Jay, and I want to introduce you to a great new way to to learn to play guitar. For free guitar lessons online, visit Learn How To Play A G... (more)

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