Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Discuss the Guitar lesson: How to Tune Your Guitar

https://banjobenclark.com/lessons/how-to-tune-your-guitar-guitar-beginner

One of the most important (and often overlooked) skills in playing guitar is playing in TUNE! It’s more than just matching the line on the tuner, too—knowing how to temper your tunings and make fine adjustments means you can ensure your chords will be ultra-pleasant. in this lesson, we’ll go over the best tricks of the trade to make sure your guit-fiddle is all tuned up and sounding sweet as can be.

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No, this was an interesting lesson. An old dog can learn new tricks. Thanks Ben!

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Your last remark really made me laugh! I mostly play the banjo and am so aware of how retuning a string causes all the other four to change enough to demand adjusting! I never realized the guitar is also sensitive in this way, too, Thanks, Ben! This also makes me aware that changing my tunings on the banjo, instead of sticking say, in open G or Double C, could help me develop my ear better. Why? Because lots of balancing those retunings will require practice time spent simply hearing each string correctly tuned!

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Thanks for this lesson, Ben. You were right… I almost dismissed it because “I’ve been playing guitar longer than Ben’s been alive…” :slight_smile: BUT… Mel Bay didn’t teach me about harmonics at the 5th and 7th frets. That one segment was worth not only my time, but the cost of admission. Blessings on you and yours today, my friend!

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Nice refresher on using harmonics. One idea that I hope you’ll pursue more is the use of “sweetened” tunings for key specific songs. My Peterson tuner has a sweetened setting that is helpful but maybe this one setup configuration paints the “sweetened” idea with too broad a brush. Fretting the D note on be string and then comparing that on a strobe tuner yielded subtle, but excellent micro tuning of intonation. Ben, you teased use by suggesting other micro tuning techniques could be used for other keys (C, E, Am, Em etc). Hoping you might consider exploring this concept more in a future lesson.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and insights.

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