Saturday, September 29, 2012

How To Overcome Most Guitar Tuning Problems

By Patrice McCoy


Guitarists are born different, some are natural and others strive for perfection. If you are one who believes that they can play all guitars with the same perfection then you have not been introduced to guitar tuning problems. Tuned guitars are in a class of their own not just engineering wise but also musically such that they sound better, badder and bigger with more clarity. These guitars will bring out the love for music in you.

Start with a tuner. These are just gadgets that tell the player what frequency they reached on the last note the moment it is played. Trying to figure out problems with the tune is hard because notes tend to begin with intensity and then die out towards the end.

A favorite tactic of many professional players is to avoid the tuner peg at all costs. This means that when you find yourself out of tune on any string, it is better to give it a hard yank rather than turning the tune peg. Simply bending the string allows any hidden slack in the string to disappear and gives back the proper note and frequency. Leaving it as such and playing with the peg tends to slowly increase the slack over time and causes the instrument to go completely out of tune.

It is also advisable to tune up when you have to wait. If you already know that your next performance or practice is a few hours away, why not tune up a little extra beforehand? This way, the strings shall remain taut and by the time you get ready to play, they would have lost a little tension and returned to the perfect setting.

Remember that tune up is always meant to help you play guitars better. It is not meant to elongate the life of the instrument. So, if you are a hardcore player who pulls chords hard, continue to do the same when tinkering with a tuner. Many folks tend to mellow down when the time to tune guitars comes. Odd, but it is a common practice.

Guitarists of the highest caliber are always well aware of their natural inclination to play certain chords higher or lower. Hence, they prefer going without tuners so that they can manually listen to the tone, pitch and volume, tuning-up exactly as they want. You too should spend time learning how to tune up without the use of a tuner. It works great with high E, G and B strings, which are the problem areas for most guitarists.

Average guitarists usually have a problem with specific chords. While practice and timing shall improve this it is also advisable to compensate for this using tuning. You can tune up so that your mistake is hidden from the world, it is no different than what singers do by re-singing phrases.

Sometimes it is not the guitarist and neither the instrument that requires tuning-up. It could simply be a case of old strings screwing with the sounds. The best way to tackle guitar tuning problems is to either clean the strings or to use new strings.




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