Let’s talk more deeply than just how to tune a guitar

It’s pretty obvious that learning how to tune a guitar is a critical part of playing the instrument. Without proper tuning, nothing you do will sound right or particularly good.

But you can help yourself become a better guitarist by not only understanding how to tune a guitar, but also by understanding some of the music theory behind the mechanics. Let’s talk a bit about that here.

What is standard tuning?

On a typical six-string guitar, standard tuning refers to each string being tuned to a specific pitch or note. It is the most common guitar tuning. Specifically, the thickest string plays the note E with a frequency of 82 hertz. The next thinnest string plays the note A above the E string. Each string after that is thinner and plays a higher note. The next four strings play D, G, B, and E with the last E at a frequency of 329.628 hertz.

When beginners contemplate how to tune a guitar, it’s natural to think that there is one–and only one–way to properly tune up. But in reality, there are countless legitimate and good tuning possibilities.

Each different type of tuning can lend it’s own unique characteristics to the sound of the music you make on your guitar.

But, since we’re learning, let’s stick to standard tuning. I don’t really want to focus just on the procedure of how to tune a guitar in this article. Instead, I want to talk about what standard tuning means to you as you strive to unravel the mystery of this amazing instrument.

Don’t skip your education on scale degrees and intervals

This article relies on your knowledge of scale degrees and musical intervals. If you don’t know what those are, you have some homework to do before this article will make sense.

Read my Scale Degrees and Musical Intervals article. If you don’t understand the major scale, read my Understanding the Major Scale is Fundamental Music Theory article.

With that required reading out of the way, we can talk about how to tune a guitar. But more importantly, why it works the way it does. And more importantly still, why knowing that can make you a better guitarist faster.

The rogue B string

Each string on a six-string guitar in standard tuning is tuned a degree of a fourth higher than the string lower than it. Except for the B string which is tuned a third above the next string lower than it.

That exception makes knowing how to tune a guitar–and actually doing it–a bit more difficult. On the other hand, it makes playing the guitar easier. But then on the other other hand, it makes understanding the fretboard more confusing. So, with standard tuning–with any tuning, for that matter–you’ll need to take the good with the bad.

Anyway, it’s that B-string exception that causes the pattern I discussed for learning the notes on the fretboard (A Simple Pattern Can Help You Learn the Notes on a Guitar) to be different when the B and High E strings are involved.

The fretboard is full of repeating patterns. And if the B string were only tuned up a fourth like all the other strings, these patterns would be identical regardless of which strings you played them on.

But because the B string is tuned differently, we have to compensate for that difference by altering the patterns that we use on other strings. Confused yet? Let’s see if we can step back and make sense of it.

Close is good enough when you’re alone

Let’s start on the Low E string. Pluck that open string to sound an E note. That’s the lowest note you can possibly play on a guitar in standard tuning.

But wait; how do you know that the Low E string is actually sounding a E note? Well, in general, it doesn’t really matter too much if you’re playing alone. As long as you’re somewhere in the neighborhood of E (and that only so that the string isn’t too loose to play or so tight that it might snap), you can tune your guitar “to itself” and it’ll sound just fine.

In fact, it’s not uncommon for players to actually tune their “Low E” string down to Eb or D, even though they obviously know how to tune a guitar. They do this to achieve a deeper, richer sound, or make heavier strings easier to play.

As long as they’re playing alone it won’t matter to the listener. Or, if they’re not playing alone, all other musicians will have to tune or play their instruments to match.

The all-important fourth degree

But let’s assume you’ve used a reference tone or an electronic tuner to tune your Low E string to an actual E and all of the other strings to their proper pitches. So you have your strings, from lowest to highest, tuned to E, A, D, G, B, E. That’s standard tuning.

Now let’s explore a little bit. Starting again on that E string, play the E major scale up the string. You find E in the open position, F# on fret 2, G# on fret 4, and A on fret 5. So, E is the 1, F# the 2, G# the 3, and A is the 4. This shows that there is an interval of a 4th from E to A in E major.

That A on the fifth fret of the low E string is exactly the same note as the A played on the open A string. Try it. Fret the Low E string at fret 5 and play both the E and A strings together. With your guitar properly tuned, these are exactly the same note.

And this is the main secret to how to tune a guitar when you don’t have an electronic tuner handy. When those two notes are identical, then you know your Low E and A strings are in tune with each other.

Same note, different locations

As an interesting aside, this is one of the special and fascinating things about the guitar. On a piano, you can only play any of the instrument’s 88 notes in one way. But on the guitar, as you’ve just seen, you have options. You can play the same note in different positions. And depending upon which note you’re talking about, there may be three or four different places that you can play that exact same note. We can look more closely at that in another article.

There is only one way to play all of the notes below fret 5 on the E string. But as you just saw, at fret 5 on the Low E string, you’re playing a note that you can also play on the open A string.

The same, yet different, and that builds character

The note at fret 5 of the Low E string is indeed the exact same note as that on the open A string, but they actually sound a bit different. They have a different Timbre (pronounced “Tamber”…go figure). You can think of a note’s timbre as its tonal quality or characteristics.

It’s no different than a man and a woman singing the same exact note. They’re both singing the same note, and yet you can easily tell the man’s voice from the woman’s. Their voices have different and distinct timbres.

As you progress as a guitar player, you will begin to choose to play certain things in different locations on the guitar neck depending upon the tonal quality you’re after. Doing so adds a completely new aspect to your playing, and it’s pretty cool that you can shape the sound of notes, chords, and passages just by changing where on the neck you play them.

Now, back to learning how to tune a guitar.

Tuning some more fourths

OK, now that we have the E and the A strings in tune, let’s next tune the D string. After all, that’s the basis of how to tune a guitar. You get each string in tune one at at time.

How to tune a guitar D string

And tuning the D string works in exactly the same way. The D string is tuned a fourth above the A string. Prove it for yourself.

Start with the open A note and work your way up the A major scale. A is the 1, B is the 2 at the second fret, C# is the 3 at the fourth fret, and D is the 4 at the fifth fret. D is the 4th degree of the A major scale. And that D note on the fifth fret of the A string is exactly the same as the D note at the open position of the D string.

In terms of how to tune a guitar, fret the A string at the fifth fret and play the A and D strings simultaneously. Adjust the tuning peg on the D string until the two notes match.

How to tune a guitar G string

So far we see that the A string is tuned a fourth above the E string, and the D string is tuned a fourth above the A string.

And guess what…the G string works just the same. G is the 4th degree of the D major scale, and you can work out the D major scale to find that G at the fifth fret of the D string.

That G note is identical to the note played with the open G string. So again, in terms of how to tune a guitar, play the fifth fret of the D string and the open G. These are both G notes if your guitar is in tune. If they are not the exact same note, adjust the tuning peg of the G string until the notes match perfectly.

Someone always has to be different

Now, here’s where the complication comes in. Just when you’ve gotten comfortable with how to tune a guitar using fourths, the rules change.

That’s because the B string is not tuned a fourth above the G string. Instead, it’s tuned only a third higher.

In the key of G major, G is the 1, A at fret 2 is the 2, and B at fret 4 is the 3. So to tune your B string, press the G string at fret 4 (not fret 5 like the other strings!) and play the G and B strings together. They should be exactly the same note. If they’re not, adjust the tuning peg for the B string until they are.

And finally, the last step in our little journey into how to tune a guitar comes back to familiar ground. The E string is again tuned to a fourth above the B string.

The 4 of B major is E, and just like the other strings, you’ll find that E at the fifth fret. So, play the fifth fret of the B string and the open E. If those are not the same note, adjust the E string until they are.

Why is the B string different?

Well, I said I wasn’t necessarily going to really discuss how to tune a guitar in this article, but now I’ve done it anyway. OK, since that’s valuable information for you, we’ll leave it.

But I’m sure that just like everyone else, you’re wondering why this is how to tune a guitar. Why does that B string break such a nice, convenient pattern?

Well, people have spent a lot of time diagnosing this and attempting to answer that question. No one really seems to know who came up with this tuning, but most people agree that it was a really clever tuning to settle upon.

Standard tuning makes some things much easier

True, the tuning of the B string breaks patterns and complicates things in some ways. But it also makes things much easier in other ways.

For instance, it makes playing many chord shapes–particularly open chords–much easier.

Playing chords would be much more complicated if the B were tuned to a fourth above the G, meaning it would be the C string instead of the B string. The High E string would be tuned to an F because that’s a fourth above C. Suddenly many simple chords would be much harder to play.

I’d like to explore some of those concepts further in a future article, but for now, take my word for it.

It would also be more difficult to play the pentatonic scales in that tuning. The nice, comfortable pattern for playing the pentatonic scales would be upended. That pattern would be clumsier if the B string were instead a C string and the High E were actually an F string.

If you don’t understand the pentatonic scale, read my deep dive article to come to speed:

What is the pentatonic scale: a complete exploration

Again, those are concepts that maybe I can explore further in future articles, but there’s one more point I really want to make about this whole how to tune a guitar business.

Understanding the fretboard

Understanding the relationship each string has to the next higher string can help you immensely when it comes to learning your way around the fretboard and identifying the notes across the neck.

Refer to my article A Simple Pattern Can Help You Learn the Notes on a Guitar. From that discussion, you know how to find at least two other instances of the same note in other octaves.

So, for instance, play the Low E string at the third fret to sound the note G. Using the pattern in that article, you know that the note at the fifth fret of the D string is also a G an octave higher.

So, if the G on the low E string is the 1 of the G major scale, the G at the fifth fret of the D string is the 1 of the G major scale one octave higher. It stands to reason, of course, that between those two notes are all of the other notes of the G major scale. And now that you’ve learned about scale degrees and you understand how to tune a guitar, you can work out where those notes are.

For instance, you know there is only a half step from the 7 of the scale to the 1 of the next octave. So you can quickly figure that fret 4 of the D string must be the 7 of the G major scale. That makes that note an F#.

Use your knowledge of tuning in fourths to quickly identify any fourth on the neck

Now what you know about how to tune a guitar gives you a handy sign post for quickly identifying the 4 of any major scale. Or look at it another way. You know that most of the strings are tuned in fourths. This gives you a fast way to know the name of any note on the same fret one string higher.

Huh? OK, let’s take a look. Play the open Low E. Then Play the open A. We already discovered that the A is a fourth above the E. But that’s not unique just to the open position. It works no matter what fret you’re on.

Try it. Play a C note at the eighth fret of the Low E string. We know from our study of the major scale that the fourth of the C major scale is F. And we know that the A string is a fourth above the Low E string. So the A string fretted at the eighth fret is a fourth above the C note played at the eighth fret of the Low E string. The note at the eighth fret of the A string has to be an F. And indeed it is. It works for every note you start with.

That pesky B string

This is true going from any string to the next higher string. Except when going from the G string to the B string. Remember, the B string is only a third above the G string.

So play the C note that you find at the fifth fret of the G string. To find the F note that is a fourth above that C you have to fret the sixth fret of the B string. You have to go one fret higher to compensate for the fact that the B string is tuned a half step lower in relation to the G string.

It’s kind of a confusing concept, but anytime you’re going to the B string, you have to go one fret higher to compensate for the fact that the B is only a third above the G string. Whether you’re playing melodies, scales, chords, whatever, you have to compensate by going one fret higher on the B string.

Now that you know it, don’t think too hard about it

Most of the time while you’re playing you won’t really consciously think about this. You’ll learn your chords and patterns and just comfortably and naturally play them.

But understanding this slightly quirky aspect of how to tune a guitar gives you a more full understanding of your instrument. It has helped me become more comfortable with the instrument. Just knowing the mechanics of how to tune a guitar really–oddly enough–helps you grasp the instrument more quickly and more fully.

You will come to understand why an open A chord has a different finger configuration than an open E chord. And an open D chord’s fingering is different yet. That future article is starting to write itself!

Conclusion

It’s obviously important to know how to tune a guitar. But it’s also important to understand why a guitar is tuned the way it is. The special relationship of one string being tuned a fourth above the string below it makes it easy to identify the fourth degree of any major scale.

And yet, the B string breaks the comfortable pattern by being only a third above the G string. While this makes playing chords and scale patterns easier, it does introduce some confusion and complexity into fully understanding the fretboard.

But once you understand the relationships that we outlined in this article, the mysterious guitar becomes a little less frightening. You understand the instrument just that much better. And with understanding comes confidence.

And that’s why it’s important to not only understand how to tune a guitar, but also to understand the special relationships between the strings created by standard tuning.