Tritone Tuning: A Deep Dive into Dissonance and Symmetry

The 'Tritone tuning' for guitar, as its name profoundly suggests, is an experimental and highly symmetrical tuning built entirely around the tritone interval. This tuning drastically departs from standard guitar conventions, offering a unique sonic landscape for adventurous players.

Verbal Analysis

Imagine a guitar where every adjacent open string creates the distinct, unsettling tension of a tritone (also known as an augmented fourth or diminished fifth). This tuning, with its open notes B-F-B-F-B-F, is precisely that. The result is an remarkably resonant and harmonically ambiguous sound. When strummed open, this tuning produces a stark, dissonant texture, far from the familiar major or minor harmonies. It's a tuning that evokes a sense of suspense, mystery, or even unease, making it ideal for avant-garde music, film scoring, or genres that thrive on sonic tension rather than traditional resolution.

Instead of traditional chord shapes, this tuning encourages a different approach to the fretboard. Sliding a single finger across any fret will create a cluster of stacked tritones, leading to rich, complex voicings that are inherently dissonant. This can be exploited for dense, textural drones or for crafting melodies that play against a highly tense harmonic backdrop. While open major or minor chords are not readily available, the repetitive nature of B and F notes means that any melodic or harmonic ideas built around these two pitches will find strong sympathetic resonance with the open strings. It pushes the player to explore new harmonic possibilities and sonic palettes, making it a compelling choice for those looking to break free from conventional guitar sounds.

Technical Analysis

• Instrument Type: Guitar
• Tuning Concept: The core principle is a symmetrical arrangement of B and F notes across the fretboard, with each string separated by a tritone. This creates a consistent interval relationship between all open strings.
• Open Notes: The tuning sequence is B1 - F2 - B2 - F3 - B3 - F4 (from lowest to highest string).
• Interval Relationships:
  • String 6 (B1) to String 5 (F2): Tritone (6 semitones)
  • String 5 (F2) to String 4 (B2): Tritone (6 semitones)
  • String 4 (B2) to String 3 (F3): Tritone (6 semitones)
  • String 3 (F3) to String 2 (B3): Tritone (6 semitones)
  • String 2 (B3) to String 1 (F4): Tritone (6 semitones)
• Chordal Implications: Traditional open major/minor chords are not a feature of this tuning. Instead, it lends itself to highly dissonant clusters, drone effects, and experimental harmony. The open B and F notes create a strong tonal center around the tritone itself, offering a canvas for avant-garde composition.

Open String Notes

• String 6 (Lowest): B1
• String 5: F2
• String 4: B2
• String 3: F3
• String 2: B3
• String 1 (Highest): F4

How to Tune: Tritone Tuning

To achieve the Tritone tuning, you will adjust your strings from standard E Standard tuning (E-A-D-G-B-E) as follows. Please take note of the significant string tension changes for the lower strings.

• String 6 (Low E): Tune down 5 semitones from E2 to B1. Caution: Tuning down by 5 semitones is a significant change. A heavier gauge string is strongly advised for this string to maintain optimal tension, tone, and intonation.
• String 5 (A): Tune down 4 semitones from A2 to F2. Caution: A drop of 4 semitones is at the threshold where a different, heavier gauge string is recommended to ensure proper string tension and feel.
• String 4 (D): Tune down 3 semitones from D3 to B2.
• String 3 (G): Tune down 2 semitones from G3 to F3.
• String 2 (B): Keep as is; no change (0 semitones). The string remains at B3.
• String 1 (High E): Tune up 1 semitones from E4 to F4.