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Just was tuning my guitar and remembered something my guitar teacher once mentioned to me that I wanted to pass along. It’s second nature now, but I found it useful information when I first learned it because I was doing it backwards for years.
When tuning your guitar the best practice is to go slightly sharp, then lower it back down into tune. Your guitar will stay in tune marginally longer.
If you start flat and tune up, your string will be closer to the out of tune, because naturally they loosen from playing. By starting sharp you ensure you’re at the absolute start of the required tension for that note.
Cheers
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That’s good to know – thanks, Marek.
I actually do it the other way round, if the note is sharp I go down to slightly flat and then fine tune it. Your teacher’s method does make more sense – but … I wonder if it depends whether your strings tend to go flat or sharp? I live in the desert (dry climate) and keep my guitars in their cases. I noticed that after a while they tend to go sharp rather than flat.
🎸JoLa
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I do not agree with that.
I will always tune up.
My mate Tommy Emanuel told me that. So if it’s good enough for him it’s good enough for me.Brendan
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Rad, I learned it from Chet Breau.
He said that he learned it from his father, Lenny Breau. I took lessons under Chet after discovering he lives in the city I do. Was super cool stories in addition to the lessons.
I will say I admire both their playing though!
Regarding strings going sharp when you leave them, yep, definitely can happen! That’s why I typically check my guitars when I’m ready to play. This is when the tip comes into play. Not really needed for when storing your axe.
When I jam out, especially when I really dig in hard, my strings never go sharp on any of my guitars. I typically check tune pretty frequently, all of my guitars behave slightly differently in terms of keeping tune. One common theme is when it’s being played, especially when as I said I dig in hard – to get extra volume – it goes flat. Especially that dang G string on my electrics!
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My motto is “if you’re gonna miss it, miss it flat”. At least you can bend it up to pitch on the fly, can’t do that when sharp. Second motto, always tune before commencing to play in public. The audience and other players will be thankful.
The first motto came from Steve James who passed away unexpectedly this year, RIP Steve. True we were talking about slide playing, but he made the point that missing it a bit flat sounds better than going sharp. I find that to be true, particularly with acoustic country blues.
I can only think of one great player who tuned some strings routinely sharp. That was Reverend Gary Davis. It was so consistently the case that he had to be tuning that way on purpose. It turns off a lot of people listening to it today, but he was still one of the the greatest players of his genre IMHO
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I often find my tuning goes sharp when my Gibson is left for some time maybe the wood moves with humidity I don’t know and have wondered the true explanation. It does hold tune usually very well indeed.
Also there is the friction of the machine heads to be overcome and the hysteris take up of the gear train. I believe that those mechanical factors more often swing things in favour of tuning up from below, thus keeping constant thrust direction on the gear arrangement. If you have any hysteris in the machine head and you slacken it to lower the pitch you will invariably need to reverse the torque until the slack of the hysteris is taken up else the pitch will drift down as the axle rotates to remove the play. Of course that all depends on the precision and or wear of the machine heads.
JohnStrat-
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I think you speak the truth, John. I have observed that most of my guitars have some friction where the string crosses over the nut (especially for the wound strings), so if I slack off the string, it gets kind of “caught” on the nut and won’t relax fully. If you don’t believe this, just slack off a string a bit, then play it and note the pitch. Now grab the string and stretch it a bit – or try a few bends – and you will hear that the pitch is a bit lower because you have physically pulled it across the nut (or taken up some slack in the machine heads, as John suggested) and slacked off the string. I suppose if you had a Teflon nut, or applied some oil to the nut, it might not be an issue. But for me, if I tune upwards, my strings always stay in tune better. The gurus at Taylor Guitars agree:
https://blog.taylorguitars.com/how-to-tune-an-acoustic-guitar-for-beginners
Sunjamr Steve
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What I’m reading says that it’s less likely for the gears in the tuning peg to move by tuning up. Fair point. Which is exactly what John mentioned too. I concede that tuning up may be the better way for a beginner. It seems there are many external factors that could make it more frustrating doing it the other way around.
It also does have a lot of other good tips, like the harmonics for tuning by ear. I found harmonics being my favorite for by ear because of that 5th and 7th sounding identical and you can hear it easily.
The crazy thing is it seems like my cheapest guitar keeps tune best. At least that’s how it seems. Part of me wants to do more research on this topic just because it has me wondering if there is more to this.
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I’m not sure I understand the physics here but I live in a temperate climate in the UK and if there’s a few days of rain or low pressure my guitar strings sharpen slightly. A few days of sunny high pressure will slightly flatten the strings.
I’ve always experienced it that way round which to me appears totally the wrong way round but it happens.
Btw, because of the way the tuning pegs work and the friction on the nut, I would always tune UP.Richard
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