How to Tune a Guitar Without a Tuner

Tuning by ear – it’s kind of one of those party tricks that’s bound to impress other musicians in the room, if you can do it accurately.

Say you pick up a guitar in a music store to try and it’s slightly out of tune.

Are you going to whip out your phone and load up a tuning app, or even worse ask the store clerk for a tuner?

This would be a great instance where tuning the guitar by ear would be of great benefit to you, especially if you’re looking to try several guitars in the store.

Or maybe mid-practise session you notice that your G string has gone slightly flat (it’s always the G string isn’t it?).

Rather than stopping the flow of your practise to grab a tuner, quickly being able to get this string back in tune will allow you to keep moving along quickly.

So how do you tune a guitar by ear?

5th Fret Method

There are a few ways to tune a guitar by ear, although these first few methods will require you to have at least one of the strings in tune before everything will be in tune to 440 Hz, which is considered the standard tuning pitch.

You could do this by asking someone else in your band to play their low E string for you to match, or a piano.

Once you have one of the strings in tune (I usually like to start with the low E string), play the 5th fret on the low E string to give you an A note.

Now that you have an in tune A note, play this against the open A string to see if they sound the same.

If not, you may hear somewhat of a ‘rub’ between the two pitches, as if they are similar but slightly off they won’t want to marry up.

Try to listen if the open A string is sharp (too high) or flat (too low), and then adjust accordingly.

Sometimes when the string is super close but not quite in tune it can actually be harder to hear if it is sharp or flat, so if that is the case try de-tuning the A string a decent amount flat and then bring it back up to the pitch of the 5th fret low E string.

Continue this method through to tune the rest of the strings using the following frets: 5th fret low E string gives you an A note to tune the open A string

5th fret A string gives you a D note to tune the open D string

5th fret D string gives you a G note to tune the open G string

4th fret G string gives you a B note to tune the open B string

5th fret B string gives you an E note to tune the open E string

Harmonics

A similar method to the 5th fret method will be the harmonic method, which is where you play a harmonic on the 12th fret of the tuned string and the 7th fret of the next string to match up the pitches in a similar manner.

So for example, play the 12th fret harmonic on the low E string and the 7th fret harmonic on the A string to tune the A string.

This method will also allow you to ensure that the guitar is in tune on the mid to upper part of the neck, since due to the design of the guitar and its intonation just because the open string is in tune, does not necessarily mean that it is in tune all over the neck.

This can be a more beneficial way to tune if you tend to play more fretted notes higher on the neck rather than playing open chords for example.

Tuning Track

If these methods are a little too challenging for the moment, another way to tune your guitar without a tuner can be to use what’s called a tuning track, which can be found on YouTube.

These are literally just recordings of the open strings of the guitar played slowly to allow you to try and match up the pitch of your string to the sound of the strings on the recordings, which will still require you to use your ear to hear if your strings are sharp or flat.

This can be a great way to get started tuning by ear, as you are still training your ear to hear if the notes are sharp or flat without having to worry about fretting notes on the 5th frets or playing harmonics simultaneously while trying to tune.