Tuning By Ear or With a Tuner

Tuning by ear or with a tuner is something that every musician will undoubtedly encounter on their guitar journey.  Tuning with a tuner is fast and convenient. Tuning by ear to match pitch or key is a great skill to build upon when creating great music. This approach is fundamental in many scenarios. We've seen some of the greatest composers in history transcribe and rearrange notes and tunings to the delight of millions of fans. We can’t forget the speed of electronic tuners that were popularized during the development of digital effects and modelers. 

My first tuner was about the size of a cell phone and had a green led light in the middle of the cover that was marked on either side with a flat b symbol and a sharp number symbol on either side with some other red LED lights.  Very cryptic for a newbie.  I had no idea what key I was tuning to.  I had no idea that many of the songs I wanted to play were in E flat.  Needless to say, my guitar stayed in standard E tuning for months.  Some friends and I discovered drop D tuning soon after that, but were still in the same boat as before.  We had no idea what we were tuning to. Auto tune didn't even exist before 1998.

Many of the songs I learned, I stumbled on a matching note here and there. The beginning was clumsy with no direction or purpose. I barely knew how to tune my guitar. I had a Strat with a Floyd Rose locking tremelo bridge that I traded because I didn't know how to adjust anything. Fretted chords were weak and my barre chords didn't sound like bars to me. On one of my trips to Reliable music I went over to the book rack. They had dozens of guitar books on classical guitar and guitar theory. I should have bought one of those along with a tuner, but instead I got stuck in the section with tablature books. This made things a lot more interesting. Most of my favorite bands selling cheat sheets to their music. It was heavenly.

One of the many tablature books from the late 1900s

I have to admit that tablature books are the cliff notes for guitarists. I never learned to read music and always felt that I lacked the skills early on necessary to play good songs. Many guitarists get discouraged in the beginning because they feel like they are not progressing fast enough. I was no different. I only lasted 6 months during my first guitar lessons, but I did learn all my basic chords. Then I started buying tablature books instead of CDs and I was off to the races. That is when I really began to develop my ear for tuning a guitar. I could open up my study book, put the song on the radio, and follow along with my Strat in my lap. This level of participation was just what I needed to spark my push forward into being a guitarist.

In most cases, playing guitar means joining a group or band and performing live to whoever will listen. That also meant that everyone had to be in tune with each other. That was the first milestone in developing my ear as a guitarist. I could hear when my tuning was off. I could hear the harmonics when everything was even. I even started trying to sing along so I could hear the note reverberating in the back of my throat. Up until that time everything was running through an amp or a PA. I didn't have an acoustic guitar laying around. I had no idea what play softer meant. It had to be live and loud or nothing at all.

For my first two years at college, I was guitar-less. During the last 2 years of the 20th century there was a rush of music and technology that was becoming available to more people than ever before. I got my first acoustic guitar somewhere in there, and my first guitar tuner upgrade came at the same time. It was a gray Boss chromatic tuner with a floating needle in the display. It was with me for a few years, but inevitably ended up missing. During that time I was playing everything in E standard tuning. It didn't matter what key the song was in. I would simply move up and down the fret board until I found the notes that matched the song and bingo!

This a pic what my tuner looked like in the beginning.

After the loss of my tuner I did not go get a replacement. If I was playing with another guitarist, we'd tune to each other. I was discovering a lot of great music coming out that used dropped tunings throughout the entire catalog. Dropped D tuning (tuning the E string down to D) became a favorite go to of ours. With a decent ear you could quickly down tune and incorporate the lower register in any arrangement. I also started down tuning my second electric guitar so that I could quickly change tuning by grabbing another guitar. That's what the pros do right?! More guitars!

During those years I was tuning by ear, either to another guitar or to whatever song I was playing guitar karaoke to. Even though I was tuning to different stuff, I was still using my ears to find the tune on the guitar end. I learned the different tunings that my favorite songs were in and I found a substitute tuner when playing along to the stereo. The only problem with that is you have to have a copy of that song ready to go with your rig when it was time to play. 25 years ago, that was problematic. Having an acoustic around helped with tuning, but they go out of tuning too. Guitar karaoke was fun for practice, but it still meant that I had to KNOW what tuning I was playing along to in order to transcribe the right notes.

I had already made the conversion from tape to CD in the 90s. I became accustomed to tuning to my favorite artists songs for 15 years. I hated when my CDs got phased out and everything went digital. All of my tuning mix discs were obsolete. Compact disc players on computers were discontinued. I scramble to find a way to conveniently tune up in the absence of an old set of stereo speakers.

Thank god for my wife. She encourages me when I get discouraged and gives me the best advice that I'll ever have as a man. She also tells me when its time to join the 21st century. I am pleased to announce that this year after my 45th birthday she told me to buy a tuner. I'm only 25 years late getting one.