E♭ Standard tuner.

Half a step down, E♭ A♭ D♭ G♭ B♭ E♭, is the smallest retune you can hear and feel. The strings go slightly slack, so bends travel further and vibrato gets wider, yet every chord, scale and solo stays under the same fingers.

The players who made it famous give similar reasons. Slash has said tuning down makes the notes easier for the singer, loosens the strings and, above all, sounds heavier. Stevie Ray Vaughan used it to tame very heavy strings, about .013 to .058, so he could still bend them hard. Jerry Cantrell simply calls it “standard Alice in Chains tuning”.

Jimi Hendrix made it popular. After recording most of Are You Experienced in E, he tuned down for nearly everything else: Axis: Bold as Love, Electric Ladyland and the songs on First Rays of the New Rising Sun, 43 on TuneLit. Stevie Ray Vaughan kept it for his whole career (53 songs), and Eddie Van Halen tuned the early Van Halen albums to it, from Runnin' with the Devil to Panama.

TuneLit has 667 songs in E♭. Black Sabbath lead with 87, from Heaven and Hell (1980) on, and Slayer follow with 83, from Haunting the Chapel to Repentless. Guns N' Roses have used it since their first EP in 1986 (72 songs), Alice in Chains on every record (62), Green Day on Kerplunk, Dookie and Insomniac (49 in all), and Metallica on most of Load and ReLoad.

Each song has its own page: the exact tuning, the pitch of the record and how to get there string by string. Tune sets the tuner to the record, cents included.

• Back in the SaddleAerosmith · Rocks (1976)Tune
• Man in the BoxAlice in Chains · Facelift (1990) · +4 ¢Tune
• Neon KnightsBlack Sabbath · Heaven and Hell (1980) · +5 ¢Tune
• LongviewGreen Day · Dookie (1994)Tune
• Welcome to the JungleGuns N' Roses · Appetite for Destruction (1987)Tune
• Manic DepressionJimi Hendrix · Are You Experienced (1967) · +18 ¢Tune
• A Tout le MondeMegadeth · Youthanasia (1994) · +4 ¢Tune
• ScumNapalm Death · Scum (1987)Tune
• DumbNirvana · In Utero (1993) · −7 ¢Tune
• Angel of DeathSlayer · Reign in Blood (1986) · −12 ¢Tune
• Pride and JoyStevie Ray Vaughan · Texas Flood (1983)Tune
• Across the UniverseThe Beatles · Let It Be (1970) · +25 ¢Tune
• Just TonightThe Pretty Reckless · Light Me Up (2010)Tune
• Runnin' with the DevilVan Halen · Van Halen (1978) · +28 ¢Tune
• RoosterAlice in Chains · Dirt (1992) · +10 ¢Tune
• Heaven and HellBlack Sabbath · Heaven and Hell (1980) · +5 ¢Tune

Open a band to see its songs in this tuning. Each song opens on its album page, at its own Tune button, set to the pitch of the record.

Tabs for these songs are almost always written as if the guitar were in E: same fret numbers, lower sound. Once your guitar is down, an ordinary tab of Sweet Child o' Mine or Pride and Joy lines up with the record. A guitar left in E cannot follow along, since a capo only raises the pitch.

Most players keep their usual set: Billie Joe Armstrong used ordinary .010s in E♭, and Kerry King goes lighter still, .009 to .042. On a floating tremolo, like the Stratocasters of Hendrix and Vaughan or a Floyd Rose, slacker strings let the springs pull the bridge out of balance: go round all six strings two or three times, or loosen the spring claw a little. The bass follows to E♭ A♭ D♭ G♭.

The tuner on this page works at any A4 from 300 to 600 Hz, and can shift the whole tuning by half steps or fine cents.

E♭ Standard goes down to E♭2 on String 6, 77.78 Hz. A phone mic hears E♭2 faintly: in our phone-mic model its fundamental arrives 6 dB quieter. Read from its overtones, E♭2 stayed within 1 ¢.

How the tuner listens →

If your tuner only knows E Standard, clamp a capo across fret 1 and tune the strings, capo on, to E Standard (E A D G B E) as usual. Take the capo off: every open string drops a half step and you are in E♭ Standard (E♭ A♭ D♭ G♭ B♭ E♭).

A capo pushes the strings a little sharp, so the open strings can end up a few cents flat. Check each one again without the capo: the tuner on this page reads E♭ Standard directly.