A Tuning a ukulele

Tuning a ukulele

I was making ukulele covers of songs I already loved—Bob Dylan's "Love Sick" and John Lennon's "I Don't Wanna Be a Soldier Mama" among them—when I finally did something new: I taught myself to play the ukulele inBefore you start playing your ukulele, it’s always best to make sure it’s in tune. On this page we’ll talk you through the different ways you can tune a ukulele. You’ll learn about using electronic tuners, relative tuning, tuning with a piano, and with a guitar. Of course, the way you choose to tune your ukulele depends on what you have available at the time, but it’s good to know how each approach works. So, let’s get started.The DGBE tuning, which is sometimes referred to as Chicago tuning, is more popular on some of the larger ukuleles, and is the most common tuning on the baritone ukulele. This tuning matches up exactly with the top 4 strings of the guitar in standard tuning. Because of this, DGBE tuning works very well when translating songs and chords between guitar and ukulele. It is an excellent tuning for playing along to more guitar-based songs.

TUNE

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The ukulele can theoretically be tuned to a very large range of tunings. Each string can be set to any note, as long as it's within range, based on the minimum and maximum tension for the string. However, there are a handful of tunings that are most widely used for the ukulele. It is recommended to use these tunings for playing popular music, but other tunings can be useful for more experimental work. On the uke, the botttom-most string is typically tuned to a note that is higher than the note on the 2nd bottom-most string. Tunings denote this with a lower case letter, as in the standard tuning, gCEA. Each of the four letters of the tuning name denote the corresponding string on the ukulele, starting from the bottom (the string closest to your chest). The UkuTabs online ukulele tuner offers you the most advanced and easy-to-use ukulele tuner to keep your ukulele in tune without the need of a tuning device. It is completely free and very versatile. By default it is using standard or 'C' tuning (GCEA), but you can freely choose one of the popular (and less popular) preset tunings. Hit the play button on each string to hear the note. You can easily switch between a real ukulele playing or digital beep. Left handed ukulele players are not forgotten as well, click the right/left toggle to switch.

If you get a used or vintage ukulele, you probably won’t have a tuner. Instead, you might get some really old books or brochures and something called a pitch pipe. A pitch pipe is a neat mini harmonica that plays one note at a time when you blow into it. In some cases, you may have a pitch pipe that wasn’t designed for your instrument, so you need to know how to tune one string to the pitch pipe and the other strings to the first string. A final note on tuning: It’s only natural for your ukulele to go out of tune. Once you think you get your instrument in tune, your strings will probably have stretched a bit. Sometimes, depending on your strings, the humidity, the types of tuners you have, and the type of wood your ukulele is made of, your ukulele will not be in tune immediately after you tune it. So you have to go back through the whole process two or three times to fine-tune your ukulele. Once you’ve done this, you’re ready to play! (Source: takelessons.com)