This may come as no surprise to you but guitars are typically made of wood.  And as with any wood structure, many environmental factors can contribute to the condition of a guitar.  What I mean is that factors such as temperature and humidity can cause your guitar to slowly change.  I recently got an email about such an issue from one of my readers here as he was tackling the task of learning how to play guitar and have gotten his permission to repost his question here as I believe it is a common one.

I saw your web-page and thought I’d give you a shot at answering a question for me, if you could.  I am a brand new player.  I am teaching myself how to play guitar using books.  I am having trouble with some very simple things.  I bought a chromatic tuner and it seems to work great.  Problem is that the strings don’t seem tight enough.  Secondly and probably most importantly for now is that after replacing the 1st string, I cant seem to get any sound out of it  with the string pressed behind the first fret.  It’s just flat and blah.  Second fret is fine.  Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Jerome+

And my response: