C6 lap tuning

[Tony Harris]

I've read thatI should tune my G's a little sharp and my E's and A's a little flat. Since I now have a tuner that can read in cents, has anybody worked out exactly how sharp and flat these should be?

[Earnest Bovine]

Try
C +6 cents
G +3 cents

A -3 cents
E -6 cents

If you stretch these out (to say 5 and 10) you will sound better alone but worse with a band.

To get along better with a band you may try reducing to, say, 2 and 4 cents.

Also every giutar and string has its own quirks. If you use a plain, unwound A string, you may have to go a little flat on the A since bar pressure will raise its pitch more than that of the other strings.

[Mike Fried]

Try using natural string harmonics to tune the G, A and E strings to the tuner-tuned C's. To do this, first chime the (tuned) sixth string C at the seventh fret to obtain the G note, and tune the fourth string to it. Then chime the 6th string C at the fourth (or ninth) fret to obtain the E and tune the fifth string octave harmonic to that. Then chime the third string A at the seventh fret to tune it to your fifth string E octave harmonic. The second string C and first string E can then be tuned to the octave harmonic of the sixth and fifth strings, respectively. When that's all done, you can check and jot down the tuner settings for all the strings to duplicate them from then on. This is a pretty wordy explanation, but the procedure yields a guitar tuned "Just", which will give you the sweetest chords and harmonies.