Manual Tuning, or, Tuning 'By Ear'

Manual tuning is an important skill to have, if your electronic tuner is on the fritz, or if you want to make quick checks and adjustments as you are practicing and playing.

The manual tuning system will put your guitar in good tune with itself, so your notes and chords will sound right together. What manual tuning will not tell you is this important fact: are you in tune with the rest of the musical world?

When using the manual tuning technique, it is a good idea to have an external reference point for at least one note of the guitar. This could be a tuning fork, another stable instrument like a piano, or an online reference.

Instructor Lisa McCormick
Tutorial:
The Strings and Tuning
Styles:
Any Style
Difficulty:

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Questions & Answers

1 month ago
But how I can tune de Sixth string "E" ?? If this is out of tune the rest will be too.
Mike Olekshy 1 month ago

Hello - thanks so much for your question! You are correct - you need to have some sort of reference pitch for the low E string in order for the guitar to be in tune. I recommend using our GuitarTricks tuner: https://www.guitartricks.com/guitar-tuner