Robo scientists, Richard Feynman, is quoted as saying, “If you understand quantum physics, you don't understand quantum physics”. In a similar light, if you haven't had a guitar tuning nightmare, you haven't recorded guitar. Otherwise outstanding guitar players often come to the conclusion that they can't play a D chord in tune. (Just for the record, it's generally more embarrassing when a person isn't aware of their D chord problem than it actually is for them to actually have a D chord tuning problem.) It's a very common problem. Very common! The studio world makes this whole tuning issue a total freakin' nightmare on a bad day.

In this article, I'm going to discuss advanced techniques to save you a few billion hours in time in the next few years. I'm making the assumption that you already know how damn good a performance playing IN TUNE sounds and how awful a performance that is 1% off sounds. While many bands may not have the budget, inclination, or ear to care, the serious projects will require mega tuning. It's easy to waste a weekend on a single riff. I know. I've done it.

Some guitar players don't have much trouble and can just jump in and rock. These guitar players are few and far between. If you've never had tuning troubles, odds are good that you haven't really heard in tune guitars before. Guitars that are REALLY in tune are dramatically clearer, bigger, meaner, and better on the engineering end and dramatically more musical. I'm convinced that the #1 reason people struggle with recording acoustic guitars is they are trying to compensate for the boxy sound of a barely out-of-tune guitar with mic placement and such. When you get the guitar REALLY in-tune, you will hear it and LOVE it.

#1 - A Tuner Is Just a Gadget
Tuners are nice little devices. They tell you the frequency of the note a person has struck. The problem is strings go sharp when you first hit them and go flat immediately afterwards. This means that just because you got a string to land on “E” or whatever on the tuner doesn't mean when you strike it with 10x more (or less) force in the take that the string will go sharp.

#2 - Never Twist Flat
One of my favorite tactics that I use daily is to never turn the tuning peg flat. If I'm tuning the G string and I end up being a little sharp, I don't grab the tuning peg. I simply bend the G string HARD. There is always slack hiding in the string and a hard bend will yank that slack right out of there. If you leave this slack in there, it will slowly come out over time and the guitar will drift flat as you play it.

If you aren't so great at bends (it amazes me as a crappy lead guitar player that some really talented guitar players look like something is wrong with them when they attempt to bend a string!) it's okay to physically grab the string with your right and and pull on it a bit. You don't want to yank TOO hard, but you can probably pull a little harder than you think.

This one takes a bit of practice as you have to nail your pitch by SLOWLY turning the tuning peg sharper and sharper. (Kinda like when getting gas for your car. No one wants to go over the magic dollar amount in your head.) Of course, if you go too far, you should just bend the string, and repeat.

In rare occasions when you go too sharp and there isn't enough slack, always go way down so you can come back up, bend the string, and tighten it some more. Repeat.
#3 - Stretch 'em Hard!

I see guitar players all the time who toss brand new strings on, tune up, and think they are ready to track. I'm not sure where they got that idea, but I'm positive all of 'em have fought through wild tuning fluctuations at first. ...