Why is a guitar tuned the way it is?

I couldn’t decide - GQ or Cafe Society? But I figured the guitar nerds hang out here.

Himself plays a little bit of banjo. The banjo is tuned to a chord. (I think it’s G?) Anyway, you strum the open strings and it makes a nice chord.

The guitar is tuned to a WTF. I realize that there are other tunings, but EADGBE is standard, right? I assumed when I started taking lessons that there was some reason for it that would be made clear - something the shape of which makes sense. I haven’t been taking for long, but I haven’t found it yet. Power chords are movable shapes… but not on every string. The pentatonic pattern seems to be the closest thing to “make sense” I’ve learned yet.

I come from a piano background. One thinks that’s the most logical of instruments - it’s in order, there’s only one key for each note, etc. This guitar thing is incredibly counterintuitive to me all over. So is there a single, obvious reason for the way it’s set up? A historical one, perhaps?

I’ve often wondered the same thing, especially that odd interval between G and B – why not flatten that out to EADGCF? There are plenty of alternate tunings, but the real question is why “standard” tuning is so, well, standard. My guess (and the link below hints at this) is that standard tuning allows the easiest combination of open chords on acoustic guitars, and the electric folk go along to get along.

Requisite Wiki article on guitar tunings.

G to B is not an odd interval, it’s a major third.

I think the big clue is that the middle the D, G, and B strings make for a major chord that can easily be played open or with a single finger. And then the G, B, and E strings are a minor chord. What you have then is all of the major chords and all of the minor chords able to be played with one finger (barred.) I suspect ultimately that this tuning allows for the widest range of chords to be played with the minimum of finger gymnastics. Alternate tunings are great but they are often limited and are best suited for a particular song.

Also, there’s nothing much special about open chords. Barre chords are just the open ones using your forefinger as a make shift capo.

I meant odd compared to the other string intervals; when you tune a guitar, or do octaves or other things, that B string is the odd guy.

Yes but it is not odd in musical terms as it would be one of the most common interval along with the minor third, it makes a lot of sense to have it in the tuning.

From the wiki guitar article:

Guitar nerds? Paging WordMan

To make it easy to play Chuck Berry licks?

I’m guessing it settled to eadgbe around the time early classical repertoire was developing. It makes sense ergonomically, it’s not like QWERTY which is silly but entrenched. In any case you can tune your guitar any way you like, as the Wiki article says alternative tunings are really very common.

Of course, you could tune the guitar a multitude of ways. You wouldn’t want the open pitches too close together; that wouldn’t leave much overall range for building tall (i.e. as notated on a staff) chords. Too far apart and individual strings would almost begin in distinct octave ranges, making it hard to play scales. So yeah, about half an octave apart facilitates both chords and scales.

It makes sense to me inherently that top and bottom strings are the same for the sake of barring…six strings, only five fingers. As it is, GBE=a third, then a fourth. Change it to GCE and it’s a fourth, then a third. There’s no preserving equal intervals if you keep the top and bottom strings the same.

I suspect that changing B to C would cost more than it’s worth. Consider Em and Cmaj7. You can raise a B to C for other chords; you can’t lower from (open, tuned) C to B. How much of a PITA is it to play minor chords when you’re tuned to a major? If we’re tuning to a chord, it would make more sense to me to tune to a minor because you can raise the third.

Neil Young uses DADGBE on stuff…if you’re composing in D, you’ll have the tonic in the bass.

I think standard practice is tune a major chord (D or E) when playing slide guitar. Works fine for I-IV-V stuff, i.e. blues progressions. I remember watching Dolly Parton on TV once, and after I managed to pry my eyes off her girls, I noticed her guitar playing was all barred, i.e. she was tuned to a major chord.

I sometimes play the disc and try to figure out the chords to songs by playing along. One I could never get: “If I Laugh” by Cat Stevens. So I looked it up.

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/tabs/c/cat_stevens/if_i_laugh_tab.htm

He must have tuned to a major chord when he composed it. IIRC when I tried with standard tuning, there were some gawdawful reaches for the left hand.

My father lost two fingers on his left hand in a sawmill accident, but continued playing guitar by tuning to an open G chord and using a capo to change keys, and his remaining two fingers to play flatted thirds and sevenths and such.

I suppose Django Reinhardt also would have had problems playing if the intervals between strings were larger.

<blushes>

You know - I don’t have a definitive answer off the top of my head, but I could check my guitar library (why yes, I have probably 50 - 75 guitar books lying around; doesn’t everybody? :smack: ) and see what they say. I seem to recall it is basically the chordal equivalent of equal temperament: it is a versatile tuning that enables most keys to be chorded pretty easily. I am sure it evolved from **lute ** and **vihuela ** tunings (the vihuela is a Spanish ancestor to the guitar, I am pretty sure)…

Oh, and we guitar weenies prefer “geeks” to “nerds” - alliteration, don’cha know…
:wink:

Jumping in - it’s been a few years since university, but let’s see what I remember.

Quick answer - at the time standard tuning became standard (late 18th/early 19th century), parallel motion of entire chords was not considered acceptable. The standard tuning provided greater flexibility of contrary motion between bass notes and upper voices, and also provided a variety of left hand fingering positions for the same pitches/chords depending on which strings were played. These advantages were very important to early guitar composers anxious to establish the guitar as a serious instrument, and therefore the E-A-D-G-B-E tuning came to predominate.

In greater detail -GEEK WARNING! The modern guitar evolved out of its earlier cousins - the lute, the vihuela, and the baroque guitar. Lute and vihuela tended to be tuned to something like G-C-F-A-D-G, with the possibility of extra bass strings. You can see that that’s the equivalent of dropping the third string to an F# and capoing at the third fret, which is what lots of people do when they perform renaissance lute music on the guitar. Baroque guitar often had doubled strings (‘courses’ is the term - a five course instrument would often have five pairs of strings tuned either in octaves or in unison.) and while there was no standardization, they were often tuned A-D-G-B-E.

Comes the late 18th century, and the six string guitar comes into being. While various other tunings were experimented with, the one that comes to predominate is the one we now consider standard. Why? Well, it has advantages - in the key of A, you have the open A, D and E strings available as bass notes. In the key of D, you have the open D, G and A strings available to use as bass notes, plus the G fingered on the 6th string at the third fret. Of the 24 keys (every chromatic note, ignoring enharmonic equivalents, factoring major and minor gives you 12x2), only 10 (C#, Eb, F, Ab, Bb, major and minor) have no roots of I, IV or V available as open strings. 4 (C, F#, major and minor) have 1 open string root for one of those chords, 4 (G, B, major and minor) have 2 and 6 (D, E and A, major and minor) have all three chords (I, IV, V) with available open string roots. So, we have an instrument which is not as versatile as the piano in terms of being able to play in all the keys, but which is more versatile than an open tuning, particularly in an age when sliding all the notes of a chord in the same direction (parallel motion, particularly parallel octaves and parallel fifths) was a massive aesthetic no-no. It took Debussy on the classical front, and a gradual acceptance of the worth of folk forms in popular music, to change this aesthetic by the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th.

I want to touch on one other aspect of standard tuning. Consider the first position E, A and D chords. [My convention - (#) = string number, # = fret.] The relationship of these notes of E (6)-0, (5)-2, (4)-2, (3)-1 is the same as the relationship of these notes of A (5)-0, (4)-2, (3)-2, (2)-2 and as these notes of D (4)-0, (3)-2, (2)-3, (1)-2. They are all (lowest note to highest note) the root, fifth, root up the octave and the third of their respective chords.

Now, take that D (4)-0, (3)-2, (2)-3, (1)-2. If you finger the following (no barres required!) - (5)-5, (4)-7, (3)-7, (2)-7 you will get the same pitches as the first position D. Different strings, different finger shape, slightly different tone colour. Now finger this - (6)-10, (5)-12, (4)-12, (3)-11. Same pitches, different strings, different finger shape. By now, you’re either regretting you brought this up in conversation, you’ve heard all this before, or your mind is blown.

This difference in shapes is the key to playing the guitar at the intermediate and advanced levels. It all boils down to this - if you find a block fingering shape (a chord shape, a grip, a LH position, whatever you want to call it - they’re all different names for the same idea) difficult where you are playing it, try taking it over a set of strings, or over two sets of strings. Look for potential open strings in the new position - did anything get easier? Maybe that’s the placement the composer intended.

It’s a little like piano, in that with the patterning of two black keys, then three black keys, the fingering of scales changes. C, D, E, G, A and B Major all finger the same in the right hand. C, D, E, F, G and A Major all finger the same in the left hand. The principle of sorting out the fingering of scale passages on, well, any keyboard instrument, is to figure out where thumb and third have to cross, and where thumb and fourth have to cross. For people like me, who came to piano in my 40s, that’s the hardest part about keeping my 88s straight, and that’s why I have so much work to do over Mozart, Haydn, Clementi, Kuhlau, Beethoven. Compared to those guys, I find the contemporary and Jazz rep way easier.

I hope this helps - brevity is a virtue and I am a wicked man.

Here’s Steve Miller/The Joker, and he’s tuned to DGCFAD. He’s fingering in G but it comes out in F. Nice rattly sound from the lowered tension on the strings.

The chords are a pain in F, which is how it’s usually represented in song books.

Indeed, tune a guitar’s G string down a semitone, and it’s possible to play directly from 16th century vihuela tablature.

I sympathize with you… Guitar has too many options… But the other night I picked it up and just played with it… E B G D A E is a portion of the circle of fifths with E repeated… And I discovered that a major scale is, are, the same fret position on all strings. There is logic to it…

Come now, that’s an Em11 chord.

Huh. A five voice chord. I guess leaving out the ninth (F#) does make sense. All this time I’ve called it Em11(no 9).

Amazing analysis and commentary! Explains a lot I have wondered about most of my adult life.

Six string bass is obviously tuned in fourths throughout and being a bass player this tuning makes complete sense. I am about to start learning acoustic guitar and the tuning is the first real hurdle for me. I already checked to see if anybody tunes their guitar in fourths and found Stanley Jordan. He says this is the most logical tuning. It’s hard to argue that point and whilst I have not played any chord shapes as yet, I can certainly see the advantage of having movable patterns and no shifts. I guess piano is very logical too in that sense!
I’m going to experiment with this tuning and just wondered if I might be setting myself up for failure?
Looking forward to helpful comments.

Tune your guitar in all fourths: E A D G C F.

Now strum me a simple open position cowboy chord of E major.

(Stanley Jordan? The dude is superhuman. You could probably tune the strings in alternating major sevenths and tritones and he could still make it sing.)