How to tune a banjo

Five-string banjo in open G is g D G B D, and the fifth string is the highest note on the instrument despite sitting closest to your thumb. Pitches for five-string and Irish tenor.

July 29, 2026

The standard five-string banjo tuning is open G, written g D G B D. Strumming the open strings gives you a G major chord, which is where the name comes from.

Five-string, open G

The fifth string is the one that confuses people. It is the short one, it starts at the fifth fret rather than the nut, it sits nearest your thumb, and it is the highest-pitched string on the instrument at 392 Hz. It is a drone: you rarely fret it, you just let it ring.

This makes the banjo re-entrant, like a ukulele, and it means any tuner that assumes strings run from low to high by position will mislabel that string immediately.

Tuning it

Start with the fourth string, the thickest, and work through to the first. Do the fifth string last, on its own.

That drone string is thin, short and under proportionally high tension, so it is the one most likely to snap. Approach it from below and go slowly. Its tuning peg is also usually a friction peg mounted in the side of the neck rather than a geared machine head, which means it turns much more per degree of pitch change than the others do. Small movements.

Irish tenor banjo

Four strings, tuned G D A E in fifths. It is the same pattern as a mandolin or violin but a full octave lower than the mandolin, which suits the melody-driven Irish repertoire it is used for.

You will also encounter tenor banjos in so-called standard or jazz tuning, C G D A, a fifth below the Irish tuning. TuneHaven ships the Irish tuning as the tenor preset; if you use the jazz tuning, build it as a custom tuning, which is free.

Banjos drift

A banjo head is a stretched membrane, and its tension changes with humidity and temperature far more than a wooden soundboard does. The bridge sits on that head, unglued, held in place by nothing but string pressure. So a banjo genuinely does go out of tune faster than a guitar, and it is not something you are doing wrong.

Check the tuning between tunes rather than assuming it held. If the whole instrument has gone sharp or flat together rather than individual strings drifting apart, the head tension has changed, and it will likely come back on its own when the room does.