# Double bass tuning

Source: https://arcosounds.com/glossary/double-bass-tuning
Also known as: bass tuning, EADG

**The double bass is tuned in perfect fourths, E1, A1, D2, G2, unlike the rest of the string family, which is tuned in perfect fifths.**

The reason is hand span. On a string as long as the bass's, a perfect fifth exceeds what a hand can cover in one position, so fourths keep each position reachable. This is also why the bass inherited a fingering tradition from the viol family rather than the violin family, and why Simandl fingerings use three fingers rather than four in the lower positions.

Many orchestral basses add a low C extension on the E string, operated by mechanical levers, to reach the notes below E1 that composers from Beethoven onward wrote. A five-string bass with a low B is the other common solution.

Canonical source: https://arcosounds.com/glossary/double-bass-tuning