Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Free Guitar Tuner

By Wesley Lyon


A quality guitar tuner is a crucial tool in any guitarist's gig bag. A typical acoustic guitar has six strings, each of which is adjusted to produce a specific pitch (or musical note). While there are many varieties of guitar tunings, the strings on a standard guitar are tuned, from lowest to highest note, as follows: E-A-D-G-B-E.

I played guitar for the first time when I was in college when a friend let me borrow his guitar. After a some time, the friend came over to look in on me. I strummed a few chords I had been practicing. He cringed. Because I had been playing so much, the instrument was out of tune, way out of tune. I had never played a musical instrument before so I lacked the ability to hear that the instrument had gone out of tune.

That's where an electronic guitar tuner comes in. The main function of an electronic tuner is to automatically determine the pitch a string is producing and to visibly indicate whether that pitch is sharp (high), flat (low), or "in tune."

The acoustic guitar tuner uses a microphone to detect the sound emitted from the guitar and displays its readings by LED or on an LCD screen. The most basic tuner is programmed for the standard guitar tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E), while chromatic tuners feature the flexibility of tuning to match any note on the 12 note scale.

For tuning acoustic guitars, the quality of the tuner's microphone is very important, as this is only input source. The better the quality microphone, the more accurate reading you will receive.

Not too long ago, Peterson strobe tuners were the professional guitarists tuner of choice. One guitarist who used Peterson strobe tuners is former Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash (however, he has since changed tuners). Another guitarist who has used Peterson strobe tuners is Andy Timmons - a popular guitarist's guitarist. In terms of accuracy, the Peterson strobe tuners are accurate to plus or minus 1 cent.

Lower and Higher Tunings: The strings are all tuned either higher or lower by the same interval. These tunings are usually to accommodate the vocal range of the singer. For the higher tunings the guitar strings need to be very thin as they are under extreme tension (they are therefore prone to breakage).




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