A guitar can be strung with three, four, five, six or more strings. Guitars typically have six strings.
To adjust the tension of a string, first loosen the string’s tuning peg by twisting it counter-clockwise.
Then crank the tuning peg one half-turn clockwise to tighten it and bring it a little closer to a pitch a fourth higher than what it was tuned to before. After tightening the string, retune the string until you get the desired pitch. Repeat this procedure for each string on your guitar.
Pitch refers to the ‘frequency’ of a note. In other words, it’s the sound of a string being plucked or struck with a pick. The more tension on a string, the higher its pitch will be, but you have to tune your guitar so that the strings are all in tune with each other. If one string is too high for another string, the guitar will sound out of tune.
Songs are composed of a series of notes; within those notes there are different pitches and frequencies. The higher the pitch and tension on a string, the better it will be able to reproduce those subtler sounds: It’s comparable to what happens when you play an electric guitar through an overdriven amplifier.
If you want to really hear what a clean, unaltered electric guitar can do, you’ll need to adjust the tone and volume knobs. This will allow the string to reproduce its full sound, with all frequencies still intact and crisp. That said, it’s not always possible for electric guitars to reproduce all frequencies and subtleties, and sometimes you’ll need to use a separate amplifier to really hear what’s going on.
After you get all six strings tightened each by one-half turn, tune the guitar again, making sure that the open string and the corresponding 1st fret (the place where you put your index finger when you’re playing the string open) are in tune. When tuning, you’ll want to make sure that you are tuning up to pitch.
After getting an E note at the 1st fret of the sixth string perfectly in tune with an open E-string, it would be beneficial to check other notes on your guitar to see if they are in tune. To do this, play the open string again (checking if it is still in tune with an E-note), and then play each fret on the sixth string individually (one after another) up to the twelfth fret.
If you are tuning a classical guitar, there are usually no frets past the 12th fret; instead the strings end (short of the body) and are then attached to the guitar’s bridge.
After checking each note on your guitar, you’ll be able to tell if one is too sharp or flat for another by seeing which notes don’t match up. You can give them all a quick tune-up with your tuning pegs if necessary, but be sure to apply a little finesse when tuning a guitar up because a little goes a long way. The last thing you want is for your guitar to be out of tune after all this!
After completing the previous steps, enjoy playing your freshly-tuned guitar!
So this is how to String a Guitar.