## Metadata - Author: [[Jeff Owens]] - Full Title:: Standard Tuning: How EADGBE Came to Be - Category:: #🗞️Articles - URL:: https://www.fender.com/articles/setup/standard-tuning-how-eadgbe-came-to-be - Read date:: [[2026-01-12]] ## Highlights > 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. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kepvsaaz5np3g39n8qa9nkcg)) > With the guitar sitting in the lap and the neck diagonal to the player, the bend in the wrist starts to make it more difficult to spread out the fingers. So our next best choice for tuning any larger scaled multi-stringed instrument is going to be to tune in fourths, which are a little closer together. On a guitar, a person with a normal-sized hand can reasonably be expected to sound the major third with the pinkie finger while holding down the tonic with the index finger. So it makes sense that the next string should be the fourth.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kepvv2gc2edrnz9gcyz181fj)) > that if six-string guitars were tuned completely in perfect fourths, you’d wind up with a harmonically discordant arrangement of (low to high) EADGCF. You can see the problem there—E and F are only a half step apart, imposing a naturally irritating interval of a minor second. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01kepvw32h7bxr43hxa8zna9vt))