Standard guitar tuning: notes and frequencies

The notes of each string

Guitar strings are numbered from the thinnest (1st) to the thickest (6th). The table goes from the lowest note to the highest, in the order you tune them.

The pitch column uses scientific pitch notation: the number after the note is its octave. E2 and E4 are both E, two octaves apart, so the high E vibrates four times faster than the low E.

An easy way to remember E A D G B E

A memory aid, suggested for example by the guitar maker Ortega, is a sentence whose words start with the notes, from the thickest string to the thinnest:

Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie

Make up your own if you prefer: any sentence works as long as the first letters stay E, A, D, G, B, E.

Why the B string is different

From one string to the next, the notes are a perfect fourth apart (five semitones): E to A, A to D, D to G, and B to E. The exception is G to B, a major third (four semitones).

This is why, when you tune the guitar to itself, you use the 5th fret for every string except the 3rd, where you use the 4th fret to find the B. See the method.

A440, the reference note

All these frequencies are calculated from one reference: the A above middle C, A4, at 440 Hz. This is the international standard pitch (ISO 16), also used by Guitar Tuner Pro.

Each semitone multiplies the frequency by the twelfth root of two, about 1.0595, and each octave doubles it.

Questions & answers

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