Tuning the guitar with new strings

Tuning new guitar strings can be difficult. When putting new strings on your guitar you must always make sure you stretch them as you're tuning them to pitch. I always hold them down on the neck around the 24th fret with my left hand while pulling them away from the guitar body with my right hand. You don't have to use too much muscle, a few firm tugs should do the trick.

Tuning guitar strings down in pitch

Whenever tuning a string down in pitch, be sure to use the string stretching technique described above. Remember ALWAYS TUNE UP! It's always better when tuning down, to get close to but lower than the intended pitch, then stretch the string and then tune up to the intended pitch.

Tuning with a quality tuner

You should purchase a quality tuner. You don't need to spend your life's saving. An inexpensive tuner should be fine to start out. Remember, this thing will be traveling to gigs and jam sessions with you.

Tuning a guitar with a tremolo bridge

If your guitar has a tremolo bridge, always remember that each string that you tune will go down in pitch as you're tuning the next string. One solution to this is to over tune the strings. That is to say, you may need to tune your low E string to an F in order to have it be around an E note by the time you finish tuning the other strings. Over time you'll get a feel for how much you need to over tune each string and it will become second nature.

Tuning & playing in a band

If you play in a band, it is a good idea to always tune to the same pitch. Standard tuning pitch is 440 but some bands like to tune lower to 430 or even 420 for the heavier sound or vocal reasons or both. My point is that if you're practicing at 430 then you have a gig and your band tunes to 440, everything will suddenly sound different, your singer might not be able hit all the notes he or she did at practice, your solos might even sound wrong. This is because everything is now a half step higher in pitch. Make things easy on yourself, pick a tuning pitch and stick with it at practice and gigs.