How to Tune Your Guitar To Open E Tuning (Guitar Lesson ES-033)

Hi, how you doing? Justin here.

Today, I'm going to show you how to get
your guitar into Open E Tuning.

Now, Open D Tuning and Open E Tuning
are the same tuning, just a tone apart.

The difference is that to get to Open D
Tuning, you're tuning a lot of notes down.

But to get to Open E Tuning,
you're tuning a few notes up.

Which is a little riskier as far as
breaking strings and stuff goes.

So normally if-if I was playing in Open E,
I would tune down to Open D Tuning

and put a capo on the 2nd fret,
and then I'm in Open E.

But I'll show you how to get to Open E,

just in case there's a song
you're doing that's using it,

you'll wanna sus it out.

So the tuning for Open E will be
E-B-E-G#-B-E.

So the thickest string and
the thinnest two strings,

are gonna stay exactly the same.

First thing we have to do is tune the
A string up one tone to the note B.

Easiest way to do that is to play
a harmonic at the 12th fret,

and then an open B string.

Okay? Shouldn't be...

...it's not a huge kind of a tune that
one, just up a tone.

Now we've gotta tune the open D string
up a tone to the note E.

So, again we're gonna use the, uh,
harmonic at the 12th fret of the D string,

with the thinnest E string.

That's pretty good so far.

Now we've got to get our, uh, G string
up a semitone to the note G#. Okay?

Now to do that, because we've already
tuned our D string a little bit,

We're gonna use the 4th fret of the
D string, or the fourth string,

and that will be our note G#.

It's just a little one,
it's only a semitone.

Okay? And we've got it.

So, 4th fret of the fourth string...

...will get the open G string.

We're tuning the G up to the note G#.

Now, as usual, open tunings you gotta
have a little bit of a tweak at the end.

Well, you usually do,
that's pretty damn near perfect.

It's a beautiful tuning,
Open D and Open E.

Lovely, lots of fun,
great fun with slide guitar as well.

So, definitely a fun one to explore, if
you're checking out like "Gimme Shelter"

or something like that, a lot of those
Stones songs are in Open E.

Uh... great tuning, great tuning.

Hope you have lots of fun exploring it,

and I'll see you for plenty more
songs and lessons very soon.

Take care of yourselves,
bye-bye.