How to Tune Your Guitar and Which Tuner Should You Buy

Why tuning your guitar is important and which tuner should you buy…

Choosing to learn guitar is one of the greatest decisions I have ever made in my life. Tuning it was a nightmare as a beginner.

When I was 12 years old I had a neighborhood friend show me how to play Glycerine by Bush on the guitar and I was immediately hooked. Now, you don’t know that song or that band but in the 90’s grunge music ruled the guitar world and Bush was a popular band at the time.

As soon as I ran home I told my mom I wanted to learn guitar. She smiled and said that she had an old one in the basement. That was all it took for me to start my guitar journey and I haven’t stopped playing since.

If you’re reading this you are probably just starting out on the guitar or you are considering learning the guitar. Either way you are in the right place because I love making things easy for my audience.

Today I am talking about tuning the guitar and what kind of tuner you should buy. There will be a video below that will give you most of the info you are probably looking for.

Why do we need to tune our guitars? Well, the guitar has six strings on it and the body and neck of the guitar is mostly made of wood. This means that the wood contracts and expands with temperature changes and the strings stretch out over time. It is an imperfect instrument but it’s so fun to play! Not to mention that it’s pretty cool as well.

Back in the day guitar players had to use a piano or a tuning for to tune. That meant you had to know the notes on the guitar and the piano. This also meant that you had to use your ear to get the pitches in tune. That was a nightmare for beginner guitarists.

The more modern way of tuning the guitar uses an electronic tuner. Electronic tuners used microphones to pick up the pitch of each string and then you had to make adjustments based on what the dial on the screen told you. Those were a vast improvement from the piano and pitchfork but they still were not that accurate.

In the last 10 years some clever person invented the clip on tuner. This is by far the most accurate and easiest to use, as long as the batteries are good. The clip on tuner like the one on the left picks up the vibrations of the strings which makes it easier to tune more accurately and discretely. This is the kind of tuner I suggest that all beginner guitar players use. The LED screens are easy to read and the tuner itself is quite accurate. Check out the video below to learn the in’s and out’s of tuning your guitar as well as how to use the Snark clip on tuner. If you would like to purchase one here is a link to my favorite one. (This is an affiliate link)

Please check out the video for a full tutorial on how to tune your guitar with a clip on tuner.

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