Learning To Tune A Guitar

It will be more beneficial to you if you don't only learn how to play the guitar but also acquiring the skill how to tune it properly.As for most beginners, your ears aren't well acquainted yet to the guitar standard tune or to the right string harmony. Well, the standard guitar tune goes this way. The first string (which is the thinnest), is on E note, the second is on B, The third is on G, the fourth on D, the fifth on A and the sixth string (which is the thickest and the lowest sounding string) is on E. We can easily memorize those notes from the first to the sixth string by this phrase:"Every Body Gets Dinner At Eight", wherein the capital letters represent the notes from the 1st to 6th strings. Before we go to the tuning lesson, let me discuss some important points. First and foremost, about the metal bars and spaces that lies along the guitar neck or the fretboard. Some guitar lessons points to those metal bars as the "fret" whereas some lessons refers to the spaces as the frets that lies between those bars. In order for you not to get confused, it's much better to consider the spaces as the frets. Fret numbering starts from the first space that lies between the guitar nut and the first metal bar and it is called the "1st fret", the next space that lie between the 1st and 2nd metal bar will be called the "2nd fret" and so on and so forth going to the direction of the sound hole.

      Since you are still a beginner i suggest that you use a new set of strings and adjust it to the guitar standard tune to let you know how your guitar sound in the standard pitch, and to know how new strings sound it well in terms of tone stability and brightness. This will greatly help you in your quest to learn how to tune the guitar because old strings may not give you the right sounding condition and may not help set your tone hearing capability perfectly.

 Guitar Tuners
      There are various ways wherein you can tune your guitar. One is through the piano keyboard (see illustration below)

Second, is through the online guitar tuner 
There are many available guitar tuners online. You can always check there if your guitar still sounds in the right harmony. It's pretty helpful for us if we from time to time hear those standard string tones on guitar tuners in order to sink it deeper in our memory.

Common Mistakes Some Beginner Guitar Players Often Do

Some of the beginner guitar players especially the younger ones are too eager to play their favorite songs once they've learned few guitar chords and be able to achieved the proper strumming style. Well that's good and i feel kind of happy for that because there's an overflowing enthusiasm or passion and i have been like that before also. But we should never get too carried away by mere excitement to play. Remember that sounding right pays after all. Here i have listed some of the common things beginner players often neglect to do.
1. Not learning to tune the guitar or not acquainting your ears to the proper string tone setting.
2. When performing chord positions with open strings like the families of A, C, E, D ranging from first to third fret, the palm often touches the bottom edge of the fretboard thus making it hard for the pressing fingers to established a good chord positioning and that often results to the first string being muted in the process.
3.  Some beginners are often unmindful of those dead strings showed in the chord chart. They tend to touch the dead strings in playing.
4. The strumming fingers isn't positioned at the center of the sound hole.
5. The fingertips at some point is placed at the top of the metal bar itself thus making the string muted.
6. Not applying enough pressing force on the strings to achieve tone clarity.
7. Not mastering the timing of the song and in the process greatly affects the strumming pace and chord shifting process.
8. The guitar is not in the right angle with your lap and the fretboard not inclined upward that makes the pressing fingers difficult to achieve the right pressing position especially in songs with a more faster tempo.

Learning Songs in the First and Second Strumming Patterns

In our first strumming pattern we do only a single downward stroke by the thumb. Now we are going to learn how to apply this on songs. In this lesson we use the 4/4 time signature wherein our counting is: "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and". The following song below requires you to maintain your timing while playing the song. You will only touch the strings on the numbered parts of the beat, 1,2,3,4 but be sure you maintain your counting. Practice your strumming pattern 1 in this song Love Me Tender. The moment the first chord applies that's when you will begin to count "1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and" all in an eighth note count continuously. At the end of the song you will only strum a single downward stroke in a whole note time duration.

For our strumming pattern 2, we do a alternating downward and upward strokes. This means that in every part of the beat, your will touch the strings beginning with a downward stroke like this:
        1  and  2  and  3  and  4  and  -  (all in eighth note duration)
        D   U   D   U   D   U   D   U        D- downward (by thumb), U - upward ( by forefinger)
For our strumming lesson 2 here is the song: You Are My Sunshine