Tuning
Use a Tuner
A digital tuner can tell you how close you are to making a note sound right. Therefore, if possible, you should practice your scales in front of a tuner. The tuner will require you to input a pitch. The common pitch these days is 440. The tuner will have numbers from a zero that is displayed to the left and to the right. The numbers are called ‘cents’. If your note tunes to the right of the zero, it is ‘whatever-number cents sharp’ and if your note tunes to the left of the zero it is ‘whatever-number cents flat’. Depending on how picky you need to be… +/-(plus or minus) less than 20 cents is in tune , +/-(plus or minus) less than 10 cents is in tune , +/- 5 cents is in tune , +/- 3 cents is in tune. There is a variety of tuners available. An affordable tuner is the KORG TM-40(It also has a metronome feature built in). There are better tuners on the market, though the ones of greater expense are unneeded when you are learning.
Use a Metronome
A metronome helps you practice at the right time. If a song says 176 bpm(beats per minute), yet you’ve heard the song before, you’ll naturally play the song how you’ve heard it. With a metronome like the KORG TM-40, you can set the beats per minute and the number of beats per measure so you can have the correct timing. That is, you can use a metronome to help you play written notes when you should.
