Guitar Chord - Standard Tuning

Standard Tuning

A six-string guitar has five musical-intervals between its consecutive strings. In standard tuning, the intervals are four perfect-fourths and one major-third, the comparatively irregular interval for the (G,B) pair. Consequently, standard tuning requires four chord-shapes for the major chords. There are separate chord-forms for chords having their root note on the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth strings. Of course, a beginner learns guitar by learning notes and chords, and irregularities make learning the guitar difficult—even more difficult than learning the formation of plural nouns in German, according to Gary Marcus. Nonetheless, most beginners use standard tuning.

Another feature of standard tuning is that the ordering of notes often differs from root position. Notes are often inverted or otherwise permuted, particularly with seventh chords in standard tuning, as discussed below.