Bass guitar tuning refers to the pitch

Pitch (music)

Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...

 adjustments carried out on the individual strings of an electric bass

Electric Bass

Electric bass can mean:*Electric upright bass, the electric version of a double bass*Electric bass guitar*Bass synthesizer*Big Mouth Billy Bass, a battery-powered singing fish...

 in order to achieve a prescribed arrangement of note

Note

In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....

s on the open (unfretted) strings.

The electric bass is a bass string instrument played with the fingers by plucking, slapping, popping or using a pick

Plectrum

A plectrum is a small flat tool used to pluck or strum a stringed instrument. For hand-held instruments such as guitars and mandolins, the plectrum is often called a pick, and is a separate tool held in the player's hand...

. The bass is typically similar in appearance and construction to an electric guitar

Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

, but with a larger body, a longer neck and scale length, and four strings tuned one octave lower in pitch

Pitch (music)

Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...

 than the bass strings of a guitar. The fretted electric bass is an equal temperament

Equal temperament

An equal temperament is a musical temperament, or a system of tuning, in which every pair of adjacent notes has an identical frequency ratio. As pitch is perceived roughly as the logarithm of frequency, this means that the perceived "distance" from every note to its nearest neighbor is the same for...

 musical instrument, in which the octave

Octave

In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...

 is divided into a series of equal steps.

Standard tuning

Standard tuning on a bass guitar is E, A, D, G (lowest to highest string.) A popular altered tuning is Drop D. This is when you tune your lowest string down a whole step to the note D. Standard tuning is the most popular tuning of the electric bass. Most bass guitars have four strings, tuned one octave lower than the lowest pitched four strings of an electric guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

. However some bassists, such as Michael Manring

Michael Manring

Michael Manring is an American electric bassist from the San Francisco Bay Area, .-Biography:...

, use a variety of altered tunings.

4 String	6 String	5 String	Note Scientific pitch notation Scientific pitch notation is one of several methods that name the notes of the standard Western chromatic scale by combining a letter-name, accidentals, and a number identifying the pitch's octave...	Frequency
	1		C3	130.813 Hz
1	2	1	G2	97.999 Hz
2	3	2	D2	73.416 Hz
3	4	3	A1	55 Hz
4	5	4	E1	41.204 Hz
	6	5	B0	30.868 Hz

See also

• Bass guitar
  Bass guitar
  The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
  
  
• Extended-range bass
  Extended-range bass
  Extended-range bass refers to an electric bass guitar with greater frequency range than the standard 4-string bass guitar. Bass guitars tuned one octave lower than a standard four-string instrument are also considered an extended-range bass...
  
  
• Guitar tuning
  Guitar tuning
  Guitar tunings almost always refers to the pitch of the open string, though some tunings may only realistically be attained by the use of a capo on an unmodified instrument....
  
  
• Stringed instrument tunings
  Stringed instrument tunings
  This is a list of tunings for stringed musical instruments. Strings or courses are listed from low to high pitch, reading from left to right facing the front of the instrument standing vertically...