Comparative Study of Digital Signal Processing Techniques for Tuning an Acoustic Guitar

This paper presents the result of a comparative study between different methodologies for tuning an acoustic guitar. In order to tune a guitar, determining the fundamental frequency of the note being played is crucial. Various digital signal processing techniques have been employed to analyse the sounds of musical instruments such as guitar, piano, etc. With the number of techniques already available, it becomes imperative to determine the optimal technique. In this study, the sounds of guitar strings are recorded and stored as WAV files, that act as input to the tuning program, implemented on Python and MATLAB. Fast Fourier Transform and Spectral Density Estimation are the two techniques that have been compared. The tuning process by both the methods has been explained in detail and the results of both the methods have been presented in a tabular format for comparing the accuracy of each method. The method with the results closer to the real values of the fundamental frequency is regarded as the better method.