Standard Tuning for Guitar

Standard runs E2, A2, D3, G3, B3, E4, in playing order. The lowest-pitched string is E2 (82.41 Hz) and the highest is E4 (329.63 Hz), measured against A4 = 440 Hz. Those are the exact target frequencies the tuner on this page listens for.

Nothing to change — this is the reference tuning for Guitar. If your instrument is already in tune, you're there.

The reference every other guitar tuning is described against. Its intervals are all perfect fourths except between the third and second strings, which is a major third — an inconsistency that makes chord shapes awkward to transpose but keeps scale fingerings compact enough to play across all six strings without shifting.

E2 is 82.41 Hz at concert pitch (A4 = 440 Hz). That's the fundamental — the string also produces harmonics above it, which is why a tuner reading the wrong octave usually means it locked onto a harmonic rather than the fundamental. This is the lowest string in this guitar tuning.

Reading upward, the gaps are a fourth, a fourth, a fourth, a major third, then a fourth. That single major third between the G and B strings is the compromise that defines the instrument: pure fourths throughout would make every scale shape identical across the neck, but would push the outer strings a fret further apart than they sit now. The consequence is that a shape moved across the third-to-second string boundary needs one finger shifted a fret, which is why guitarists memorise chord grips as pictures rather than deriving them. The upside is the familiar CAGED system and the fact that the outer strings share a name two octaves apart, giving an unambiguous octave reference on either side of the neck.