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Chapter 3: Grab Hold, Tune Up, Play On!
47
No amount of looking cool can make up for a position that’s not comfortable,
and each player knows what comfortable is by the way the left hand feels
when trying to finger notes and chords. If you have to curl your hand around
too much to play, you may feel strain — typically on the back of the hand.
Prolonged strain like this, may make your hand hate you later! So hike up that
axe and be friends with your guitar!
You may find that the guitar rides a little lower when you’re standing than
when you’re sitting. This is natural. You can test whether your guitar sits
lower when standing by wearing your adjusted strap when you sit. Chances
are, the strap slacks a bit. If this happens, it’s just an indication that what
feels natural standing is a little lower than what feels best for sitting.
Tuning Up
The first notes to play on your guitar are the ones that get your guitar in
tune. Don’t play anything — not a lick, not a rhythm figure — until your guitar
is perfectly in tune with itself and the other instruments in the band. Playing
out of tune can peg you as an amateur and cause musicians and non-musicians
alike to cringe. So learn how to tune your instrument quickly, correctly,
and painlessly, and everyone will be happy — especially you.
Basically, you have two ways to tune your guitar:
To an outside reference: These sources include electronic tuners, a
tuning fork, a pitch pipe, or another instrument (such as a piano, organ,
electronic keyboard, or even a harmonica).
To itself: By using the relative method, you tune all the strings to one
string. (This method is covered in the section “Helping your guitar get in
tune with itself.”)
In the relative method, your guitar may or may not be in tune with
another instrument or concert pitch (A = 440), but the strings are in tune
with each other. Anyone who doesn’t have perfect pitch (which is most
of the world, including the world of musicians) won’t know.
Each of these methods is explained in more detail in Guitar For Dummies,
2nd Edition, but most guitarists, after achieving a certain level of proficiency,
prefer an electronic tuner. After you get the hang of using electronic tuners,
they’re the quickest, most reliable, and quietest ways to tune.
One additional source for tuning exists in the back of this book: the CD-ROM!
Track 1 plays the six open strings on the guitar, and you can use these to
tune, repeating the track as necessary.
TEAM LinG