What is a Guitar?

How to tune, not tone, your guitar.

When I first started playing guitar I thought I was just really bad at playing. In all honesty, I kind of was but it wasn’t all my fault. The guitar was not tuned. Tuning the guitar is one of the first steps before playing the guitar. When you strum the strings from top to bottom it should naturally sound somewhat melodic. If it sounds off, it is likely out of tune. Tuning is different than a tune up of a car or the toning of the human body. It is much easier. Sitting on top of the neck is the headstock of the guitar. For our purposes we will just call this the head of the guitar. Attached to the head are tuning pegs. Also, for our purposes these tuning pegs will be called ears. Just to make things easier to figure out. The ears attached to the head control the tightness of the strings. Now that we understand how these works and translations have been determined, we can now actually get into tuning the thing.

Actually Tuning it

Tuning the guitar is an essential part of setting up your guitar. There are two ways to tune your guitar. The one that almost anyone can do is tune the guitar by hearing an in-tune guitar. Either through a video on the internet of someone playing each string on the guitar to make a sound or by hearing a recording of someone playing each string which I will include at the end, or even having an in-tune guitar played and then adjusting your strings guitar to match. You can listen to this sound and tune that string on your guitar to sound like the string being played on the device you watch the video from. Another method is using a guitar tuner. Stomp on the floor 3 three times and a person will come up through the floor to tune your guitar. THAT WAS A JOKE. An actual guitar tuner is a device with the sounds of tuned notes programmed into the device. When you play a string on the guitar, the tuner will show a dial and a letter. The letter shows which string you are closest to playing. The dial indicates how close you are to the letter shown.

Don't leave just yet!

IMPORTANT: Don’t forget to set the tuner to guitar since some tuners come equipped to tune multiple instruments. The instrument currently selected is usually represented with a picture of the instrument or the first letter of the instrument. G for guitar most likely. Once you have decided on your method, now it is time to start tuning. The strings from top to bottom are as follows. EADGBE. It is easy to remember if you can remember this simple phrase. Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie! The First letter to each word is the strings in order from top to bottom. When tuning follow the letter on the screen or on the tuner and if the dial is to the left or if your guitar sounds lower than the correct sound, turn the ear connected to the string you are tuning counterclockwise. And clockwise if the pitch is too high or the dial is too far right. Continue until the sounds match or dial is in the middle. Using these methods, you should be able to accurately tune your guitar for an awesome jamming session very soon!

This is what you could sound like

How to read guitar tabs.

Reading guitar tabs is pretty simple if you follow some basic guidelines. Guitar tabs are read from left to right. When reading guitar tabs, the top strings of the tabs are the strings furthest from you. The strings at the bottom are closest to you. The chords are translated off of the guitar directly if the neck is on the left side and the strings are facing you. This can help you determine where the notes are. The tabs have numbers on the strings that lists locations on the neck for each string. But what are the numbers for? The numbers on the tabs help you determine where on the string to hold your finger down. Example if the number 3 appears on the A string, it means that you would hold down on the third fret on the guitar neck on the A string.

Continued

Reading guitar tabs is pretty simple if you follow some basic guidelines. Guitar tabs are read from left to right. When reading guitar tabs, the top strings of the tabs are the strings furthest from you. The strings at the bottom are closest to you. The chords are translated off of the guitar directly if the neck is on the left side and the strings are facing you. This can help you determine where the notes are. The tabs have numbers on the strings that lists locations on the neck for each string. But what are the numbers for? The numbers on the tabs help you determine where on the string to hold your finger down. Example if the number 3 appears on the A string, it means that you would hold down on the third fret on the guitar neck on the A string.