Groan. Sorry. Bad musician joke. There’s tons of info online about how to tune your guitar…but every once in a while, someone asks me about it. (There are also tons of bad musician jokes online as well.) So, here are some tips and resources….
First of all…there are a lot of different tunings. Yep. And no, you don’t have to learn ‘em. After you’ve been playing for a bit, you can have fun exploring them (and that’s great fuel for songwriting…hey, isn’t that what this blog is supposed to be about?). But for now, start with EADGBE. Standard tuning. You can stay there as long as you like. You can either hike on down to your Locally Owned Music Store (or, lacking that, your local mega-mart might have something along these lines) and purchase a pitch pipe (cheapie, but does the job) or an electronic tuner (more costly, requires batteries, also does the job.) Got a piano or electronic keyboard handy? You have a tuner. Start with E below middle C, then A, then D (right above middle C), G, B, and the next E.
Or, included in the price of your monthly DSL or cable, find an online guitar tuner!
www.onlineguitartuner.com , http://www.gieson.com/Library/projects/utilities/tuner/ , http://www.guitarforbeginners.com/onlinetuner.html ,
To name a few. There are many great sites out there to get you going! This blog is to be about songwriting and creativity, and I’ve spent several posts writing about making guitar playing easier for a beginner (or “re-beginner.”)
The reason for that…if you have to fight with the tools of songwriting, it interferes with the creative process. And while you don’t need a guitar to write music (your instrument might be piano, or violin, or voice, or banjo, or hurdy-gurdy, or whatever), it is always a good thing to have additional instruments, even if you just “play around” with them. This is because it nudges your brain in a slightly different direction.
Brain nudges. Might be time to take a break from the guitar info and foray into the world of Brain Nudges and Stirring the Creative Pot.
