Improving Your Ear by Using the Song Nothing Else Matters by Metallica to Tune Your Guitar

This is an essay about guitar tuning using the Song Nothing Else Matters by Metallica. Some people say that this song is a sellout song, but who cares? It is great for tuning your guitar. Lost or broke your tuner? You can use this method to help tune your guitar. In fact, I would say that you are a rookie if you can’t tune your guitar using this method. Specifically, not the whole song, just the first six notes. The first six notes are the ones everyone knows. They repeat quite a bit in the song. They are E, G, B, E, B, G, in order. These notes describe an Em chord. When played as Metallica plays them, they are an E minor arpeggio.

So, why is this important? These six notes are used in the standard tuning of a guitar. The most common tuning for a guitar, from the fattest string to the thinnest, is E, A, D, G, B, E. If you notice the pattern, these notes are all in the introduction to Nothing Else Matters. Also, if you are serious about getting tuned, a very significant amount of effort went into making it. That means, the notes are exact, without question. In fact, these notes are probably more exact than almost any tuner you can buy.

A good way to start getting used to tuning this song is:

1. Listen to it frequently. This will help you commit the notes to memory. Listening to music is a great way to improve your ear.

2. Try to tune your guitar using the first 6 notes of Nothing Else Matters while the song is going on in the back ground. This idea is similar to using pitch pipes. However, the tones a cd player plays are much more reliable as standards for tuning. For example, a cassette tape would produce notes, but their quality wouldn’t be as reliable.

So in order to tune your guitar, tune the 4 strings that the song Nothing Else Matters uses, but matching the tones of your guitar to the first 6 notes of Nothing Else Matters. Again, this will require quite a bit of practice, but in the end it should really help you remember how to tune your guitar.

If you have been successful so far with step #2, then use these 4 strings that are in tune to tune the other 2 strings of your guitar so all 6 strings are tuned their standard.

3. The ultimate goal of this method is to be able to simply remember the notes from Nothing Else Matters to tune your guitar without the aid of having the song play in the background. That is, the goal is to be able to tune your guitar without having a tuner. For most people this takes a lot of practice. In fact, it may take years worth of practice to get to step 3, and it is easily conceivable that you will never be able to get to step 3 no matter how hard you try because probably not everyone is capable of having perfect pitch.