Tag Archives: Tuning

Tips & tricks for tuning your guitar

It really doesn’t matter how good you are, no one sounds good on an out-of-tune guitar. But if you’ve just started playing, tuning your guitar isn’t always the easiest part and it can feel like an annoying chore if you just want to play. However, it is very important to tune your instrument regularly, not just for yourself but also for your neighbors!

So here’s a few tips and tricks. There are many ways of tuning, but for now, we’ll focus on the standard way. That means, going from low E string to high E string: E-A-D-G-B-E. You can easily remember this by the sentence: “Eddie Ate Dynamite Good Bye Eddie.” You can make the strings sound lower and higher by turning the pegs at the top of the guitar. It’s best to start with the lowest string (the thickest one) and then working your way up. 

Why is it so important to tune regularly?

Not every string detunes equally quickly, but playing a lot and differences in temperature are some of the reasons why your guitar can go out of tune. It’s easy to think that your guitar doesn’t have to sound perfect all the time. Perhaps you just want to play a song and not go through the trouble of tuning? That’s not a very good idea however, because if you’ve just started playing, you might be making life difficult for yourself.

When you’re playing, you’re not just training your fingers to go where they should, you’re also training your ear. And because of that, it’s very important that you know what notes, chords and strings should sound like. If you get used to playing out of tune, you’re training your ears to hear the wrong thing and after a while, notes that are out of tune will sound fine to you. And you don’t want that. So it’s better to prevent the problem before it’s too late. It’s much easier to be able to tune your own guitar instead of waiting for someone to do it for you. Also you never know when someone else might need a tuner!

Tuning devices

The easiest way to tune your guitar is with a tuning device. Did you know Chordify made its own tuning app? Karang is world’s first free to download multi-string tuner. It helps to tune your guitar in just one strum. Find out all about this new tuner at Karang.app.

A different tuning device you can use is a ‘clip-on tuner’ for an acoustic guitar. This is a device with a little display that you clip onto the top of your guitar. The tuner will measure the frequency of the strings and tell you the pitch. You can also use these for electric guitars too, of course. For electric guitars, you also have tuners that directly measure the signal of the guitar. The most common is a little device that you can plug your guitar cable into. But when you’re performing on stage, this tuner is far from ideal, because you don’t want to to keep plugging the cable in and out of the amplifier every time you tune your strings. That’s why most professional musicians use a tuning pedal. 

Tuning by ear

There will be times when you won’t have a tuning device on you, so you’ll have to rely on your ears. The easiest thing to do is to tune your guitar with a piano or keyboard nearby, starting at the lower E string and working your way up. Or use this video. Another thing you can do, is tune the lower E string and then tune the other strings from there. The 5th fret of the E string is an A, so you want your A string to sound like the 5th fret on your E string. The 5th fret on the A string is a D, and so on, but keep in mind that G string is an exception, where the next string is on the 4th fret instead of the 5th. On the B string the next string (E) is back on the 5th fret. You will have to play the strings one at a time after each other and adjust the pegs until the notes are the same.

Tuning new strings

Our last is tip is definitely not the least important. It is important to remember that when you get new strings, you’ll have to tune your guitar more often. Boxfresh strings can still stretch out a little before they settle down on your trusty axe. One trick to make it a little easier: each time you put a new string, grip it in the middle and carefully pull it upwards and then tighten it further. If you repeat this a couple of times, your strings will have stretched a bit more and won’t untune as quickly. Our biggest tip is simply to tune every time you get your guitar out. The better it sounds, the more you’ll enjoy playing. And the more you enjoy playing, the better you’ll get! Happy jamming!

Tune all strings at once with Karang – the brand new guitar tuner

We’ve been working on a brand-new project in our secret development lair. Something that’s useful for everyone that feels a bit out of tune sometimes. After all these months of testing and perfecting, the moment has come where we show you our newest innovation. Hit the spots!

We proudly present Karang, the first free multi-string tuner, also know as a polyphonic tuner. “A multi, poly whaaat?!” This means Karang needs only one strum to hear which strings are in tune and which are out of tune. You can download Karang for free in the App Store. We’ve listed some info about the app, so you can get acquainted with it.

How does it work?

In general, tuning software works by picking up the sound of your guitar, through your microphone, and representing it as a waveform. Then it identifies recurring patterns in the waveform, from which it can infer the played string’s frequency. After that, it simply calculates how much this frequency deviates from an in tune frequency. Karang is unique, because it also works as a polyphonic tuner, isolating all individual strings’ frequencies in the recorded waveform. This way Karang can show you where to start tuning after just one strum.

What does the Karang mean?

The technical term is polyphonic tuner, but in linguistic terms Karang would be called an onomatopoeia, which means it’s a word that imitates the sound that it describes. In the case of Karang, this is the sound of you strumming your guitar. The best way to explain this is to see for yourself. So, pick up your guitar. Say: “Karang.” Now give it a strum. You see! Karang!

This is only the beginning

This is the first version of our tuner, but that doesn’t mean we stop here. For now, we keep it simple and efficient: the app allows you to tune your guitar in the standard E tuning at 440 hertz. But we’re sure that our users (you) have great ideas about what to develop next, so we’ll keep listening to what you want. Let us know, and you’ll also decide what comes after multi-string tuning.

Jamming without a guitar!

If you open the app, you’ll see that it’s also possible to hit the digital strings. This way you can use Karang as a tuning fork. Which comes in handy when you’re tuning your voice, or you want to train your hearing. But we said you can also jam with the app.

“How?” Well, follow our lead. Open the app and hit the open E string (orange), followed by the G (green), B (yellow), and e (blue). Then, in one fluent movement, up again; B, G, and E. You’ve just played the intro of “Nothing Else Matters” by Metallica. Stay tuned for more updates, enjoy, and happy jamming!

5 essential ukulele accessories – the fun and the functional

Ukuleles are more popular than ever before, and why wouldn’t they be? Ukuleles are a great instrument, they’re fun, relatively affordable and a good starting point for people who want to learn an instrument. They’re also pretty small and portable, so it is easy to see why a lot of people opt for them as their first step into playing music. This is a guest post by Ben from Subreel, a website featuring music how-to guides, equipment reviews, and much more. If you’ve recently started playing, you’ll need to learn not only the basics of how your ukulele works, chords and finger positions, you’ll also need to learn about accessories. “How many can there be?” I hear you ask. Well, a surprising amount, but we’re here to help you navigate through these accessories, from the fun to the functional.

1. Gig Bag or Case

What good is a portable instrument if you don’t have the right equipment to carry it around? The only way to take care of a ukulele on the go is by using either a gig bag (these will normally be padded) or a hard case. Either way, these will protect your ukulele against everything from rain to bumps and scratches. Gig bags also usually have space for all of your other accessories…

2. Tuner

Strings will inevitably go out of tune, it happens naturally, not just by knocking the tuning pegs, so the tuner is a pretty essential item! You can get tuners which have the ability to tune multiple instruments, or tuners specific to the ukulele. If you are a beginner, a ukulele tuner can make sure you don’t make any mistakes. The standard tuning for a ukulele is GCEA (from top to bottom as you look at the strings).

3. Stand

When your ukulele is at home, whether in a home studio or just in your bedroom, you’ll probably want it to be on display! Not just because it looks nice, but because it will remind you to keep picking it up and practicing. A ukulele stand means it is always there at your fingertips, but safely kept (leaning against a chair is a recipe for disaster!) If you own an expensive ukulele, you should definitely buy a high-end, sturdy stand to ensure the worst doesn’t happen.

4. Capo

A capo is an essential piece of kit for players of all sorts of stringed instruments, and the ukulele is no different! A capo covers all of the strings of your ukulele and effectively changes the length of the strings you are playing, and therefore the pitch, making it easier to play certain songs. A capo can also be used to change the pitch of a song to suit your vocal range, so it is a very useful piece of kit for those who sing along when playing.

5. String Care Accessories

Strings are, of course, vital to your playing! For beginners especially, it can be easy to ignore the strings and assume they will sound the same, but strings that aren’t cared for can become dull and even rusty over time, meaning you will have to replace them sooner. Accessories to help with this include a string cleaner, which is designed to wipe across the strings and remove grease and other residue. Other string care accessories include humidifiers, which ensure that the humidity in your case is kept at the right level to avoid damage to strings or the wood of your instrument.

Conclusion

It can feel overwhelming when you start out any musical journey, but the above accessories are nothing to be daunted by if you are a beginner. They will all help you to become a better ukulele player over time. As you become a more accomplished musician, your accessories will likely evolve, along with your style of playing. This is just the first step.