Before a single chord — tune. I know you want to play; so did I, and I once serenaded a whole campfire a half-step flat. A perfect chord on an out-of-tune guitar still sounds wrong. It's almost never you. It's the tuning.
Each of the six strings is set to a specific note. From the thickest string (the one nearest the ceiling as you hold the guitar) down to the thinnest, they are: E, A, D, G, B, E.
◆ KEY IDEA
The six notes, low to high
Tune it, step by step:
- 1Get a reference: a tuner app, a clip-on tuner, or a free browser tuner like Fretwell's.
- 2Pluck one string and let it ring clean.
- 3The tuner tells you if it's flat (too low) or sharp (too high).
- 4Turn that string's peg slowly — tighten to raise the pitch, loosen to lower it.
- 5Sneak up to the note from just below, and stop the instant it's right.
▲ WATCH OUT
Turn slowly or snap it
Tune every single time you pick it up. Thirty seconds now saves an hour of 'why do I sound bad, am I hopeless' later. You're not hopeless. You're just sharp on the G.
Your turn ⭐
You're mid-tune. What's the right move?
Question 1 of 4
The tuner says your G string is FLAT. What do you do?
The cheat sheet
- Low to high, the strings are E A D G B E.
- Sneak up to each note from below to avoid over-tightening.
- Turn pegs in tiny steps: pluck, check, adjust, repeat.
- Tune every time you play, and expect new strings to drift.
Common questions
How do I know if a string is too high or too low?
A tuner shows it: 'flat' or a needle to the left means too low (tighten); 'sharp' or right means too high (loosen). By ear, too-low sounds slack and dull, too-high sounds tight and strained.
Do I need a special tuner?
No. A free phone app, a clip-on tuner, or a browser tuner all work great. Clip-ons are handy because they sense the guitar's vibration and ignore background noise.
I tightened a string and it snapped — what happened?
You probably went well past the right note, or tuned to the wrong target string. Sneak up slowly and watch the tuner; each string only needs to reach its own note (E A D G B E, low to high).