How to Tune a Guitar By Ear

In the section, ‘How to tune a guitar’, we outlined several devices to enable you to tune your guitar. However, the accomplished guitarist will pride themselves in knowing how to tune a guitar by ear. In fact, because you can tune a guitar to itself (and I’m going to show you how to do this below), you do not even have to have the strings exactly at the correct pitch. They will be in tune with each other and therefore sound fine when you play the guitar. However, if you are playing with other musicians, you will need to accurately tune one guitar string to ensure you are in tune with others.

For a Free Tutorial Including Tuning by Ear Click Here!

You may have seen guitarists prior to a performance repeatedly plucking at their strings producing the same notes over and over. What they are doing here is tuning a guitar by ear and we’ll outline how to do that now. 

If you are playing with a musician you will need to accurately tune the low E string (6^th) using a pitch fork or pitch pipe or by any of the other methods detailed in the section ‘How to tune a guitar’. The expert in knowing how to tune a guitar by ear will have ‘learnt’ the correct pitch for the low E string by playing it over and over again until the tone is embedded in their mind. Such accomplished guitarists will not need a device to tune the low E string but they do need to be extremely practised in this method if they are going to be playing with other musicians. 

Step 1

Pluck the low E string (6^th string) whilst fretting it over the 5^th fret (see diagram). This is producing the same pitch as the A string and so you should repeatedly pluck this string and the A string whilst turning the tuning peg on the A string until the exact same pitch is obtained. 

Step 2

Pluck the A string whilst fretting it over the 5^th fret (see diagram). This is producing the same pitch as the D string and so you should repeatedly pluck this string and the D string whilst turning the tuning peg on the D string until the exact same pitch is obtained. 

Step 3

Pluck the D string whilst fretting it over the 5^th fret (see diagram). This is producing the same pitch as the G string and so you should repeatedly pluck this string and the G string whilst turning the tuning peg on the G string until the exact same pitch is obtained. 

Step 4

Pluck the G string whilst fretting it over the 4^th fret (see diagram), careful, this one’s 4^th not 5^th fret. This is producing the same pitch as the B string and so you should repeatedly pluck this string and the B string whilst turning the tuning peg on the B string until the exact same pitch is obtained.  

Step 5

Pluck the B string whilst fretting it over the 5^th fret (see diagram). This is producing the same pitch as the high E string and so you should repeatedly pluck this string and the high E string whilst turning the tuning peg on the high E string until the exact same pitch is obtained. Once this is in tune you can then check it against the low E string to ensure it’s the same note just an octave apart. 

Congratulations – you have now learnt how to tune a guitar by ear! 

For More Information on Tuning and  a Free Tutorial Including Tuning by Ear Click Here!