Open G Tuning on Guitar: How to Tune, Which Chords to Play and What It Is Used For

Standard tuning is a compromise. It makes a wide range of chords reachable with four fingers, but it does not make any single chord easy. Open tunings take the opposite approach: they tune the strings so that strumming the guitar with no fingers on the fretboard produces a complete chord. Everything built on top of that becomes simpler.

Open G is the most widely used of these tunings, and for a beginner it is the one most worth learning. It unlocks slide guitar, it makes a great deal of blues and rock rhythm playing dramatically easier, and it teaches you something about how chords are built that is hard to see in standard tuning.

What open G actually is

Open G tuning is D, G, D, G, B, D, reading from the thickest string to the thinnest. Those notes are the three notes of a G major chord, G, B and D, spread across six strings. Strum them all and you have a G chord without touching the fretboard.

Compare that with standard tuning, which is E, A, D, G, B, E. Three strings move and three stay the same:

• Sixth string (lowest): E down to D, a whole step.
• Fifth string: A down to G, a whole step.
• Fourth string: D, unchanged.
• Third string: G, unchanged.
• Second string: B, unchanged.
• First string (highest): E down to D, a whole step.

Three strings down a whole step each, three strings untouched. That is the whole change.

How to tune to open G, step by step

Use a tuner for this. Tuning by ear between tunings is a useful skill but a frustrating place to start.

1. Start in standard tuning. Tune the guitar normally first, so you are starting from a known position.
2. Lower the sixth string from E to D. Turn the tuning peg to loosen the string. The tuner will pass through E flat and arrive at D. You can check it against your open fourth string, which is already a D an octave higher.
3. Lower the fifth string from A to G. Loosen until the tuner reads G. Check it against the open third string, which is a G an octave higher.
4. Lower the first string from E to D. Loosen until the tuner reads D.
5. Strum all six strings. You should hear a clear, ringing G major chord. If it sounds muddy or sour, check each string individually against the tuner again.
6. Retune. Changing three strings alters the tension on the neck, which pulls the other strings slightly out of tune. Go around all six strings a second time. On a guitar that has not been in open G before, you may need a third pass.

That retuning pass catches most people out. The first strum often sounds wrong not because you tuned incorrectly but because the neck has settled since you started.

The one shape that does everything

Here is why open G is so attractive to beginners. In standard tuning, moving a chord to a different key means learning a different shape or wrestling with a barre. In open G, you lay one finger flat across all six strings at any fret, and you get a major chord.

Bar across the fifth fret: C major. Bar across the seventh fret: D major. Bar across the twelfth fret: G major again, an octave up. Bar across the second fret: A major. One finger, every major chord on the neck.

This is the foundation of slide guitar. A slide is simply a smooth, hard object that does the job of that barring finger without pressing the string to the fret, which is why slide players overwhelmingly use open tunings. You can move between chords by sliding rather than lifting and replacing fingers, which produces the vocal, gliding sound that defines the style.

Beyond the barre: adding colour

The full barre is where you start, not where you stop. Three variations will cover most of what you hear in open G rhythm playing.

The partial barre. Bar only the top three or four strings instead of all six. This gives a lighter, higher chord that sits well above a bass line and leaves the low strings ringing open as a drone.

The added note. With a barre at the fifth fret, add your little finger two frets higher on the second string. This produces a suspended sound that resolves beautifully when you lift the finger off. Enormous amounts of rock rhythm guitar are built from exactly this move.

The minor. Open G is a major tuning, so minor chords take more work. Barre the fret you want, then lower the third of the chord by one fret on the second string. It is fiddly, and it is the main trade-off of the tuning: you gain easy majors and lose easy minors.

What open G is used for

Slide blues. This is the tuning's home. A great deal of Delta blues was recorded in open G or its close relative open D, played with a bottleneck slide. If you want to learn slide, start here rather than in standard tuning.

Rock rhythm guitar. A large body of rock rhythm playing uses open G, often on a five-string guitar with the lowest string removed entirely so the lowest sounding note is the root. The characteristic sound is a partial barre with hammered-on notes added above it.

Folk and fingerstyle. The open drone strings make open G attractive for fingerpicking, where the thumb keeps a steady bass on the open strings while the fingers play a melody above.

Songwriting. This is the underrated one. Picking up a guitar in an unfamiliar tuning strips away your muscle memory. You cannot play your usual patterns, so you find new ones. Many writers keep a second guitar in an open tuning for exactly this reason.

What you lose

Honesty matters here, because a lot of writing about open tunings skips this part.

You lose every chord shape you know. Your fingers will go to the familiar positions and produce something unrecognisable. You lose easy minor chords, which makes a lot of standard repertoire awkward. You lose easy access to standard scale patterns, so lead playing takes relearning. And you have to retune to play with anyone else who is in standard tuning, because the two do not mix.

None of these is a reason to avoid open G. They are reasons to treat it as an addition to your playing rather than a replacement for standard tuning.

Getting back to standard tuning

Reverse the process. Raise the sixth string from D to E, the fifth from G to A, and the first from D to E. Then retune all six strings, twice. Tightening strings stretches them, and a string that has just been raised a whole step will drift flat over the following few minutes as it settles.

If you move between tunings often, consider whether your guitar holds tuning well. Older strings slip more than fresh ones, and a worn nut can bind the string so it jumps rather than gliding as you turn the peg. A drop of pencil graphite in the nut slots helps more than most people expect.

Open G and its relatives

Once open G makes sense, the other open tunings become easy to understand. Open D is D, A, D, F sharp, A, D, and works on exactly the same principle with a different chord. Drop D, where only the sixth string is lowered, is the gentlest introduction of all and keeps every standard chord shape intact. Each of these rewards exploration, and the thinking you do in open G transfers directly.

A first week in open G

If you have just retuned and have no idea what to do next, this sequence gives you a week of useful work.

Day one. Strum the open strings and nothing else. Listen to how the chord rings and how long it sustains. Pick the strings one at a time from low to high and back. The point is to get the sound of the tuning into your ears before you start fretting anything.

Day two. Full barres. Index finger flat across all six strings at the second fret, then the fifth, then the seventh. Strum each. These three plus the open strings give you A, C, D and G, which is a complete and extremely common chord progression.

Day three. Move between the open strings and the fifth-fret barre in time, four strums each. This is the core move of open G rhythm playing.

Day four. Partial barres on the top three strings at the same frets. Notice how much lighter they sound.

Day five. Add the suspended move: barre at the fifth, add the little finger two frets up on the second string, release. Repeat until it is smooth.

Day six. Thumb on the open low strings, fingers picking the melody above. Fingerstyle in open G is unusually easy because the bass notes are already correct.

Day seven. Improvise. Move a barre around the neck at random and listen to what works. Because every full barre is a major chord, almost nothing you do will sound wrong, which makes this the most enjoyable practice session a beginner ever has.

Slide basics in open G

If you bought a slide specifically for this tuning, three rules will save you a great deal of frustration. Rest the slide directly over the fret wire, not behind it as you would with a finger, because the slide replaces the fret rather than pressing the string to it. Use light pressure; pushing down makes the note sharp and rattles the string against the frets. And mute behind the slide with the fingers of the same hand, because the length of string between the slide and the nut will ring sympathetically and turn everything to mush if left alone.

Stuck on something?

If the tuning sounds wrong even though your tuner says every string is correct, strum and listen for one string that stands out. Usually it is the fifth string, which travels the furthest and settles the slowest. If chords sound right at the nut but wrong at the twelfth fret, the guitar's intonation may need adjusting, which is a job for a technician rather than something to fix by retuning.

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