How to Tune a Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi. My name is Steve Anthony. I'm a musician, actor, singer based out of New York and Miami. In this clip, we're going to talk about how to tune a guitar. Now, standard tuning for a guitar, either acoustic or electric, the notes of the strings are, from top to bottom: E, A, D, G, B, and E. So obviously we have a low E and a high E. The easiest way to tune a guitar if you don't have a tuner, which these are very common chromatic tuners. If you play your string. Now as you can see, I'm just a tiny bit flat, based on this chromatic tuner. So all I have to do as I play the note is turn my tuning peg a little bit, and you'll see that the needle, I've gone a little bit sharp. So once your green light is lit on your chromatic tuner, you've basically got your string in tune. So, assuming that we've got the E string in tune, we can tune the rest of the guitar to that string in fifths, we call it. Now in the case of E, the fifth of an E is an A. So we go to the fifth fret, play the E string on the fifth fret, and the next string should sound the same. Now do that also with the A string, the D string. Now you can hear that's a little bit out. Here, I'll make it extreme so you can really hear it. So that's tuning in fifths. The only exception to that is when you get to the G string. You're going to move your finger down one fret to get the B string in tune. And then the B string at the fifth fret gives you your E string. And that's how to tune a guitar. My name is Steve Anthony."