Ukulele Beginners tips - Tuning your uke

Real basic guide for you - how to tune the ukulele!

There are a variety of ways to tune a Uke, and to go through them all would defeat the purpose of this guide (ie Basics). Let's start though in the most common 'standard' tuning that you will most often see on a soprano, concert and tenor ukulele. This is called 'C Tuning'.

First - some basics - you have four strings in front of you. As you hold your uke the string nearest the floor is string 1. The string nearest your face is string 4. You can work out which are strings 2 and 3 yourself.

C tuning has the following notes, running from the bass (face) end to the treble (ground end) of GCEA.

In other words, the strings are tuned like this

String 4 - G
String 3 - C
String 2 - E
String 1 - A

(Note - that 4th string can be tuned a low G or a high G - that is to say either the natural G note that is lower than the C on the 2nd string (low G) or the G that is above it in pitch (high G or 'reentrant tuning). On a soprano, a high G is much more common (meaning it is higher than the other strings), but as you move up uke sizes, you may consider a low G)

To tune, you need some sort of reference pitch to work from. If you are super natural, you may tune from your ear (good luck to you, I cant... I'm jealous). next step I suppose is tuning from a piano, another instrument or a tuning fork that can give you the notes you need.

But to be honest with you though, in this day and age, if you are spending some money on a uke, and you are a beginner - go buy yourself a clip on tuner. They are about £10 - £20 and clip onto the headstock. All sorts of varieties are out there. Note that they are not absolute failsafes - you need to get your note close to where you want to be and the tuner can be used for dialling you in to being accurate.

Failing that - go to a uke tuner website - I provide a few links at the end of this post.

Clip it on - tune till the needle goes green and gives you the correct note and away you go!

But I suppose there is a "bit" more to it than that. For example, it is good practice to tune UP to pitch - in other words, if you are tuning and your string is high (sharp) loosen it a bit and tune it from the flat side until you are right. Don't tune above the note and then knock it back a bit as it is best to keep you strings in prime tension.

Also - if you are adding a new string, or a new set, they WILL need time to stretch and settle. This is normal - don't be tempted to tug at them or over-tune them - a sure fire way to create flat spots in the strings and lead to tuning problems or shortening their life. Best way is just to keep playing the uke hard, re-tune, play, re-tune, play and so on. They will settle eventually. 

And that is it - use good strings - use a tuner - or tune to the instruments you are playing to, tune up to pitch, not down.

Oh, and there are other tunings as I say, such as baritone DGBE - but the system above still applies.

Good luck

Online Ukulele tuner websites:

GET TUNED

UKULELE TRICKS