page_title: Guitar tunings
section_title: Regular tunings
hierarchical_section_title: Guitar tunings / Regular tunings
context_page_description: Guitar tunings assign pitches to the open strings of guitars, including acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and classical guitars. Tunings are described by the particular pitches denoted by notes in Western music. By convention, the notes are ordered from lowest-pitched string to highest-pitched.
  Standard tuning defines the string pitches as E, A, D, G, B, and E, from lowest to highest. Standard tuning is used by most guitarists, and frequently used tunings can be understood as variations on standard tuning. One mnemonic for this standard guitar tuning is Eddy Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddy.
  The term guitar tunings may refer to pitch sets other than standard tuning, also called nonstandard, alternative, or alternate. Some tunings are used for particular songs, and might be referred to by the song's title. There are hundreds of such tunings, often minor variants of established tunings. Communities of guitarists who share a musical tradition often use the same or similar tunings.
context_section_description: In standard tuning, there is an interval of a major third between the second and third strings, and all the other intervals are fourths. The irregularity has a price. Chords cannot be shifted around the fretboard in the standard tuning E–A–D–G–B–E, which requires four chord-shapes for the major chords. There are separate chord-forms for chords having their root note on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth strings.
  In contrast, regular tunings have equal intervals between the strings, and so they have symmetrical scales all along the fretboard. This makes it simpler to translate chords. For the regular tunings, chords may be moved diagonally around the fretboard. The diagonal movement of chords is especially simple for the regular tunings that are repetitive, in which case chords can be moved vertically: Chords can be moved three strings up (or down) in major-thirds tuning and chords can be moved two strings up (or down) in augmented-fourths tuning. Regular tunings thus appeal to new guitarists and also to jazz-guitarists, whose improvisation is simplified by regular intervals.
  On the other hand, five- and six-string open chords (“cowboy chords”) are more difficult to play in a regular tuning than in standard tuning. Instructional literature uses standard tuning. Traditionally a course begins with the hand in first position, that is, with the left-hand covering frets 1–4. Beginning players first learn open chords belonging to the major keys C, G, and D. Guitarists who play mainly open chords in these three major-keys and their relative minor-keys (Am, Em, Bm) may prefer standard tuning over many regular tunings, On the other hand, minor-thirds tuning features many barre chords with repeated notes, properties that appeal to acoustic-guitarists and beginners.
caption: In the standard guitar-tuning, one major-third interval is interjected amid four perfect-fourth intervals. In each regular tuning, all string successions have the same interval.