Banjo | Five Strings

Start tuning by ear

Check out our online tuner for your Banjo and get started teaching yourself how to tune by ear. You’ll be surprised how easy it is to get started.

Improve Your Pitch

First of all, pitch is a learnable skill that can be improved over time. Practicing tuning your banjo by ear every day will improve your pitch with simple repetition. And it’s not always about having “perfect pitch”, as few people have. Therefore tuning by ear can improve your relative pitch, which is your pitch according to the tuning of accompanying sounds.

Here are three different banjo tunings

While there are several common ways to tune a five sting banjo the most common in bluegrass music seems to be the “Open-G tuning” G4 D3 G3 B3 D4. In the old days, the tuning G4 C3 G3 B3 D4 was more common and still is the preferred variation for folk music and classic banjo. Finally, we have included the double C tuning (G4 C3 G3 C4 D4).

Don’t forget to change strings

If you play regularly, you usually need to change strings every two months. If you play less, every six month or so would be ok. Not only will it sound sound fresher with a kind of brighter sound. Your banjo will also stay in tune better. With old strings, the overtones get a bit out of tune. This causes the notes to feel a bit off and not sound right. If you are a “hard picker”, old strings are also more likely to break.