page_title: Reentrant tuning
section_title: Banjo
hierarchical_section_title: Reentrant tuning / Instruments / Banjo
caption_attribution_description: English: Cropped version of BluegrassBanjo.jpg from Wikimedia Commons
context_page_description: On a stringed instrument, a break in an otherwise ascending order of string pitches is known as a re-entry. A re-entrant tuning, therefore, is a tuning where the strings are not all ordered from the lowest pitch to the highest pitch.
  Most common re-entrant tunings have only one re-entry. In the case of the soprano ukulele, for example, the re-entry is between the third and fourth strings, while in the case of the Venezuelan cuatro it is between the first and second strings.
context_section_description: The fifth string on the five string banjo, called the thumb string, also called the "drone string", is five frets shorter than the other four and is normally tuned higher than any of the other four, giving a re-entrant tuning such as the bluegrass G₄-D₃-G₃-B₃-D₄. The five string banjo is particularly used in bluegrass music and old-time music.
  The four string plectrum banjo (more often used in jazz) and the four string tenor banjo lack this shorter string, and are rarely tuned in re-entrant fashion.
caption: Upper neck and head of a bluegrass banjo, showing the shorter 5th string
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