Playing in drop B tuning on your guitar is a great way to dramatically lower the range of your instrument. Like the popular drop D tuning, drop B requires you to tune down, giving your guitar a darker and heavier sound. In this lesson, we’ll show you how to tune to drop B and give you some songs to practice in this new tuning. Grab your guitar and let’s get to it!
You’ll find drop B tuning in heavy metal and other hard rock genres of music. In fact, the guitarist who first brought drop B tuning to the attention of listeners is Victor Griffin of doom metal group, Pentagram. You don’t have to have his level of expertise on guitar to get a powerful sound out of this tuning, however. Drop B tuning is fairly easy to master, and it gives you the ability to play power chords with one finger while opening up a new lower range on the guitar.
Drop B tuning requires you to tune down or “drop” your low E string two-and-a-half steps to B. However, this tuning has two variations. In one version, you only lower your sixth string, leaving the rest of your strings in standard tuning.
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For this lesson, we’ll be focused on the other, more common version of drop B. In this version, you will tune down all six strings.
The first time you try this tuning, you might hear some buzzing because your strings will be looser than usual. If you’re serious about this tuning, you might want to invest in heavier strings or getting your guitar set up in drop B by a luthier.
However, you don’t have to spend a dime to get a good sound from this tuning. You can still use light strings and can avoid buzzing in your tone by strumming your guitar lightly.
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In drop B tuning, your lowest string will be tuned down two-and-a-half steps to B. All other strings get tuned down one-and-a-half steps.
Now that you know the notes of the strings in drop B tuning, you’re ready to tune down. Here’s how to tune a guitar to drop B: Start by plucking your low E string. Tune it down two-and-a-half steps to B by turning the tuning peg towards you. Keep plucking the string until you reach the correct note. You might want to go a bit lower than the note you’re targeting and then tune up to it. This technique helps keep your instrument in tune longer by adding tension back into the detuned string. -- Pro tip: You can use the Online guitar tuner to help you tune your guitar to the correct note. Use either the Electric Guitar Online Guitar Tuner or the Acoustic Guitar Online Tuner. Or download the app for your phone. Both the web and app versions give you the ability to adjust your settings and tune specifically to drop B and other alternate tunings.
Tuning your guitar down to drop B lowers your guitar’s range by two-and-a-half steps, giving your instrument a heavier, darker sound. You can also drone on the low B string for a heavy, sludgy effect. This low range can also come in handy if you’re accompanying a singer with a low range. Drop B also makes playing power chords super easy.
Tuning Your Guitar
To play a power chord in standard tuning, you’ll typically use two or three fingers on your fretboard. In drop B, you can play a power chord by barring one finger across the three lowest strings on your guitar, like this:
There’s no shortage of great, heavy songs that use drop B tuning. Here are a couple of songs you can learn to start playing in drop B.
“Duality” by Slipknot relies on the open sixth string for its driving, hard sound. Listen for drop B tuning on both the first and second guitar parts to gain an even better understanding of how drop B alternate tuning pulls this song together.
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Next, try “Whispers in the Dark” by Skillet. While the song features a blistering, and rather difficult guitar solo, beginner guitarists just experimenting with drop B tuning can start by focusing on the main riff of the song.
Keep experimenting with the sounds you can make with this heavy-sounding tuning. The more you practice, the better your playing will be! By practicing drop B tuning, as well as other alternate tunings, you’ll become a well-rounded guitarist capable of a wide range of play styles, tones and genres. Learn more with a free trial of Play.Let me ask you a question: what sounds better than a guitar? A lower-tuned guitar. I mean, you can play the most simple chord progression ever, and if it sounds boring on your guitar in standard tuning, you only have to play it on a guitar tuned one or three whole steps down, and the sound will drastically change.
If you decide to go as low as B Standard (or Baritone) Tuning, you are about to enter a new territory of richness in your overall tone. Still, you’ll need to consider some significant adjustments that you will have to make to your guitar.
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You’ll need to put on some higher gauge strings to accommodate the lower tension caused by the significant difference in pitch, and of course, you will have to tweak your
. If this sounds intimidating, don’t worry! I will explain everything you need to do step by step, and you’ll be able to play your
The first impression you will get when you play your B Standard guitar for the first time is one of familiarity. It will be just like playing a standard-tuned guitar, but a perfect fourth lower. This means that you’ll be able to replicate all of your favorite chords and licks that you’re already used to playing in standard tuning, but it will all sound significantly lower in pitch.
Drop B Tuning On Guitar
If you have any experience playing seven-string guitars, you will also feel quite at home when jumping to B Standard, and that’s because this tuning is almost exactly like playing a seven-string without the high E string. Anyway, let’s take a look at the actual notes that you’ll have to tune your strings to:
So, you can see that the intervallic structure within the tuning itself has not changed compared to standard tuning. This means that, in E Standard tuning, if you were to play open low E (6th string) to open A (5th string) or open D (4th string) to open G (3rd string), etc… you would be hearing a perfect fourth interval, and that still applies even when tuned to B Standard.
If you want to visualize and compare this to a seven-string guitar without the high E, you only have to mentally adjust to the fact that you won’t have an open G string. Instead, you will find an open F#.
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This happens because the interval that you get between your 3rd and 2nd strings (in any standard tuning) is not a perfect fourth like in every other case, but it’s a major third instead. So, like you would go from G (3rd string) to B (2nd string) in E standard, you are going from D (3rd string) to F# (2nd string) in B Standard. Pretty straightforward, right?
Okay, let’s start to get technical now. String Gauge is the first factor you need to evaluate when tuning down to B Standard, and, before we even begin to talk about diameters, you should know that (up to a certain point) this is entirely subjective. It’s mostly a matter of individual taste and hand-feel.
As you can see from the tuning list above, you could probably guess the gauges of five out of the six strings that you’re going to need. You can assume that your gauges will be the same as in E Standard for what concerns your E (5th), A (4th), D (3rd), F# (2nd), and B (1st) strings.
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For example, if you usually play 10-46 in E Standard, like the widely popular set of Ernie Ball Regular Slinky, you could ditch the .010 high E string and use the remaining five for your 5th to 1st strings in B Standard.
The most significant change regards the low B string. Once again, the gauge you’ll choose depends on your personal preference, but you probably wouldn’t want to use the low B string you find in a standard seven-string set.
For consistency, let’s take the seven-string version of an Ernie Ball Regular Slinky set, which would add a .056 gauge as our lowest string. If you were to ditch the high E string from that set and put the remaining six on a regular guitar tuned to
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, you would realize that the .056 string doesn’t provide enough tension for you to tune it down to a B note. That’s because you need to accommodate the difference in scale length between a seven-string guitar and your regular six-string axe.
You can expect your typical seven-string (or baritone) guitar to have a scale length of around 27 inches, while a six-string is usually between 24.5 and 25.5 inches, depending on the different
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