Tuning the guitar is commonly seen as a repetitive chore we do before practicing or performing. And, when the time comes, most of us will take out our clip or pedal tuner and try to get it over with as soon as possible. However, it doesn’t have to be like this. You can turn this routine into a learning experience.
Recently I rediscovered the necessity and the benefits of tuning by ear, without anything but a tuning fork.
In this post I am going to tell you why you should switch to tuning with a tuning fork and how to do it.
What Is A Tuning Fork? Some of you who are reading this probably never heard of a tuning fork, for the most common and efficient way to tune these days is with a digital tuner. Before we had these amazing devices, our instruments were tuned by using only our ears. If you were in a room with a piano, then the piano player would play the note A (440 Hz) and you would tune according to that note. But imagine you are alone in a room without a piano and no internet (as we were once)… How can you tune your guitar?
Here enters the tuning fork.
A tuning fork is an acoustic resonator in the form of a two-pronged fork with the prongs (tines) formed from a U-shaped bar. It resonates at a specific constant pitch and, when striking it against a surface, it emits a pure musical tone.
How To Use A Tuning Fork?
All you need to do is strike the fork gently on any surface, such as your knee, and put the round end of the tuning fork next to your ear. Then, listen carefully to the tone from the tuning fork and try to match your open 5th string to the tone. Once your 5th string is tuned, use that string to tune the 6th string, and the 4th string, and so on.
But Why Go Through All That Trouble?
I am sure that you are asking that question by now. And I can understand why. It is harder and more time consuming to tune like this, yet I believe that the benefits outweigh the costs. By tuning in this old-fashioned way, you will teach yourself how to tune the guitar using your ears and nothing else. Furthermore, you will strengthen you musical hearing abilities and you won’t need to rely on a digital tuner anymore. It may take a few tries to get it right, but you will see that soon you will tune your guitar in no time using only the tuning fork.
In these modern days we use the internet to find out the chords of a song; we have YouTube tutorials to teach us any song we want to learn; we have apps to slow down solos so we can transcribe them; and many more amazing apps and tools. But sometimes we forget that our ears are the most important tool when it comes to playing, writing and improvising music. We need to train, develop and teach them how to ear notes, intervals, chords and musical ideas. And learning to tune by ear while using the tuning fork is a good place to start.
For more information about learning music and guitar, contact me today.
Gal Dornay
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