[brandondrury]

In my experience, the #1 problem with tuning is not in the tuning of the guitar or even how hard the player smashes down on the strings (although this is often a problem too).

The number one problem is how hard they strum / pick each string.

Take a needle tuner and hit your low E string. You'll notice that it flys up a little sharp and then comes down to hopefully the right note. Then it will go flat slowly. The intensity which you hit the string makes a tremendous difference on where that note peaks and where it levels out.

I don't know how many times I've sat in front of my studio monitors and heard a guitar player hit an out of tune "D" chord. Red flags will fly up. Then I'll ask them to play it again, and it will be in tune. The problem is in the players hands.

So, there are quite a few tricks to improve guitar tuning, but the best way to improve tuning is to improve smoothness in the playing.

I always have the guitar player tune using a tuner. From there, we sweeten as needed. It's not uncommon at all to end up with tuning settings that only work for a single chord and are useless for other chords, but ideally we can find a tuning that works with the chords in the song, the guitar, and the player.

Brandon