Electronic Guitar Tuners
The first step in creating beautiful classical guitar music is to have an instrument that is in tune!
Having a guitar that is even slightly out of tune can be really off-putting for an audience, or anyone who might be listening to you. It’s a great skill to be able to tune your guitar by ear, using a tuning fork or pitch pipes for a reference tone, but I would personally recommend using an electronic guitar tuner.
Back when I first started playing guitar, electronic tuners were basically unheard of, and when you did see one it was a large, clunky device that used a microphone and a dial with a big red needle. Not only that, but they were staggeringly expensive. Thankfully, the world of electronics has moved swiftly along, and now there are hundreds of options when choosing to buy an electronic tuner.
The best kind for classical guitar is definitley the clip-on headstock tuner. This device, usually quite small, clips on to the guitar and uses vibrations to sense the note and display whether the string is flat, sharp or in-tune. Like everything else in the commercial world, there are good ones and not so good ones, and they come in at many different price points. You could get a decent tuner, like the Snark for as little as AUD20, while my personal favourite, the rather flashy TC Electronic PolyTune Clip retails at about AUD100. But a surprising newcomer to the market, and one that I use now is the D’Addario Planet Waves NS-Micro tuner that attaches to your headstock, and is so small that it remains completely out of view from the audience, meaning you can permanenllty leave it on your instrument. Super convenient, and very reasonable in price!
