Acoustic Blues Guitar Lessons www.play-blues-guitar.eu/menu-36-lessons-review.php Free Lessons and News Letter Sign Up youtunerecords.com/lp/jblet.html Sign Up Now and get these Free Goodies: Complete Robert Johnson Lesson Download, two MP3 Albums (Acoustic Blues Travellers and Blind Blake) and a mini-course of 7 streamed videos covering basic blues picking techniques. Posted mostly for people who bought the video 'Dancin' Inside - The Guitar of Blind Blake The Best Way To Tune Your Guitar Getting the guitar in tune is probably one of the first important things we learn about the instrument and should be acheived before we can learn how to play. This can be very frustrating. Even after careful tuning each string, we often hear that the sound isn't quite accurate enough - in fact it can sound quite bad! What's more, we might hear that the strings seem in tune when playing one chord, but not when strumming others. Let's quickly review the basic method for rapidly tuning the strings. It should be said that if you have access to an electronic tuner, it's a great help. That said, the majority of inexpensive tuning devices are accurate only to about one percent. It may not seem a lot, but if two adjacent strings are each out by one percent in opposite directions, it's pretty obvious. Basic method of tuning It depends how good your hearing is, but the big problem with the basic method of tuning is that the next string is tuned to the preceding one, so any error is transferred. First of all, the low E string is tuned to a standard source - a pitch pipe or piano - as an example. Fret the low E string at the 5th fret and adjust the next string (A) until it sounds the same. Fret the A string at the fifth and adjust the next string (D) until it sounds the same. Fret the D string and tune the G string until it sounds the same. Fret the G string at the fourth fret and tune the next string (B) so that the sound is identical. Last of all, fret the B string on the fifth ,adjusting the high E until it sounds the same. Play some chords and re-tune, if necessary. Many guitarists employ this method, because it is simple. Normally, during a performance, I may tune particular strings depending on the chords I used for a particular song. Using One String As The Reference For All The Other Strings-An Accurate Alternative You can greatly reduce tuning errors associated with the above quick method by tuning all the rest to only one string. This way of tuning uses the bass E as the reference, fretted at different points and also using harmonics at times. When harmonics are used, the notes produced by two strings are compared between octaves - you will understand this better as you go through the instructions that follows. The low E string is matched to a reference source, as we did for the first method, and then the A string is tuned with the bass E string fretted at the fifth. This is exactly the same as the first tuning method we tried. Press the E string down at the tenth fret and tune the D string so that it sounds the same. Fret the bass E string again at the third fret and regulate the G string so that it sounds like the same note, but ONE OCTAVE higher. This is much easier than it appears. Tune the next string (B) by pressing down the seventh fret of the low E, then tuning the B string until you hear the same note, but again, an octave above. Lastly, fret the bass E at the twelth to tune the last E string. These last notes should sound exactly the same. Strum a few chords and make any adjustments, if needed. With some practice, this method is much more accurate than the simple method we all know, and doesn't take that much longer to carry out. Even though professionals use these two methods for speed during performances, it isn't easy in noisy environments. In addition, some performances need very accurate tuning, like when recording, for example. In this case, I prefer a stroboscopic tuner, which are usually calibrated to be 0.1% accurate. By contrast, a cheap electronic tuner is accurate to just 1%. More guitar blues music here www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWGIiuAHveI

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