Free Online Banjo Tuner
Play a string, see exactly how in tune you are.
A simplified preview of what the Tunable app does. Get the full app
Left to right in playing order: the short 5th string (thin, high G) first, then 4th, the thickest, to 1st. Tune one string at a time.
Allow microphone access to begin
How to use this tuner
Click Start Tuning and allow microphone access. Play one string at a time, the short fifth string first is a good habit, and the tuner shows how sharp or flat you are in cents.
The bar spans −50 to +50 cents. Zero is perfectly in tune. A banjo string decays fast and the head resonance colours the first few cycles, so read the plateau on the history line rather than the attack.
The tuner reads against the nearest open string of Open G tuning (G4, D3, G3, B3, D4), so the cents value is the distance to that string, not to the nearest chromatic note. Tap a string to hear its reference pitch and lock the tuner to it; tap again to release.
Banjo is already selected. It is a concert-pitch instrument, so no transposition is applied. The strings are listed in playing order: the short fifth string (G4) first, then D3, G3, B3, D4.
Default is A440. Tap + / − to match your ensemble, A441–442 is common in orchestras, A415 for historical pitch.
Standard 5-string banjo tuning is open G: the short fifth string is G4, and the four long strings are D3, G3, B3, D4 from the bass side up. The buttons above the display follow that playing order, fifth string first, so the leftmost button is the highest note on the instrument. Strum the open strings and you get a G major chord, which is why so much bluegrass and old-time playing lives in G with a capo for other keys. The high fifth string is what trips up a chromatic tuner: it sits a fourth above the first string, so a tuner expecting notes to rise across the neck will happily read it as the wrong octave. This page reads against the actual target for each string.
Banjo strings are light and the drum head makes the instrument loud and quick to decay, so the tuner has less time to read each note than it does on a guitar. Pluck cleanly near the bridge, not a hard clawhammer strike, and read the value once the trace flattens. The head itself matters: a loose head lowers the resonance and can make the low strings read unsteady, and humidity changes head tension from one day to the next. If every string drifts the same direction between sessions, the head or the neck has moved, not the tuners.
The fifth string deserves the most care. It is the thinnest, it runs over a small nut or a spike at the fifth fret, and if you play up the neck with a capo you will be using fifth-string spikes or a capo of its own, each of which pulls the pitch slightly sharp. Tune it open first, then check it again after fitting the spike. Because the fifth string drone is heard against every chord, a few cents out is more audible than on any other string.
Old-time players use several other tunings from the same starting point. Double C (gCGCD) drops the fourth string to C3 and raises the first to C4 for tunes in C; raise everything a whole step with a capo at the second fret and you have double D. Sawmill or mountain minor (gDGCD) raises the second string to C4. A chromatic tuner still shows the right pitch for any of these; use the chromatic page if you are in a tuning that this page does not list. Tenor and plectrum banjos, which have four long strings and no drone, are on the 4-string banjo tuner.
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The Tunable app adds 15+ tuning temperaments, metronome, tone generator, recording, ear training, and more, all on your phone.
