Lauren Bateman shows how to tune a six-string guitar using a clip-on Snark tuner. The strings from thickest to thinnest are E A D G B E. Pluck continuously while turning the tuning pegs slowly until the tuner's needle centers on each note.
I'm going to review with you today on how to tune your guitar. So every time you pick up your guitar, especially if it's been sitting for a while, you want to tune the guitar because you want the guitar to sound good all the time. If anything's out, it's gonna sound crap like no matter how good of a guitar player you are. So right now my guitar is in tune and I have a tuner that's built into my guitar. Some guitars have tuners. I put a headstock, I have this little snart tuner that I can show you. So these little Snart tuners, they're electronic and they have like this little needle, you can see that little LED light and what I'm trying to do. So as we play this, I'm going to do a little bit of a close up for you. As I play the strings of the guitar, this little tuner is going to light up. It's going to tell me a letter and that letter is going to pertain to the string that I'm playing. And it will tell me whether the note is sharp, meaning the note is too high, or whether the note is flat, meaning the note is too low. And we're going to have to play with our tuning pegs to get the guitar into shape. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to a close up for my guitar so that I can show you how, how to properly tune your guitar. Before I do that, I'm just going to go over the strings on your guitar. So you have six strings. If you're playing a six string guitar, hopefully no one has a 12 string guitar. But anyway, the top string is your E string. So the thickest string on your guitar sits up here at the top. This is an E string. Below that is your fifth string. That is your A string. Below that is your D string. Below that is your G string. Below that is the B string, as in baby. And on the bottom the thinnest string, we have E again. So there's two E strings, one at the top, one at the bottom. So it's Eddie Ate Dynamite. Goodbye Eddie is one of the ones that you can say. So we have E, A, D, G, E, E. And that's where we're going to tune our guitar to. Now there are some times where you will tune your guitar to different tunings depending on the song that you're playing. But this is what we call standard tuning. And this is usually what you're going to tune your guitar to. So I'm going to go in for a close up so that you can see how to use your tuning device. Okay, so now this is a close up of the headstock of my guitar. And I intentionally put the top three strings of my guitar out of tune. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to come a little bit closer here so you can see my snark. I'm going to turn it on and you can see that needle and you'll see it light up. So I'm going to play the top string.
And you'll see that it says D sharp. So it's that little tic tac toe sign. So this string is too low. So what I have to do is I have to slowly turn the peg.
Until it gets to E and see where the needle is. Right in the middle. That's where you want it, right in the middle. So I look for the tuning peg that corresponds with this top string. This is important to do. Make sure you get the right peg for the right string or you're going to possibly break a string. So the next string I'm going to go to, I'm going to go to the fifth string which is supposed to be our A string. So when I play. Alright, this one's not so bad. I didn't tune it that bad, but it's a little bit. So we're going to lower.
The pitch.
There we go. You'll notice it goes in that center. There we go. Now I like to continuously hit the string so that it registers as I'm changing and do the third string. Now that's supposed to be D. This is also low.
So I'm going to just tune.
There we go, right in the middle. The other string should be in tune. I didn't really change them that much, but we'll check them. So we have a G for our third string, B for our second string. It's a little off. We'll tune it up, want things to be nice.
And also when I'm tuning these, I go very slow because if you go too fast you might overshoot it.
And then our last string, E. A lot of people, they'll tune and they'll go really quick and then it's like, okay, now we're too high. And then they'll do this and now we're too low. But if you just go very slow and keep hitting the string, you can slowly get it right on point.
And now your guitar should be in tune so that it's ready to play it.
