Some tunings are used for particular songs, and may be named after the song's title. Alternative tunings change the fingering of common chords when playing the guitar, and this can ease the playing of certain chords while simultaneously increase the difficulty of playing other chords. This often gives folk music its haunting and lamenting ambience due to the atmosphere and mood that the notes make. Alternative tunings are common in folk music where the guitar may be called upon to produce a sustained note or chord known as a drone. These offer different kinds of deep or ringing sounds, chord voicings, and fingerings on the guitar. Chromatic note progressionĪlternative ('alternate') tuning refers to any open-string note arrangement other than standard tuning.

Scales and chords are simplified by major thirds tuning and all-fourths tuning, which are regular tunings maintaining the same musical interval between consecutive open-string notes. The irregular major third breaks the fingering patterns of scales and chords, so that guitarists have to memorize multiple chord-shapes for each chord. This tuning pattern of (low) fourths, one major third, and one fourth was inherited by the guitar from its predecessor instrument, the viol. The open notes of the second (B) and third (G) strings are separated by four semitones (a major third). Separation of the first (high E) and second (B) string, as well as the separation between the third (G), fourth (D), fifth (A), and sixth (low E) strings by a five- semitone interval (a perfect fourth) allows the guitarist to play a chromatic scale with each of the four fingers of the fretting hand controlling one of the first four frets (index finger on fret 1, little finger on fret 4, etc.) only when the hand is in the first position. Standard tuning provides reasonably simple fingering ( fret-hand movement) for playing standard scales and basic chords in all major and minor keys. This is to reduce the need for ledger lines in music written for the instrument, and thus simplify the reading of notes when playing the guitar. The guitar is a transposing instrument that is, music for guitars is notated one octave higher than the true pitch. In scientific pitch notation, the guitar's standard tuning consists of the following notes: E 2– A 2– D 3– G 3– B 3– E 4. Standard tuning is the tuning most frequently used on a six-string guitar and musicians assume this tuning by default if a specific alternate (or scordatura) is not mentioned. In standard tuning, the C-major chord has multiple shapes because of the irregular major-third between the G- and B-strings. Communities of guitarists who share a common musical tradition often use the same or similar tuning styles. There are hundreds of these tunings, often with small variants of established tunings. The term guitar tunings may refer to pitch sets other than standard tuning, also called nonstandard, alternative, or alternate. To aid in memorising these notes, mnemonics are used, for example, Elephants And Donkeys, Gave Big Ears. Standard tuning is used by most guitarists, and frequently used tunings can be understood as variations on standard tuning. Standard tuning defines the string pitches as E, A, D, G, B, and E, from the lowest pitch (low E 2) to the highest pitch (high E 4). This sometimes confuses beginner guitarists, since the highest-pitched string is referred to as the 1st string, and the lowest-pitched is the 6th string.

By convention, the notes are ordered and arranged from the lowest-pitched string (i.e., the deepest bass-sounding note) to the highest-pitched string (i.e., the highest sounding note), or the thickest string to thinnest, or the lowest frequency to the highest. Tunings are described by the particular pitches that are made by notes in Western music. Guitar tunings are the assignment of pitches to the open strings of guitars, including acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and classical guitars.

Acoustic guitar tuner