Bass guitar tuning

E1 · A1 · D2 · G2

A four-string bass is tuned E A D G — the same notes as a guitar's bottom four strings, an octave lower. That octave is what makes a bass hard for most tuners: the low E sits at 41 Hz, and a five-string's low B at 30.87 Hz is below what many phone microphones reproduce well and below what a short analysis window can measure at all.

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Strings

  • 4E1
  • 3A1
  • 2D2
  • 1G2

Last few seconds

Harmonics

How far each overtone sits above its ideal position. A stiff, wound string rises to the right.

Your microphone audio is never uploaded — it is analysed on your device and never recorded.

What to aim at

Matches what it hears to the nearest string of the tuning.

The strings

E1, A1, D2, G2 on a four-string, counting from the thickest. A five-string usually adds a low B0 below them, though some players add a high C above instead. The low B is the note worth checking a tuner against: its waveform is over 1,500 samples long at 48 kHz, and a tuner that reads it as the octave above will look perfectly confident while being exactly wrong.

Other tunings for it

Drop D lowers the fourth string to D1 for the same one-finger power chord a guitar gets. Half step down (E♭ A♭ D♭ G♭) follows a guitarist who has done the same. Five-string basses are usually B E A D G, and tuning them BEADG rather than EADGC is near-universal outside of soloists.

Other tunings

Your microphone audio is never uploaded — it is analysed on your device and never recorded.