Half step down tuner: Eb tuning, free, with your mic

This is a free online guitar tuner, already set a half step down. Every string drops by one semitone, so the guitar reads Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb and all your chord shapes keep working. Press Start, play one open string, let the note settle, then aim for 0 cents. Standard tuning is one click away in the menu above the tuner. No account, no download. It sits alongside the rest of our free guitar tools.

What Eb tuning is: Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb

Eb tuning, E flat tuning, Eb standard and half step down tuning are four names for the same thing: standard tuning with every string lowered by one semitone. Nothing is rearranged. The six strings keep their order and their relationship to each other, and the whole guitar simply sits one fret lower than it did.

Because the gaps between the strings never change, everything you can already play still works: the same shapes, the same scale patterns, the same tabs, the same fingerings. What changes is the name of the sound. The shape you think of as a G chord now sounds Gb, and a song played from standard tuning tab comes out a half step below the record.

How to tune half step down, string by string

The order below goes from the thickest string to the thinnest, which keeps the pull on the neck even as you go.

1. Press Start and allow the microphone. Nothing is recorded or uploaded: the signal is analyzed in your browser and discarded.
2. Check that the menu above the tuner says Eb. This page opens there already, so the six target notes on screen are Eb Ab Db Gb Bb Eb rather than the standard ones.
3. Play the open sixth string and loosen it. Mute the other five with your palm so only one note reaches the microphone. Watch the note name change: E, then Eb. Stop when it reads Eb at 0 cents.
4. Do the same for the fifth, down to Ab, the fourth to Db, the third to Gb, the second to Bb, and the first to Eb.
5. Go round all six again. You have just taken a good deal of tension off the neck, so the first pass is never the last word. Strum an open chord and listen for one string beating against the others.

Expect fresh strings to settle more than usual when you tune down. If the guitar drifts for a few minutes and then stops, that is normal and it ends on its own.

Why bands tune down a half step

There are three real reasons and one practical one. None of them is about sounding heavier for its own sake: a half step is a small move, and what it changes is mostly how the instrument feels and how easy the song is to sing.

• The voice. This is the most common reason by far. A melody whose highest note sits just out of comfortable reach is exhausting to sing night after night, and that note is the one that gives way first. Dropping the whole guitar a half step takes the song down with it, without anybody having to learn the chords in a new key.
• The feel under the fingers. Less tension means the strings give more easily. Bends travel further for the same effort, vibrato opens up, and a wide stretch is a little kinder on the hand. Players with small hands or with a long scale guitar often notice this more than the pitch change.
• The tone. A slightly slacker string has a softer attack and a rounder low end. It is a small difference, not a transformation, and it is most audible on the two lowest strings and on a bright guitar.
• It costs nothing to learn. Unlike an open tuning or a drop tuning, this one asks you to relearn precisely nothing. The band tunes down, the shapes stay, the key moves. That is why it has been the default way to lower a song for decades.

None of this is new. Jimi Hendrix played in Eb almost all the time, and that slack is part of what makes his phrasing sound spoken rather than played. Stevie Ray Vaughan used it the other way round, as a way to keep very heavy strings playable. Slash and Guns N' Roses put a good deal of their best known hard rock there, and Gary Moore built some of the longest bends in blues rock on it.

Famous songs in Eb

Four reference points, if you want to hear what a half step actually does. Listen to the guitar rather than the song.

Try any of them again in Eb once the guitar is there. The bends travel further for the same effort and the low strings come out rounder, which is most of what people are hearing when they say a recording sounds warm.

If you want the lower, looser feel but only on the bottom string, that is a different tuning: see the Drop D tuner. If you want the open strings to sound a chord, see the Open D tuner. And if a half step is not enough, the Drop C tuner goes considerably further down, with the heavier strings that implies.

String gauge and setup in Eb

A half step is a small amount of tension to lose, so none of this is urgent. It is worth knowing because the two complaints people bring back from Eb, a floppy feel and a buzz, both have the same handful of answers.

• Gauge. A 10-46 or 10-48 set is the comfortable choice in Eb: slightly heavier than usual, so the lower pitch does not cost you the tension you play against. A 9-42 still works perfectly well if the softer feel is exactly what you came for.
• Action. Around 1.8 mm on the treble side and 2.0 mm on the bass side, measured at the twelfth fret, is a good target. Less tension means a wider swing in the string, so an action that was already very low is where the buzz comes from.
• Neck relief. Six strings pulling a little less hard leaves slightly less bow in the neck. If you are staying in Eb, an eighth of a turn on the truss rod is usually all it takes. Check the curve afterwards rather than going by feel.
• Intonation. Set the saddles once the strings have stopped moving, not the same afternoon you changed them. Compare the twelfth fret harmonic with the fretted note at the twelfth fret: if the fretted note is sharp, the saddle moves back.

Floating tremolo and Floyd Rose

This is the one case where tuning down is not just a matter of turning six pegs. On a guitar with a floating vibrato, a Fender style unit on two points or a Floyd Rose, the strings pull against a set of springs and the whole bridge finds a balance between the two. Take the string tension down a half step and the springs win: the bridge tilts back, every string goes sharp, and the base plate stops sitting parallel to the body.

• Rebalance the springs. Tighten the claw at the back of the guitar a little, so the base plate comes back parallel. Small turns, then retune, then look again.
• Check the height and the buzz. The drop in tension changes the clearance over the frets, so listen for a rattle on the low strings before you blame anything else.
• Change strings in batches. Bass side to treble side, stretch each one gently, and retune once the whole set has settled. Replacing all six at once on a floating bridge means chasing the balance for twenty minutes.

Eb tuning with a capo, or back to standard

A capo only raises pitch, so it cannot put a guitar into Eb. It is very good at the opposite job, which is the one people actually need.

• Capo at the first fret. Your open strings now sound E A D G B E, which is standard pitch. Play from standard tuning tab and treat the capo as the nut: everything comes out in the key the record is in. You lose one fret at the top of the neck and keep the softer feel of the lower tension.
• What you give up. Open strings below the capo are gone, so anything built on a ringing low Eb drone disappears, and a song that needs the first position without a capo will not work. For one song in a set, this is the cheapest fix there is.
• Going the other way. If you are in standard tuning and a song is in Eb, a capo is no help at all. You have to tune down, which is what the preset on this page is for.

To go back to standard, pick Standard in the menu above the tuner and work from the sixth string up to the first, tightening each one. This time the direction is in your favor: you are arriving at the pitch from below, so the strings settle quickly. Give the guitar one more pass once all six are there. For standard tuning and the other presets, the online guitar tuner is the page to use, and how to tune a guitar covers the method itself, with a tuner or by ear.

Who made this

Guitar Social Club is the work of Yohann Abbou, a guitar teacher in Paris. He teaches adults, which shapes everything here: people with jobs, limited practice time and a clear idea of the songs they want to play. The tools come out of his lessons, which is why none of them asks you to sign up before it works, and why this one shows you cents rather than a green light. The rest of our free guitar tools work the same way.

More about Yohann and how these tools are made.