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Open D tuner: D A D F# A D, free, with your mic

This is a free online guitar tuner, already set to Open D. The strings become D A D F# A D, so the six open strings sound a D major chord on their own. Press Start, play one open string, let the note settle, then aim for 0 cents. Open G, DADGAD and standard are in the menu above the tuner, so getting there and back is one click. No account, no download. It sits alongside the rest of our free guitar tools.

What Open D tuning is

An open tuning is one where the open strings already sound a chord. Strum all six without touching the fingerboard and you get music rather than a noise. Open D is the one built on a D major chord, and the notes are D A D F# A D, from the thickest string to the thinnest.

Three strings move down from standard tuning, and two stay exactly where they are. Nothing goes up, which is why Open D is gentle on the instrument.

String Standard Open D Target, at A 440
Sixth, the thickest E D D2, 73.42 Hz
Fifth A A A2, 110.00 Hz
Fourth D D D3, 146.83 Hz
Third G F# F#3, 185.00 Hz
Second B A A3, 220.00 Hz
First, the thinnest E D D4, 293.66 Hz

One row decides everything, and it is the third string. F# is the third of D major, so that half step down is what turns the tuning major. The sixth string drop is the same move as Drop D and gives you the low root; the second and first strings come down a whole step each, to the fifth and then the root on top. The fifth and fourth strings do not move at all.

The tuner is chromatic, so it names any note you give it. If you prefer to see F# written as Gb, that is the same pitch under another name. What matters on the third string is that it lands a half step below the G it came from.

Chords in Open D: one finger across the neck

Here is the whole appeal. Because the open strings are a D major chord, laying one finger flat across all six strings at any fret gives you another major chord, in tune, with no shape to learn. The chord simply moves up by as many half steps as the fret you barre.

  1. Open strings, nothing held down: D major.
  2. Barre the second fret: E major.
  3. Barre the fifth fret: G major.
  4. Barre the seventh fret: A major.
  5. Barre the twelfth fret: D major again, an octave up.

That already hands you the three chords a huge amount of music is built from: D at the open strings, G at the fifth fret, A at the seventh. You can play a whole song with one finger and still have a free hand.

Minor chords need one small change. The third of the chord is on the third string, so to turn a barre into a minor chord you put the third string one fret below the barre and leave the rest of it where it is. Barre the second fret for E major, then move the third string to the first fret, and you have E minor. The exception is the open position: there is no fret below the open strings, so D minor is the one chord you cannot reach this way.

Partial barres are where Open D starts to sound like itself rather than like a guitar with fewer shapes. Hold two or three strings and let the rest ring open: the open D strings carry on underneath as a drone, and the chord changes above them.

Slide guitar in Open D

A slide cannot bend to fit a chord shape. It is a straight bar, so it can only play what a straight line across the strings gives you. In standard tuning that line is not a chord. In Open D it is, at every fret, which is why slide players spend so much of their time in open tunings.

  • Sit the slide over the fret, not behind it. Directly above the metal, where a fretting finger would never go. Behind the fret you get a note that is flat.
  • Almost no pressure. The slide rests on the strings and lets them vibrate underneath. Press and you get a rattle against the frets and a note pushed sharp.
  • Mute behind the slide. Let the fingers behind it touch the strings lightly. Without that, everything between the slide and the nut rings along and the sound turns to mud.
  • A slightly higher action helps. If you only ever play with a slide, raising the strings a little gives it room. If you switch between slide and fretted playing on the same guitar, leave the setup alone and press more gently instead.

Tuning matters more with a slide than without it, because there is no finger pressure to pull a slightly flat string into line. Get each string to 0 cents, play the open strings together, and listen for one that beats against the others.

What Open D sounds like

The fastest way to decide whether a tuning is for you is to hear what other people did with it. These are reference points rather than a playlist: find any of them, listen to the guitar rather than the song, and you will recognize the open strings underneath.

Tuning Listen to What you hear
DADGAD Led Zeppelin, Kashmir The most famous modal riff written in the tuning
DADGAD Davy Graham, Bert Jansch The British folk revival that put DADGAD on the map
DADGAD Pierre Bensusan An entire body of work built in this one tuning
Open D Bob Dylan, the Blood on the Tracks period Wide folk accompaniment on an open chord
Open D Elmore James and the slide blues The barre and the slide moving as one gesture

Two of those are worth a sentence of history. Davy Graham, the English folk guitarist, is the player who spread DADGAD in the 1960s, drawing on what he had heard while traveling in Morocco. Pierre Bensusan took it further and made it his permanent tuning, which is the proof that a whole language can be built in one of these rather than a handful of drones.

DADGAD

DADGAD is the other tuning most Open D players end up in, and the two are one string apart. Leave the third string at G instead of taking it down to F#, and D A D F# A D becomes D A D G A D. One half step, and the tuning stops being a major chord.

That is the whole point of it. The third is what tells a chord whether it is happy or sad, and DADGAD has no third in it at all: the open strings give you the root, the fifth and a fourth, so the tuning is neither major nor minor. A melody can sit on top of it and decide the mood by itself, and the chord underneath never argues. It is why the tuning turns up so often in Celtic and fingerstyle playing, and why a single shape can sound cheerful in one bar and bleak in the next.

The practical consequence for your hands is that one finger across the neck no longer gives you a chord. What it gives you instead is a pair of drones at both ends, the two D strings, with four strings between them to carry a line. Partial shapes on two or three strings, with the rest left open, are the normal way to play in it.

DADGAD is a preset in the tuning menu above, so you do not have to count: pick it and the six target notes on screen change with it. You can also open this page straight into it by adding ?tuning=dadgad to the address, which is worth bookmarking if it becomes your tuning.

Open D vs Open G vs DADGAD

These three are the tunings most players meet first, and they are not interchangeable. Open D and Open G are both open major chords, a fourth apart. DADGAD is the odd one out: it has no third in it, so it is neither major nor minor. All three are presets in the menu above the tuner, and you can also open this page straight onto one by adding a tuning parameter to the address.

Open D

D A D F# A D

The tuning this page opens with. The open strings sound a D major chord, so a straight barre anywhere on the neck gives you another major chord.

Opens with ?tuning=opend

Open G

D G D G B D

An open G major chord. The same idea a fourth higher, and the home of a lot of blues and country slide playing. Many players leave the sixth string out of the way.

There is also a dedicated Open G tuner page.

Opens with ?tuning=openg

DADGAD

D A D G A D

Not an open major chord: there is no third in it, so it sits between major and minor. That is what keeps it open and ambiguous under a melody.

Opens with ?tuning=dadgad

How to choose, in one line each. Take Open D for slide and for big ringing D major accompaniment. Take Open G for blues slide and for the looser, rootless feel it has when the sixth string is left out. Take DADGAD when you want a melody to sit on top of a drone without the chord underneath committing to a mood.

If you would rather keep every shape you already know and only gain a low D, the Drop D tuner is the gentler door, and the half step down tuner keeps the shapes too while putting the whole guitar in Eb. For standard tuning and the full list of presets, go to the online guitar tuner. And if getting a guitar in tune at all is still new ground, how to tune a guitar is the door to come through first.

Frequently asked questions

Is Open D hard on the guitar?
No. Three of the six strings go down, so the total pull on the neck drops rather than rises, which is the safe direction. Two things do follow from that. The neck relaxes very slightly, so a guitar set up with a low action can buzz a little in Open D. And the strings that moved will settle for a few minutes, so expect to go round them twice.
Do I need different strings for Open D?
A standard set works. The sixth, third, second and first strings sit lower than they were built for, so they feel softer under the fingers, which most players like. If you stay in Open D and the sixth string feels slack or rattles against the frets, a slightly heavier set is the fix, not a truss rod adjustment.
What is the difference between Open D and Drop D?
Drop D moves one string, the low E down to D, and leaves the other five alone, so every chord shape you know still works. Open D moves three more strings as well, which changes the whole fingerboard: the shapes you know no longer apply, and in exchange the open strings give you a chord. If you want the low D without relearning anything, use the Drop D tuner instead.
Can I use a capo in Open D?
Yes, and it is the simplest way to change key without retuning. A capo moves the whole open chord up with it: at the second fret the open strings sound E major, at the fifth they sound G. That is also the honest answer to Open E, which is Open D a whole step higher. There is no Open E preset here, and a capo on the second fret gives you the same chord without asking three strings to go up in pitch.
How do I get back to standard tuning?
Pick Standard in the menu above the tuner and work through the strings: the sixth goes back up to E, the third to G, the second to B, the first to E. Tighten up to the pitch rather than loosening down to it, so the string sits against the nut with the tension pulling the right way. The online guitar tuner page opens on standard if you would rather start there.

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.