The tuner above listens through your device’s microphone and is built for acoustic guitars — steel-string and nylon-string alike. It locks onto the fundamental note of each string, ignores room noise where it can, and tells you plainly when it needs a clearer note. Here’s how to get the best out of it.
How to Tune Your Guitar
- Find a quiet room — turn off fans, TV and background music.
- Tap Start Tuner and allow microphone access when your browser asks.
- Hold your phone — or sit near your computer — about 15–30 cm from the sound hole.
- Pluck one open string at a time, and lightly mute the others with your palm.
- Let the note ring for a second — the tuner reads best once the pluck settles.
- Turn the tuning key slowly; small movements make a big difference.
- Tune up to the note where you can: if a string is sharp, drop it slightly below the target and come back up to centre. Strings hold their tune better when you finish by tightening.
- Move to the next string only after the green in-tune light — then give all six a quick second pass, because tuning one string can nudge the others.
Why keep it in tune at all?
An in-tune guitar within arm’s reach gets picked up; an out-of-tune one gathers dust in the corner. For a story about the place a guitar can hold in a person’s life — and what one left behind can come to mean — read what happened when Dave left his guitar at ours.
Standard Guitar Tuning
Standard tuning runs E–A–D–G–B–E from the thickest string to the thinnest. The 6th string is the low E — the fattest one, closest to the ceiling when you’re holding the guitar.
| String | Note | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| 6th (thickest) | Low E — E2 | 82.41 Hz |
| 5th | A — A2 | 110.00 Hz |
| 4th | D — D3 | 146.83 Hz |
| 3rd | G — G3 | 196.00 Hz |
| 2nd | B — B3 | 246.94 Hz |
| 1st (thinnest) | High E — E4 | 329.63 Hz |
Those six notes aren’t random — the intervals between them are what make chord shapes fall neatly under your fingers, and they tie straight into how keys and scales relate to each other. If you want that bigger musical map to click, spend five minutes with our interactive circle of fifths tool — it shows how every key, sharp and flat connects, and why some chords feel like coming home.
What the Meter Means
♭ Needle left — FLAT. The string is below the target note. Tighten the tuning key a little to raise the pitch.
✓ Needle centred — IN TUNE. Within ±5 cents of the target, which is closer than most ears can hear. Green means done.
♯ Needle right — SHARP. The string is above the target note. Loosen the tuning key a little to lower the pitch.
Go slowly. A cent is one-hundredth of the gap between two frets, and a few millimetres of peg travel can swing the needle a long way. Tiny turns, then let the note ring again.
Better Results With Acoustic Guitars
- Pluck clearly, but don’t hammer the string — a hard strike rings briefly sharp before it settles.
- Mute the strings you’re not tuning so their ringing doesn’t muddy the reading.
- Keep the sound hole 15–30 cm from the microphone.
- Avoid fans, TV, conversation and traffic noise — the tuner will tell you when it can’t hear cleanly.
- Let the reading settle before you turn the machine head, and pause between adjustments.
- Retune after fitting new strings or any big change in string tension, temperature or humidity — and expect brand-new strings to drift for a few days.
Steel-string guitars
Steel strings throw off bright overtones, especially when picked hard near the bridge. Pluck over the sound hole with medium strength and let the note ring — the tuner locks onto the fundamental, and a clean, relaxed pluck settles fastest. Fingerpicked notes work fine; just play them deliberately.
Nylon-string guitars
Nylon is quieter, with a softer attack and a warmer, slower-blooming note. Pluck a touch firmer with the flesh of your thumb, bring the guitar closer to the microphone (about 15 cm), and give each note a full second to develop. Nylon also stretches far more than steel — retune often in the first week after a string change.
The instrument you keep coming back to
Tuning is the small ritual of looking after an instrument, and instruments that get looked after — and played hard — end up woven into the musician who plays them. For a lovely example of that bond between a performer and one battered old guitar, read the tale of Glen Hansard and the Horse.
Common Problems
The tuner shows the wrong note
Usually strong overtones or a neighbouring string ringing along. Pluck once over the sound hole — not hard, not near the bridge — and mute the other five strings. If it keeps happening, tap that string’s button above to lock Manual mode, so the tuner only compares against the one target note.
The reading jumps around
Almost always background noise or too much distance from the microphone. Move to 15–30 cm, quieten the room, and let each note ring instead of re-plucking rapidly. The signal indicator at the top tells you when the tuner can’t hear a clean note.
The tuner doesn’t hear the guitar
Check microphone permission first — the padlock icon by the address bar on desktop, or your phone’s browser settings. Then watch the level bar while you pluck: if it doesn’t move, the mic isn’t picking you up, so move closer and pluck a little firmer. Still nothing? Tap Restart Mic.
The guitar still sounds wrong after tuning
Do a second pass on all six strings — tuning one changes the tension on the neck and nudges the others. If the open strings show green but chords up the neck sound sour, the strings may be old and worn “false”, or the guitar’s intonation needs a setup.
One string keeps drifting flat or sharp
New strings stretching is the usual culprit — stretch them gently with your hand and retune a few times. Otherwise look for windings slipping on the tuning post, or big temperature and humidity swings moving the wood. Nylon trebles are famous for drifting flat for days after a change.
