What Is Nashville Tuning & What Songs Use It?

What is Nashville Tuning and What Songs Use It?

Of the many alternate tunings on six-string guitars, we find Nashville tuning to be one of the most fascinating. Plenty of tunings make certain chord fingerings easier or emphasize aspects of a guitar’s tone. With Nashville tuning, though, it’s almost like playing a different instrument.

The tuning was invented in the early 1960s by Ray Edenton, who spent nearly 40 years as a Nashville studio session musician. You don’t need to be from Nashville to play it, though — or be playing country music, for that matter. If you’ve never heard of Nashville tuning, or have heard of it but don’t know anything about it, this Nashville guitar tuning guide has everything you need to know.

Nashville Tuning Explained

To achieve Nashville tuning, you’re not so much changing the tuning as you are changing the strings — four of them, that is. It’s also known as “high-stringing” a guitar because that’s what you’re doing. On a regular six-string guitar, you replace strings three through six (G, D, A and low-E) with the “octave strings” from a 12-string guitar. You tune those strings the same way you would on the 12-string; the first and second strings (high-E and B) stay the same. The overall tuning is E3-A3-D4-G4-B3-E4.

A few string manufacturers such as D’Addario and Stringjoy offer specially-designed sets of Nashville tuning strings. There are two other ways to achieve Nashville tuning: 1) buy a set of 12-string guitar strings and throw the lower octave strings out, or 2) buy the strings individually. The gauges of a Nashville tuning string set might look something like this:

1.Light-gauge: 0.010, 0.014, 0.009, 0.012, 0.018, 0.026

2.Medium-gauge: 0.012, 0.016, 0.010, 0.014, 0.020, 0.028

Why Use Nashville Tuning

With Nashville high tuning, you can mimic the sound of other high-pitched string instruments such as mandolins, ukuleles and (of course) 12-string guitars while playing like you do on a normal six-string. It’s not a perfect match, but you get a nice approximation without needing to purchase and learn new instruments. High-string tuning offers added clarity and brightness that constrast more with the rest of the band. Furthermore, the chord notes are spaced more like what you hear from a piano.

You can do Nashville tuning on acoustic or electric guitars, but it works best on smaller guitars and any guitar designed to emphasize high-end frequencies. Also, if you plan to leave a guitar permanently in Nashville tuning, you should add a new nut and adjust the truss rod in the neck to account for having less tension from the high-octave strings.

Songs That Use Nashville Tuning

You don’t have to look far to find Nashville tuning — it’s used everywhere from classic rock to jazz. Here are some of our favorite songs in Nashville tuning:

1.“Closer to the Heart”, Rush

2.“Hey You”, Pink Floyd

3.“Love Story”, Taylor Swift

4.“Dust in the Wind”, Kansas

5.“Half a Person”, The Smiths

6.“Phase Dance”, Pat Metheny Group

7.“Shake it Out”, Florence and the Machine

8.“Wild Horses”, Rolling Stones

9.“Gimme Danger”, The Stooges

10.“Bartender”, Lady Antebellum