Understanding how to tune and play your guitar by ear is a good skill for a beginner to have. You don’t always have access to an electric tuner and it can be time consuming. By understanding a couple of tricks on the guitar neck you can quickly learn to get all the strings on your guitar in tune in just a couple of minutes without the need of any electric tuner.

There are only two things you need to remember when learning to tune your guitar by ear.

The first is that any string on the guitar neck can be tuned to the string above it on the 5th fret with one exception.

The second thing to remember is that the exception occurs when trying to tune the B string, you must play the 4th fret on the G string above it rather then the 5th fret.

Example: Let’s say that your G string is sounding a bit out of tune. By playing the D string at the 5th fret you can compare that sound to the open G string. If the G string doesn’t sound the same you can adjust it higher or lower by turning the tuning peg until the notes match.

I’d suggest practicing this each time you sit down with your guitar. After a week or two you’ll find you can check all your strings very quickly and make any minor adjustments that are needed.

Below is a short guitar video that explains why the 5th fret on each string matches the note below it, and also walks you through an example tuning of all 5 strings on the guitar.

Interested in more beginner guitar tips like this one? Why not consider trying some guitar lessons for beginners? Thanks to dvd lessons and online videos you can easily learn right from the comfort of your own home for a fraction of the price of private lessons.