The Tinturin
 Music Studio

Guitarists face a whole realm of different challenges than pianists – some things make it much more difficult of an instrument to learn and play, some make it easier.  Hey, we guitarists get to take our instruments with us on camping trips and vacations, and we get to perform on our own instruments – this is a good thing.  But we do have our challenges.

For the beginner, just the fact that it takes two hands to make one note is already twice as hard as the piano.  And, when we just start learning the notes, where are those easy black-and-white visual aids that a keyboard has?  And then, there is tuning (or should I say going out of tune). Yes, pianos do go out of tune, also, but not on a daily basis.  And, this is my point for today – tuning.

All guitarists, students and professionals, should make it a point to tune their instruments first thing on a daily basis before playing or practicing – even more frequently if necessary.  For the beginning student, this can be a big challenge without the aid of an electronic tuner.  But, it is possible.  Tuning is very important because we need to learn what an in-tune instrument sounds like in order to be able to hear if we are playing the right notes.  This means that a big part of learning to play the guitar is what we call ear-training.  For students of all instruments, learning to listen to yourself or the notes you are producing is a necessary task. But, for stringed instrument players, this is an absolute necessity. Then, once we are actually listening to ourselves, we have to be able to hear when we are stretching the strings out of tune or playing wrong notes so we can correct that.  To accomplish this, the instrument must, itself, be in tune.  So, you guitarists, tune up first.  Then, have fun.