Tuning your guitar correctly is one of the key things you need to learn to do. This is because tuning has an important role to play in how good your guitar sounds. There are different ways you can tune your guitar and here are some of the most popular guitar tunings. Try these different tunings to make your guitar practice a bit more fun.

How to Tune Your Guitar

First, here are some of the basics of tuning your guitar. You can ensure your strings are in tune using a variety of different methods. One of the simplest ones is to take advantage of an online tuner. Check out ProGuitarTuner.com for an example of a good quality online tuner. In addition, they also offer an iPhone app, which could be a handy thing if you don’t have access to the Internet.

On top of this, you can also find electronic tuners from online shops such as Ebay and Amazon. Again, these are very handy since they are relatively small, so that you can carry them around to your band practice, for instance.

Naturally, you can also utilise other musical instruments. Piano is a great help when tuning a guitar.

Standard Guitar Tunings

Guitar tunings have been changing a lot in the past few decades as musicians have experimented and looked to create new and distinct sounds, but the standard tunings have stood the test of time. For a 6-string guitar, the standard tuning consists of the following notes:

• E2, A2, D3, G3, B3 and E4

This is the tuning used for most songs and it is something you need to learn as you start playing the guitar. It isn’t too difficult to do. In fact, here are simple steps that’ll help you tune your guitar to the standard tuning:

• Tune the bottom E (the thickest string, known as the sixth string) by playing the 2^nd E below middle C on a piano or by using one of the online tuners.
• Tune the A string by placing your first finger behind the fifth fret on the bottom E string. Pick the fifth and sixth strings while tuning with the tuning peg until the strings make a similar sound.
• Tune the D string by placing your first finger behind the fifth fret on the A string. Use the tuning peg until the fourth string sounds similar to that.
• Tune the G string by tuning with the tuning peg until the G string makes a similar note to when you place your first finger behind the fifth fret on the D string.
• Tune the B string by placing your first finger behind the fourth fret.
• Finally, tune the E string (the thinnest string) by placing your first finger behind the fifth fret on the B string.

Alternative Guitar Tunings

On top of the standard tuning, there are also some alternative guitar tunings to try. Once you get a hang of using the standard tuning, it is fun to play around with these alternatives.

Some of the most popular ones include:

• Drop D – uses notes D-A-D-G-B-E. Everything is the same as in standard tuning, except the bottom E, which is tuned to low D.
• Open D – uses notes D1-A1-D2-F#2-A2-D3
• Drop C – uses notes C-G-C-F-A-D

You can find other alternative examples from this Music Radar article. Changing your guitar tunings is a great way to practice and it makes your practicing sessions feel a little bit different.