For example, electric guitarists had tuners mounted to their pedal or board. However, as electronic tuners evolved, the technology relied more on reading sound waves. However, this could leave room for error depending on the sounds of the surrounding environment. The earliest models had dials that displayed pitch based on the sound picked up from a microphone. Electronic TuningĮlectronic tuners have changed drastically since their proliferation in the 1980s. These are electronic tuners found on some electric and electric-acoustic guitars, guitar software, and pedal boxes, to name a few. Built-in tuners are chromatic tuners that are built-in to guitars and guitar accessories. Remember when we talked about chromatic tuners? I mentioned how the tuner hears the string’s pitch and tells you how close it is to the desired tuning pitch. From there, you either tune the guitar to itself or the corresponding keys going up the keyboard. In this case, you would tune the low E string to two octaves below middle C. Tuning a guitar to a keyboard is like tuning it to a pitch tuner. In this case, all of the open strings will be at the correct pitch interval from each other.
In standard tuning, when played open, strings 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 should correspond to the pitches E, A, D, G, B, and E, respectively. There are six strings on a guitar, numbered 1 through six in descending order. However, the most common is standard tuning. One can tune a guitar to match multiple desired scales. Conversely, turning the key towards you loosens the string and lowers the pitch. Turning the key away from you tightens the string and raises the pitch. The guitar player tightens and loosens the strings using the tuning keys to adjust the instrument correctly. Guitar strings change pitch as their tension changes.
Before I explain what built-in tuners are and how they work, let’s review how to tune a guitar.