How to Tune a Guitar (With or Without a Tuner)

The six notes, and which end is which

“Low” and “high” mean pitch, not position, and this trips up more beginners than anything else on the instrument. The thickest string (the one nearest your chin when you play) is the low E, even though it sits at the top of the neck as you look down at it. The thinnest string nearest the floor is the high E.

• 6th string, low E: E2, 82.41 Hz. The thickest.
• 5th string, A: A2, 110 Hz.
• 4th string, D: D3, 146.83 Hz.
• 3rd string, G: G3, 196 Hz.
• 2nd string, B: B3, 246.94 Hz.
• 1st string, high E: E4, 329.63 Hz. The thinnest.

Every gap in that list is a perfect fourth (five semitones) except G to B, which is a major third at four semitones. That single irregularity is the reason chord shapes stop being symmetrical across the neck, and it is the reason the tuning methods below have an exception in the middle. It exists so that common chord shapes fall under one hand, and it has been the standard for around two hundred years.

With a tuner: the twenty-second version

1. Start on the low E and work up. Order does not strictly matter, but doing it the same way every time means you notice when something is unusually far out.
2. Play one string, cleanly, at medium volume. Hitting it hard makes the note go sharp for a moment and then settle. Wait for the settle: the reading after the wobble is the true one. And mute the other strings; a tuner hearing three notes will pick one and it may not be yours.
3. Turn slowly and finish from below. Small movements. If you overshoot, go clearly under and come back up rather than easing down.
4. Go round a second time. Every string you tighten pulls on the neck and detunes the ones you already did. This is not the tuner being flaky, it is physics, and on a freshly restrung guitar you may need a third pass.
5. If the low E will not settle, tune its harmonic. Touch the string lightly directly over the 12th fret and pluck. The tone is far purer than the open string and any tuner locks onto it instantly.

Why the low strings are the awkward ones (and why a tuner sometimes insists your low E is an octave higher than it is) is covered in the online tuner guide.

Without a tuner: the fifth-fret method

This is the one worth knowing by heart, because it works anywhere and takes ten seconds once it is in your hands. It relies on a fact you can check right now: the note at the fifth fret of any string is the same note as the next string up, played open.

1. Get one string right first. Everything below tunes the guitar to itself, which is fine alone but useless with anyone else. Anchor the low E to something external: a piano, a phone, a drone, another instrument, or a tuning fork.
2. 5th fret of the low E gives you A. Play it, then play the open A string. Adjust the A string until the two are indistinguishable.
3. 5th fret of the A gives you D. Same again for the open D string.
4. 5th fret of the D gives you G. Same again for the open G string.
5. Now the exception: 4th fret of the G gives you B. Not the fifth. This is the major third, the one odd interval in the tuning, and forgetting it is the single most common way people end up with a guitar that is a semitone wrong on two strings.
6. Back to normal: 5th fret of the B gives you high E. And you are done, then go round once more.

Listening tip that makes this much easier: do not try to judge whether one note is “higher” than the other. Play them together and listen for the wobble, a slow pulsing in the sound, called beating. As the two pitches converge the wobble slows down, and when it stops entirely they are the same note. Your ear is far better at hearing a pulse disappear than at ranking two similar pitches.

The harmonics method, and why it is not actually better

The other classic: touch the string lightly over the 5th fret of one string and over the 7th fret of the next string up, and the two harmonics should match. It sounds more advanced, the tone is purer, and the beating is much easier to hear, all true.

But it produces a guitar tuned in pure fifths and fourths, and frets are laid out in equal temperament, where every fourth is a hair narrower than pure. Tuned this way, the guitar sounds glorious on the strings you checked and progressively worse the further you go from them, and it drifts audibly sharp on the high E. Use harmonics to check a string or to get a stubborn low note readable. Use the fretted fifth-fret method to actually tune. (And note that the harmonics trick has its own exception at the G–B pair, for the same reason as before.)

It reads in tune and it still sounds wrong

This is the moment people conclude they have a bad guitar or a bad ear. Usually it is one of three things, none of which is tuning:

• Intonation. Compare an open string with the same string at the 12th fret. They should be the same note, an octave apart. If the fretted one reads sharp, the string is effectively too short and the bridge saddle needs moving. No amount of tuning the open string fixes a fretted note.
• Your fretting hand. Squeezing hard, or pressing on top of the fret rather than just behind it, stretches the string and pulls the pitch up, worst in the first three frets and on the thin strings. If open strings are fine but chords go sharp, this is you, not the guitar.
• Equal temperament. Frets divide the octave into twelve equal steps so that every key is playable, and the price is a major third about 14 cents wider than the pure interval your ear wants. A big open E chord will always sound slightly hard. This one is not fixable, only understandable. Every fretted instrument on earth has it.

A drone is the quickest way to find out which of the three you have: hold the chord over a sustained root and listen for which string causes the churn. There is a whole method for that in practicing with a drone.

Other tunings, and other instruments

Once standard tuning is automatic, the rest is just knowing what to aim at. Drop D moves one string; DADGAD moves three; a half-step down moves all six. Alternate tunings covers what each is for and how to get back safely. If you play something else (or several things) the note, octave and exact frequency for every string of twenty-odd instruments is in the tuning reference, with a piano you can sound any note from.

Then get on with it

Tuning is the cheapest twenty seconds in music. It removes an entire category of frustration from the next hour, and it is the one part of the session where being fussy costs you nothing. Tune, then put the metronome on and start the real work.