Standard Tuning: How EADGBE Came to Be

Written by Jeff Owens

Standard Tuning: How EADGBE

 Came to Be

Ever wonder why the “standard” tuning of a guitar is EADGBE?

The history of that sequence is interesting, especially because most everyone using stringed instruments such as the violin, cello and mandolin over the past 1,000 years have agreed that they are best tuned in fifths. (For inquiring minds, all-fifths tuning means that the interval between each open strings is a perfect fifth.)

Guitars, however, are typically tuned in a series of ascending perfect fourths and a single major third. To be exact, from low to high, standard guitar tuning is EADGBE—three intervals of a fourth (low E to A, A to D and D to G), followed by a major third (G to B), followed by one more fourth (B to the high E).

The reason? It’s simultaneously musically convenient and physically comfortable, a conclusion players came to a few hundred years ago. The aim was to create a tuning that would ease the transition between fingering simple chords and playing common scales, minimizing fret-hand movement.  (www.fender.com)