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Summary: Learn how to stretch and re-tune the strings of your acoustic guitar to ensure that your instrument will remain in tune and play music beautifully in this free video series.
Views: 370 | Tags: guitar, strings, scales, theory, change, tuning, acoustic, pick
About the Expert
Matt Graham Matt Graham is a graduate from Texas A&M University and pursuing a Graduate degree from the University of Texas. He also has a love for cooking and not much m... read more
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Questions & AnswersMATT GRAHAM: All right. So now I've got all the strings on the guitar. And as I put them on I brought each string into tune, you know, like I tuned them all up. But what happens when you first put new strings on, they're going to stretch again like the whole string will stretch as well as whatever you got wrapped around the post. But then also as you add more strength, even though I was tuning each string as I've put it on, the tension of all those other strings is going to slightly cause your neck to bend which is natural but as that neck bends it's going to make the strings you've already put on and tuned more loose. So you know, yeah, I tuned every string when I was putting it on. So ideally I could play a coordinate would be in tuned right? Nah-uh. So what we're going to do is we're going to retune each string. So I'm looking at the floor at my chromatic tuner and I'm just going to bring each string back up into tune. Some of these will stretch a whole note lower than they ought to be then I'll put them before where I put them before. And then that one was really low. But then after we get everything back in tune, we're going to stretch it. And by stretching it, intentionally, you're going to again shorten the amount of time that your strings will be going out of tune when you first put them on. And so a technique I like to use when I stretch is to rest my palm on the strings just in front of the bridge and then grab the strings with my thumb and forefinger, two at a time, and then put my other hand down here just in front of the nut, and what I'm going to do is just push down with the palm of my hand and pull up with my forefinger on those strings just several times and that's going to stretch them. Playing them will stretch them out too, but this gets the stretching done a lot quicker. So I just tuned everything up but I'm stretching these strings again. Let's hear it. Let's try to play that chord again see if it's in tune. Its closer but you can hear a lot of those strings are stretched out more. So what I'm going to do is go through each string again, tune it up again, stretch again and tune it up again. And after you do that two or three times, your string should be pretty well stretched out and start to stay in tune with that nice, bright tone that you'll get with new strings.
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