How to Tune Your Guitar Half a Step Down

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Rick Tobey and I'm going to show you how to tune your guitar a half step down. Now, this is how it sounds with standard tuning. (strums) But you may find that you want to put some heavier strings on your guitar, and the heavier strings makes it hard to play. So you might tune your guitar down a half step, and that way the strings will be a little bit looser, and that would make it easier to play. In fact, that's what Stevie Ray Vaughn did. He used a very heavy gaged string, but then rather than have his guitar tuned to standard E tuning, he tuned his guitar down to an E flat tuning. That enabled him to get a really big, full, fat sound because he was using much heavier string, but it was still fairly easy to play because the strings were a little bit looser on the neck. So now, you can hear (strums) the guitar is tuned a little bit lower than it was. And so, basically, what you do is you have, if you have an electronic tuner, which is what I like to use, you would just tune the E down to an E flat. The A string would be tuned down to an A flat, D string to a D flat, the G string to a G flat. The B string to a B flat, and the E, the high E string would be tuned to an E flat. And that's how you tune your guitar a half step down."