Guitar tuning
Nashville Tuning
E·A·D·G·B·E
Nashville tuning keeps standard’s note names but raises the bottom four strings a full octave. The 6th, 5th, 4th and 3rd are restrung with much lighter gauges and tuned up to E, A, D and G above their usual pitch; the top two, B and E, stay where they are. Played on its own it sounds thin and bright — like the top six strings of a 12-string with the lower courses taken away.
That is the point. Layered under a normally strung guitar, Nashville tuning adds the octave shimmer of a 12-string while leaving the low end clear. Nashville studios have doubled acoustic parts this way for decades — hence the name — and the trick carries a lot of records: the jangle on the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses,” the sparkle behind countless pop and country productions, and much of Elliott Smith’s layered acoustic sound.
How to tune to Nashville
From standard tuning:
- 6th (lowest) E → E (up an octave)
- 5th A → A (up an octave)
- 4th D → D (up an octave)
- 3rd G → G (up an octave)
- 2nd B — unchanged
- 1st (highest) E — unchanged
Open—Shape’s tuner listens for one string at a time and tells you which string it is and how far off — including in alternate tunings like this one.
What Nashville does well
- Every shape you know, unchanged. The note names match standard tuning, so all your chords, scales and songs transfer with nothing to relearn.
- 12-string shimmer from six strings. The raised octaves give the high, chiming character of a 12-string without the tuning and handling of one.
- A double track that stays out of the way. Recorded next to a standard guitar, it thickens the top of a part while leaving the bass register untouched.
- New life in old progressions. Familiar open chords ring in a register you have never heard them in, which tends to suggest new parts.
Common chords in Nashville
The shapes are the standard ones. The grid shows how the engine voices a few common chords — every note sounds an octave higher on the bottom four strings. Tap any chord to browse the rest.
Numbers read low string to high; 0 is open, × is muted.
A progression to try
An ordinary G–C–D, transformed by the register:
Songs in Nashville
- Wild Horses — The Rolling Stones
- Hey You — Pink Floyd (the doubled acoustic)
- Much of Elliott Smith’s layered acoustic work
- Countless Nashville session doubling tracks
Where you’ll hear it
Nashville session players, who named it, plus Keith Richards, Elliott Smith, Pat Metheny, and any producer after 12-string sparkle on a doubled track. It is more a studio layering tool than a live tuning.
Open a Nashville canvas — a tuning module already set, wired to a starter progression, every shape recalculated for you.