Green Day · American Idiot · song 3
Holiday tuning.
Holiday (Green Day, 2004) is in E Standard at concert pitch (A 440), measured by TuneLit from the record.
Measured by TuneLit
At concert pitch
The album's value, measured on the CD.
Green Day · American Idiot · 2004
About Holiday
Holiday, the third song on American Idiot, is one of the album's two openly political singles, a mid-tempo stomp in F minor with a spoken bridge. Songsterr's most-viewed tabs, viewed well over a hundred thousand times each, put it in E Standard with F minor barre and power chords on the first fret.
TuneLit measured the American Idiot CD at concert pitch (+1.7 cents), and Holiday reads about 1.5 cents sharp, so Tune gives plain E Standard at A 440. Here the audio check does not settle the tuning: the song's low notes sit on F, A♭, C and D♭, and nothing tells it whether the low string is E or E♭. The two songs before it on the album are listed in E♭ after the check, so Holiday may well have been played the same way, with F♯ minor shapes a half step down.
For playing along it makes no difference to the sound, only to the shapes. The common E Standard tab works at A 440 as it is. If you have tuned down for American Idiot and Jesus of Suburbia, you can stay there and play F♯m-shaped chords instead; a small Songsterr tab does exactly that.
Tip: If you are already in E♭ from the first two songs, stay there and play F♯m shapes; otherwise use E Standard and the first-fret F minor of the main tab.
Step by step
Tune your guitar like the record
- Tap Tune like this: the tuner switches to E Standard, the notes Holiday was recorded in.
- Turn String 6 to String 1 until each shows ✓ in tune. Holiday sits at concert pitch on the record, so the tuner stays at A 440.
- Then play Holiday along with the record: its lowest open note and your String 6 should ring together without a wobble.
Or the other way round
Move the record into your tuning
Rather keep your guitar as it is? Let Play along move Holiday instead. Add your own copy, for example from your CD (it never leaves your device); the link already says the song is in E Standard. Choose E Standard at A 440 and Holiday moves down 2 cents, at its own speed. Slow it down or loop a few bars to learn it, and save the result as a WAV file.
Questions
What tuning is Holiday in?
E Standard: E A D G B E, low to high, at the pitch TuneLit measured on the record.