Guitar Technology: Part 1

Last week I gave a general overview of what sort of technologies one could use in the music classroom. If we narrowed the spectrum down into instrument specific technologies we could talk even more about all of the different kinds we have. Because I am a guitar major I will briefly touch upon the technologies available and which ones would be applicable to the classroom. This is not including the standard technologies that a teacher would definitely want to have e.g. whiteboard (with markers), a computer, paper, pencil/pen, an overhead device, etc. This post will serve as the beginning of a bibliographic series that go into detail about the different technologies and how best to use them in the classroom.

Tuning

The first issue to think about when it comes to the guitar are the different tuning instruments. Do you want a hand crank for new strings? What tuner should I buy? Should I have them rely on their ears? Do I actually have time to tune? These are questions that a teacher must ask before making the purchase because it will probably come out of your own pocket. In my opinion, tuning is important. With that said, tuning by ear must be encourage but should not be the sole form of accomplishing the end goal which is to be tuned. Tuning by ear can take some time even with a trained ear let alone the student’s ears.

 Personally, I own the Korg CA-1 which is an “orchestral tuner” meaning that you play a pitch and it tells you how sharp or flat you are to the designated pitch. It runs on battery and is reliable. It also plays any note you want which is great for large classrooms, especially orchestra and band. After internalizing the pitch, the students can tune individually before instruction begins.

There are a number of different head-stock tuners specifically made for the guitar. These work really well since it operates from the vibrations through the guitar not the frequencies which can be easily distorted.

The way my High School instructor tuned was by passing around a headstock tuner during instruction. When the tuner reached you, you would tune as silently as you could and then pass it along. This method seems the easiest form of tuning without sacrificing much time.

Here are a list of brands:

Korg

Snark

D’Addario

Intellitouch

Taylor