How to Tune a Guitar: A Complete Beginner's Guide (Standard EADGBE)

Ask a hundred guitarists what the single most important habit is, and a huge share will give you the same answer: tune before you play, every single time. A perfectly fretted chord on an out-of-tune guitar sounds wrong, and — this is the part that hurts beginners — it teaches your ear the wrong thing. So before you learn a single chord, learn to tune. The good news is it takes about two minutes, and after a week it’s automatic.

Standard tuning is E-A-D-G-B-E, from the thick 6th string down to the thin 1st string. Here’s the reference every one of my students starts with:

If those note names and numbers feel unfamiliar, spend five minutes with our guide to the six guitar string notes first — it explains why the numbering runs “backwards” and why the guitar is tuned this particular way. Want to hear each target pitch, or see the exact hertz your tuner is aiming for at 440, 432 or 442? Our free note frequency chart plays every note and lets you change the reference pitch. Everything below assumes you know which string is which. Ready? Let’s get your guitar in tune.

What You Need to Tune a Guitar

You have four ways to find the right pitch, and I’ll be honest about which one to use when.

• A clip-on tuner. A small device that clamps to your headstock and reads pitch from the guitar’s vibration, not from sound in the room — so it works in a noisy space and even ignores the TV. This is what I recommend to every beginner. It’s cheap, it’s accurate, and it clips on and stays out of your way. If you buy one thing to go with your guitar, buy this.
• A tuner app. Free apps for your phone use the microphone to hear the note. They’re genuinely good in a quiet room and cost nothing, which makes them the perfect starting point before you own hardware. Their only weakness is background noise — a mic-based tuner struggles where a clip-on tuner doesn’t care.
• A pedal or amp tuner. If you play electric through a pedalboard, a dedicated tuner pedal is the pro standard: rock-solid, silent (it mutes your signal while you tune), and always in the chain. Many amps now include a built-in tuner too. We cover the whole signal chain in our guide to the best guitar amps.
• By ear. Tuning the guitar to itself using the frets, or matching a reference pitch from a piano. This is a skill worth building — it trains your ear like nothing else — but it is not how you should tune on your first day. More on the method below, once you’ve got the basics down.

For at least your first month, use a clip-on tuner or an app. There’s no prize for tuning by ear before your ear is ready, and a beginner tuning blind is the fastest way to snap a string by winding it far too high.

How to Read a Tuner

Every tuner, whether it’s a clip-on, an app, or a pedal, shows you two things: a note name and a needle (or a moving bar, or colored lights) telling you whether that note is flat, sharp, or dead-on.

• Flat means the string is too low in pitch — the needle sits to the left of center, and you need to tighten the string (turn the peg to raise the pitch).
• Sharp means the string is too high — the needle sits to the right of center, and you need to loosen the string.
• In tune is when the note name matches your target and the needle sits dead center, usually turning green.

The one habit that separates people whose guitars stay in tune from people who fight it all night: always tune up to the note from below. If a string is sharp, don’t just ease it down to pitch — loosen it until it’s clearly flat, then slowly tighten up to the note. Tuning up into the note takes the slack out of the gears and the string, so it holds far better than tuning down into it. This one trick fixes most “why won’t it stay in tune” complaints on its own.

How to Tune a Guitar With a Clip-On Tuner or App

This is the everyday method — the one you’ll use before every practice session for the rest of your playing life.

1. Clip on the tuner (or open the app and set your phone nearby, screen facing you). Put it in chromatic mode if it has modes — that just means it reads any note, so it won’t get confused.
2. Start with the thick 6th string (low E). Pluck it once, cleanly, and let it ring. Don’t strum — pluck the one string so the tuner hears a single clear pitch.
3. Read the tuner and adjust the matching peg. Find the peg that controls the string you’re plucking (pluck and watch — the needle moves when you turn the right one). Turn it slowly. If the tuner reads a note below E, or E with the needle left of center, tighten; if it reads sharp, loosen back down and come up to it.
4. Pluck again after every small turn. Tune in small increments, re-plucking each time, until the tuner reads E with the needle centered.
5. Move to the next string: 5th string to A, 4th to D, 3rd to G, 2nd to B, 1st (thin) to E. Same routine each time — pluck, read, adjust up to pitch, confirm center.
6. Go back and check the low E again. Tuning later strings changes the tension on the neck slightly, which can nudge the first strings you tuned. One quick pass back through all six locks it in.

That’s it. The first few times it’ll take a couple of minutes as you learn which peg moves which string; within a week you’ll be through all six in under thirty seconds. Once you’re in tune, put those notes to work with our first eight chords for beginners.

How to Tune a Guitar by Ear (the 5th-Fret Method)

Once you’re comfortable, it’s worth learning to tune the guitar to itself — a skill that pays off when your tuner’s battery dies mid-session and, more importantly, sharpens your ear for pitch. You’ll still want one reference note to start from (the open low E from a piano, a pitch pipe, or a tuner) so the whole guitar sits at correct overall pitch; the method only guarantees the strings agree with each other.

Here’s why it works: most adjacent strings are a perfect fourth apart, and a fourth is exactly five frets. So a fretted string at the 5th fret matches the next open string over. Starting from a correctly-tuned low E:

• Fret the 6th string (E) at the 5th fret → it sounds an A. Play it against the open 5th string and tune the open A until the two match perfectly.
• Fret the 5th string (A) at the 5th fret → it sounds a D. Tune the open 4th string (D) to it.
• Fret the 4th string (D) at the 5th fret → it sounds a G. Tune the open 3rd string (G) to it.
• Fret the 3rd string (G) at the 4th fret → this is the exception. Because the G-to-B jump is a major third, not a fourth, you use the 4th fret, not the 5th. It sounds a B; tune the open 2nd string (B) to it.
• Fret the 2nd string (B) at the 5th fret → it sounds an E. Tune the open 1st string (high E) to it.

The pattern is 5 – 5 – 5 – 4 – 5. Memorize that one exception at the G string and the rest falls into place. When two strings are close but not matched, you’ll hear a slow “wah-wah” wobble called beating; adjust the peg and the wobble slows down, then vanishes when they’re identical. Chasing that wobble to silence is exactly how you train your ear. (If you’re curious why that G-to-B interval is the odd one out, our string notes guide explains the centuries-old reason behind it.)

Why Your Guitar Won’t Stay in Tune

If you tune up and the guitar drifts flat again twenty minutes later, don’t assume it’s broken — there’s almost always a simple cause. In rough order of how often I see them:

1. New strings, still stretching. This is the number-one reason, and it’s completely normal. A fresh set of strings settles for the first three or four days, drifting flat repeatedly until it’s played in. You can speed this up enormously by stretching each new string by hand — gently pull it up away from the fretboard along its length a few times, retune, and repeat until it holds. If you’ve just restrung and it won’t settle, this is why.
2. Old, worn-out strings. The opposite problem. Strings that are months old lose elasticity, corrode, and simply can’t hold pitch anymore — they also sound dull and feel rough. If your strings are old and won’t stay in tune, replacing them fixes both at once. A fresh set is the single cheapest upgrade in all of guitar; our roundup of the best acoustic guitar strings breaks down gauges and materials so you can pick a set that suits your hands and holds its tune.
3. Temperature and humidity. Wood expands and contracts, and that changes string tension. A guitar carried in from a cold car, or sitting next to a heating vent, will drift until it acclimates to the room. Give it fifteen minutes to settle before you fight the pegs.
4. Not tuning up from below. As covered above — always arrive at the note by tightening up into it. Tuning down into a note leaves slack that slips.
5. Cheap or worn tuning machines. Low-quality tuning pegs can slip under string tension. This is more common on very inexpensive starter instruments, and it’s one reason a well-built guitar is worth the small step up — the best beginner acoustic guitars and best beginner electric guitars in our guides all use tuners that actually hold, which matters more day-to-day than beginners expect.

Nine times out of ten, a guitar that “won’t stay in tune” has new strings that need stretching or old strings that need replacing. Rule those out before you blame the instrument.

Common Tuning Mistakes to Avoid

• Turning the wrong peg. Pluck the string, then turn a peg and watch — if that string’s needle doesn’t move, you’ve got the wrong one. On a slotted headstock especially, it’s easy to overtighten a different string toward breaking. Always watch the tuner respond before you keep turning.
• Tuning too fast. Small turns, re-plucking each time. Fast, big turns overshoot the note and, on the thin strings, snap them.
• Winding a string way too high. If the tuner keeps reading a note below your target no matter how much you tighten, stop — you may be trying to tune a string up to the wrong (higher) octave, and you’ll break it. Double-check you’re on the right string for the right note.
• Strumming instead of plucking. A mic or clip-on tuner needs one clean note at a time. Strumming all six confuses it.
• Skipping the second pass. Always recheck the low strings after tuning the high ones. The neck’s tension shifts as you go.

A Quick Note on Alternate Tunings

Everything above is standard tuning, EADGBE — the tuning for the vast majority of songs and the only one you should learn first. But you’ll eventually run into songs that ask for something different, and the friendliest one to try early is Drop D: you lower just the 6th string from E down a whole step to D, giving you D-A-D-G-B-E. Only one string moves, so it’s easy to drop and easy to bring back, and it makes one-finger power chords possible — which is why it’s everywhere in rock and metal.

Beyond Drop D lie open tunings for slide and folk tunings like DADGAD, but those can wait. Get fluent with standard tuning first, build the habit of tuning before every session, and the rest is a small adjustment rather than a fresh start. If you’re still choosing your first instrument, our guides to the best beginner acoustic guitars and beginner electric guitars will point you to instruments that arrive playable and stay in tune — and once you’re set up, learning to play starts with these same six notes, in tune, every time you pick it up.