Keep Strummin’ – Tuning Your Guitar

Now that you’ve got your guitar, the next thing on the agenda is to tune it. To illustrate why this is important, strum down on the strings with your thumb and note the horrible noise that’s produced. Pretty awful, huh? Next, check your strumming hand to see if you’re holding anything that might have contributed to the ruckus, such as a Red Bull can or a salami sandwich. If so, drop said item and try again. Ugh! Still pretty awful! So, that’s why you need to tune your guitar.

Unfortunately, tuning can be an annoying little chore, so before we get into any details, the first thing you should do is look around and see if there are any experienced guitarists nearby who might be able to do it for you, such as Ricky Skaggs. If so, then you’re in luck! Now you just have to convince them to do it! If you happen to be a girl, it can sometimes help to bat your eyes and/or a do a cute little hair-flip to grease the skids. Guys, conversely, are going to have a tougher time in general with this, although don’t let that stop you from trying, especially the hair-flip part. You never know!

If it turns out that you’re unlucky enough to have to do it yourself, you’re going to need a tuner to assist you, which will be either a physical device that you clip to your guitar or an app downloaded onto your phone. (Side note: Some people can tune their guitars by ear, but they’re all freaks of nature who’d never read this essay anyway, so we’re just going to pretend that’s not a real thing.)

The short overview of how your tuner works is that it’s calibrated to detect the notes your guitar strings play and then tell you just how off-pitch each is from what it’s supposed to be. If your string is playing too high, you have to loosen it, and if it’s too low, you have to tighten it. Simple, right?

Ha ha! Just kidding! Of course it’s not simple!

The first confusing thing is that the notes you’re supposed to tune the strings to—which are denoted by letter names—are all random and make no sense. Starting with the thickest string and working down, they need to be: EADGBE. I mean, what? Why is E in there twice? What makes it better than C, which has been totally ignored? Or F? Have those notes offended the others and are now in exile or something? How rude! Then, to make matters worse, the first and second E don’t even sound the same! What’s up with that? Why can two notes have the same name but also sound different? 

The short answer to this nonsense is that a guitar can play a lot more notes than the six you tune the strings to, and the Founding Guitar Fathers could only afford the first seven letters of the alphabet (A-G) when they were purchasing the rights to use them. It wasn't long, then, before they'd used up all seven, and so they had no choice but to loop back around and start over again at the beginning. It’s really a shame, too, because it’d be way easier if they kept everything separate, resulting in such notes as J and Z and LMNOP. Also, sometimes you’ll see notes with weird little symbols after them, like the pound sign. (Example: C#) Ignore them for now, as their only function is to confuse you and make you want to quit. (The Founding Guitar Fathers were an exclusive club, and they wanted to keep the number of their members low.)

Unfortunately, your tuner can only tell you the letter name of the note you’re playing, and not if it’s the correct variation you’re trying to tune to. So, you might be tuned to Fat String E when you really should be tuned to Skinny String E! AARRRGHH! It’s at this point where you might need to turn to the internet for help, namely one of the millions of tuning videos you can find on the video sharing site of your choice. Pick one at random, because they’re all the same, and after watching eight minutes of commercials, jump to the end, where the smug person in the video will proudly play each tuned string nice and slowly. If you need to, you can now use this as a reference for when you begin trying to tune your own instrument.

(Note: I did say that all tuning videos are the same, and for the most part that’s true. However, the one exception I know of is a guy who teaches you to tune a mandolin, in which case he keeps talking about his G-String in the most serious manner, over and over again: “Okay, take hold of your G-String!” It’s one of the most unintentionally hilarious things ever, and sometimes when I’ve had a bad day, I’ll just watch that video several times to help lift my spirits.)

Okay, so now you know what tuning your strings means, but you still need to know how to do it. We’ll start with the big, thick E string. (Not your G-String.) Squinting intently, follow it up the neck of the guitar to where it ends. If it disappears just past the big, scary hole, you’ve gone in the wrong direction and need to do a three-point turn and head back the opposite way. Eventually, you’ll see that its terminus is a metal post that the string is wrapped around, holding it in place. Also note that at the end of the post is a handy little knob you can twist. This knob is the key to everything. If you twist it one way, the string tightens, and if you twist it the other, it will loosen. However, keep in mind that the end of the string, not to mention possibly the ends of its neighbors, might be poking out of the wrapping like a thorn bush, ready to puncture your flesh at the slightest misstep. This is why I recommend you have plenty of bandages and antiseptic on hand any time you attempt the tuning process.

Now, here’s where things get extra-tricky. If you start looking at other tutorials, they’ll all say that there’s a method to determine what direction you need to twist to either tighten or loosen a string, one that depends on such complicated factors as what side of the guitar you’re currently working on, whether you’re north or south of the Equator, and whether or not you’re in Daylight Savings Time. However, that’s all nonsense. What I’ve discovered over the years is that the direction you need to turn the knob is completely random and can change daily, sometimes even hourly. When a knob does this, it’s called “reversing polarity,” and why it happens is a great mystery that’s best not dwelt upon. So, what you’re going to need to do is twist the knob in a random direction, clockwise or counterclockwise, and see what happens. You’ll either feel the string tighten, loosen, or it will break with a frighteningly loud snapping sound that will cause you to have a minor heart attack and/or poke one of your eyes out.

In the case of the string breaking, you’ll have to refer to another essay I intend to write, “Restringing Your Guitar in 36 Hours or Less.” However, if the string makes it through intact, you’ll now know what direction to turn the knob to tighten or loosen it, which then leaves you with the task of combining your tuner with the online video and the knob to sync it all up. However, you have to be fast about it, because there’s always the potential for the knob to reverse polarity halfway through the process, which has happened to me on more than one occasion.

When you’ve finally finished tuning all six strings, you’re going to need a break. You’ll most likely be bleeding from several puncture wounds, your nerves will be shot from the fear of strings breaking, and it will be several hours later. However, before you flop down on the couch, run your thumb down the strings and note that it now makes a completely unremarkable, yet totally inoffensive sound. Hooray!  Your guitar is tuned and sounds completely tolerable! (At least until it falls back out of tune sometime in the next few days.)

All right, that’s all for today! Join me next time when we discuss attempting to play a few basic chords! (Note that I said “attempting,” as I don’t want to get your hopes up.)

Until next time,

Keep Strummin’!

Keep Strummin' - Obtaining Your Axe

Okay, so you’ve made the big commitment to learn to play the guitar! Now what?

Obviously, your first priority is to take a series of classy portraits of yourself for use on the cover of your inevitable debut album. In addition, you might want to pen the introduction of your autobiography, which you will inevitably have to write, as it’ll be super-cool if it came from the time before your meteoric rise to stardom.

Once you get those important tasks taken care of, it’s time to move on to the next step: Getting yourself a guitar to play. Unfortunately, this can be a particularly confusing and stressful endeavor, due to the sheer number of options out there, and so I’ve taken the liberty of coming up with a potential hack. Listen close, as this may save you a LOT of time: What I want you to do is search your entire house, including all of those dark little closets that play host to massive spider parties, and see if you can find … a guitar. If so, congratulations, you already have one!!! Hooray!! What a lucky break! Now you can just skip the rest of this essay and take some well-earned time off.

Still here? Bummer! That means you don’t own a guitar and you now have to go out and find one.

The obvious play here is to go down to your local music shop, since there should be people there to help you narrow your options and assist you in making a wise choice that not only suits your needs but also fits your budget. However, I wouldn’t recommend this, since music shops all have an air of … how do I put it? … competence to them. The few times I’ve entered one, I’ve always felt like an absolute poser with no right to be there, like every single person inside has Jimmy Hendrix-like abilities and is already judging me. In fact, in my mind, this is how I fully expect things to play out each time I decide to frequent such an establishment:

Proprietor: {Mildly suspicious} “Oh, hello. Why are you here?”

Me: “I play the guitar. I’m here to examine your wares.”

Proprietor: {After doubling over in a fit of hysterics that lasts for far too long} “Oh, that’s a good one! You play the guitar!! Can you imagine? Still, you almost had me going there for a second!” {Wipes a few tears away} “Okay, now really, why are you here? Are you lost or something?”

However, if you don’t have crippling music-shop-anxiety, feel free to give it a shot and let me know how it goes!

Another option would be to go to a few local yard sales and see if you can pick one up cheap there. People are giving up learning to play left and right, and if they haven’t already destroyed their instrument in a fit of rage, there’s always a chance they might be selling it. The advantage of going this route, as opposed to looking at various online marketplaces, is that you get to see the instrument in-person and squint at it knowledgeably before deciding if you should buy it. Of course, you’ll have no idea what you’re doing, much like when you open the hood of your car to try and diagnose that funny wheezing noise, but you can still do a few basic checks, such as making sure it’s still in one piece, it doesn’t have any fire damage, and there are no rats’ nests inside of the sound hole. Beyond that, though, I recommend you don’t even touch it, much less try to play it. The last thing you want is to be chastised by some smug know-it-all who has the nerve to tell you that you’re not supposed to be holding it like an upright bass.

This leads me to my preferred method of obtaining a guitar: Intending to do intensive research online but then getting frustrated and picking one on a whim off of Amazon. Yes, I always go into purchasing a guitar with good intentions of doing my research, including a critical analysis of different brands and styles. However, I’ll then remember that about 7 million companies make guitars of various shapes and sizes, including some that you’d never expect, such as Yamaha. This sobering fact always makes my motivation crumble, leaving me looking for an easy way out. I’ll then go to Amazon, search for guitars, and sort the results by price. Next, I’ll scroll to those within my specific price range, look at a few, and finally pick one pretty much at random, just as long as there are no user reviews stating that these particular models have been known to spontaneously combust.

All right! Assuming you follow these steps, you’ll soon have gotten yourself a guitar! Congratulations! At that point it’ll almost be time to start completely humiliating yourself! However, you won’t be there yet. So, join me next time as we’ll discuss tuning your new guitar, which is a necessary step to make your initial attempts to play sound slightly less terrible.

Until next time,

Keep Strummin’!

Keep Strummin’ - Introduction

So you want to learn to play guitar, do you?

Maybe you’ve noticed the lulls in the conversation during your summer camping trips that you think would sound good filled with a high-decibel rendition of “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” Or perhaps you finally want to fill that guitar-sized empty spot in the corner of your living room, so that when somebody drops by and sees it, they might say, “Do you play?” at which point you could then shrug and reply, “Oh, I dabble.” Or, assuming you’re a single man under the age of 30, maybe you’re hoping that as soon as you learn to strum a single chord, every girl within a fifty-mile radius will fall hopelessly in love with you and come knocking on your door, prepared to fling themselves at you with reckless abandon.

Regardless of your motivations, though, I can say definitively that you’ve come to the right place.

Or, at least that you’ve come to a place.

I mean, a place that’s won’t charge you any money or anything.

Anyway, unless I get bored and eventually give up on this project, what’s going to follow this introduction is a series of straight-to-the-point essays that will help get you up to speed on playing the guitar. These will be written by a “regular Joe” for a “regular Joe,” which means I won’t be getting into all of the technical jargon and music theory that makes most internet tutorials on the subject much too dense and virtually unusable. I do this out of respect for your time and sanity, not to mention the fact that I’ve yet to figure any of it out yet myself. (Circle of fifths, am I right?) Plus, if I’m being honest, you don’t really need any of that stuff anyway, unless, of course, you’re one of those people; you know, those snobby guitarists who like to show off by playing things such as (rolls eyes) melodies.

But ... before we go any further, here’s a little bit about myself:

I play the guitar at a level somewhere above that of a beginner and below that of an expert.

Okay, now that we’ve established my rock-solid credentials, I’d like to next share a few, overarching thoughts about learning to play the guitar that you should keep in mind as you set out on your journey:

1) Be Ready To Be Terrible

I know it might sound harsh, but it’s best not to sugarcoat it. In fact, a recent survey has revealed that 17.4% of all beginning guitarists give up in less than a month. Or, wait, is that the percent of New Year’s resolutions that last through February? Anyway, the point is that it takes a certain kind of person to be able to push through the beginner phase, where you’re going to be terrible. Now, don’t panic, that’s totally normal. It happens to everybody. Heck, it even happened to Jerry Reed! (Source: My assumptions)

In short, learning to play has a way of throwing your ego onto the ground, stepping on it, and grinding it into dust. It’s just the natural order of things. You might not believe it now, but you will after you attempt to play a few chords and each time the result sounds like you’ve just thrown a cat down a flight of steps.

2) Don’t Compare Yourself to Others

Don’t do it. Just don’t. You see, no matter where you go or who you play with, there is always going to be somebody better than you, probably one of those annoying “melody” people, and after listening to this person perform, you’re going to want to set your guitar, and possibly a few other things, on fire. The only real way to deal with it is to decide early on that you’re only going to compare yourself to … wait for it … yourself. Yes, as long as you’re doing better than you were a few months ago, then all is well and you can move forward with your head held high! (Side note: It’s when you’re continually getting worse month after month that you might need to have a hard conversation with yourself, which is something I’ll cover in the “Quitting With Dignity” essay, assuming I remember to write it.)

3) Find a Proper Practice Place

Having a good spot to learn to play is paramount. For example, a courthouse jury room would be a bad choice, as would a doctor’s office or my living room. In short, you want to be outside of the hearing range of any high-strung individuals with potential anger issues, as you never want to have to use your instrument as a means of self-defense should someone finally snap as you work through “Sweet Home Alabama” for the sixtieth time. Also, if your practice area is not located on a ground floor, make sure the windows all have locks. You see, one of the greatest temptations when you’re learning to play is to throw your instrument out of one of these said windows, so you can hear the satisfying sound of it breaking into a thousand pieces on the sidewalk below. Now, while this can be a fun little exercise, it can also be quite fiscally irresponsible, especially if it becomes a regular habit.

4.) Always Make Sure Your Lists End at 3

All right, that’s it for today! Next time we’ll get into how you should go about obtaining your first guitar! (Note that I didn’t say “buying,” as theft is most definitely on the table.)

Until next time,

Keep Strummin’!