You've got a guitar, you know a chord, you strum the chord, it sounds ghastly. Either you're playing a bizarre 'diminished fourth suspended nasty' chord or your guitar needs tuning. While this is quite straightforward with an electronic tuner there isn't always one to hand, so here's how to do it using just the guitar and your ears.

Relative tuning

Relative tuning is when the guitar is in tune with itself but not necessarily in tune with anything else. It'll sound fine while you're playing on your own but if you try playing along with a record it'll probably sound like a catfight in an elastic band factory. Fear not, once you've learned the basics of tuning a guitar relatively you'll easily be able to tune it to concert pitch and play along with stuff (more of that later).

The standard guitar tuning is:¹

• Bottom (thickest) string: E
• Next: A
• Then: D
• Followed by: G
• Then: B
• And finally, the thinnest one is: E

But for relative tuning you don't need to know that. All you need to know is this:

The 'A' string should be tuned so that when played open it is the same note as the bottom 'E' string played at the fifth fret. Or, put another way, fret the bottom 'E' at the fifth fret then play the 'A' without fretting it. Twiddle the 'A' string's tuning peg until it plays the same note as the fretted 'E'. Once they play the same note they are in tune.

Then play the 'A' string at the fifth fret and twiddle the open 'D' string's tuning peg until it matches. Repeat with the 'G' string against the fretted 'D'. Four down, two to go.

There is a slight change with the 'B' string in that it should be tuned to the fourth fret of the 'G' string rather than the fifth. The top 'E' (the really thin one) should be tuned to the fifth fret of the 'B'.

Pretty straight forward isn't it?

Concert Pitch

Concert pitch is the 'official' pitch that instruments are tuned to. Most pianos are supposed to be tuned to concert pitch. At concert pitch the 'A' string would play at 440Hz when open.

It's alright - you don't need to know about frequencies (although they are fascinating and worth learning about). All you need to know is that an electronic guitar tuner would, unless told otherwise, help you tune your guitar to concert pitch but if you haven't got one you can tune to a song you know. For example, AC/DC's 'Highway To Hell' is tuned to concert pitch and is in the key of 'A' so provides a handy tuning reference when tuning from the 'A' string.

Is that it?

Yep. Believe it or not, that is pretty much all you need to know to tune a guitar! There are other ways of tuning (such as using harmonics) and alternatives to the 'E,A,D,G,B,E' open strings (such as open 'G' tunings etc) but you should find that you now know everything you need to know to tune your guitar and play that chord harmoniously.