Why not just play guitar capo 5? A great deal of the ukulele's charm stems from two factors that guitar cannot reproduce: These two elements make it an entirely unique instrument. Plus everyone looks friendly when they hold a uke. And let's not forget, it easy to hike or travel with such a small instrument. And it's small size makes it a good fit for kids and people with small hands. So now, with our uke enthusiasm reestablished, let's continue on. We've already looked at Baritone, and have seen that its standard tuning matches the four high pitched strings of the guitar.
There are a number of common alternate tunings, and several shown in the following diagram.
Guitar and Ukulele may be more similar than you realize!
You can study them interactively with the Sound Thinking app by clicking on the the Tuning List image below:. The Sound Thinking app displays a lot of information about each tuning. Above we see the Ukulele selected in the left most column, which is a column of instruments available for exploration.
The panel on the right displays three columns: A unison list is simple, useful, shorthand nomenclature that specifies tuning of a fretted instrument. Most guitarists are familiar with the tuning concept of E — that's a unison list for guitar's standard tuning. The letter name E specifies the name of the lowest string, then it's 5 half steps or frets to the pitch of the next string, and again 5 half steps to the pitch of the next string, and so on.
For centuries guitarist have used the unison list to tune acoustically without the aid of an electronic tuner or a tuner app.
ukulele tuner
To tune this way guitarists:. In Sound Thinking , you can sort instruments by Unison List. Simply click the column's header. Once sorted, we can easily see that the first seven tunings share the same fretboard logic, because they all share the same unison pattern: It's no surprise that the first four uke tunings have the same unison list— they share the same notes GCEA. In reality, D6 is just a whole step higher than C6 like putting a capo on the 2nd fret.
And E6 is another whole step higher. And that's the beauty of unison lists—they succinctly describe the open string interval pattern, and illuminate the similarity between tunings. The unison list for guitar is So we can see by the , that there is a parallel between guitar and ukulele.
The unison list logic still gets us the correct letter name, but an octave higher than unison. Each of these tunings has a unique Unison List.
So each is beast unto itself, and each is quite unlike guitar As an experienced guitarist, you possess a lot of applicable knowledge about any uke that's in standard tuning: CGEA—that's the standard tuning for tenor, concert and soprano ukulele. The main difference between these three instruments is their size: Another relatively inconsequential difference from a chordal standpoint is that some people use a "low G" string the G is tuned an octave lower.
This practice is most common on tenor ukes, and it removes the reentrant factor,. So here's the deal is in a nutshell: The standard tuning for uke is the same of the highest four strings of the guitar, except they are raised a perfect 4th in pitch. This little difference throws people off track when first exploring uke chords, because most ukulele chord diagrams for tenor, concert and soprano ukulele look nothing like guitar chords, so it's easy to conclude that uke chords are entirely different than guitar chords.
Familiarity comes when you realize that the root names of the chord shapes are different, and that's all. In other words, some uke chords look like guitar chords, but from a guitar player's perspective the chord letter name doesn't match up. For instance a soprano or tenor uke's G chord looks like a guitar D chord, as shown in the upcoming diagram.
These matters make ukulele seem like an entirely different instrument or tuning. Peculiar as they may seem—those ukulele chords are exactly the same as guitar chord fingerings. It's just that the roots and individual letter names are not what you'd expect. For the rest of this article, when we speak of ukulele, we'll be referring to the popular tenor and soprano uke, which share the same tuning: We'll put this in perspective by applying a handy transpositional twist. Soon you'll grasp the similarities between guitar and ukulele, discern the differences, and you'll be able to leverage your guitar knowledge, which will quickly enable you to explore, play chords and play chord progressions on ukulele.
The perfect tools for the task are free, online at TheorecticallyCorrect. Chord Transposer and Sound Thinking chord finder. Much more on this soon, and a simple solution to get you going. Here's a link that will take you to an instrument comparison page on Sound Thinking:.
- Diagram/Chart.
- How to Tune the Ukulele?
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For some, this sort of visual guide clarifies everything in an instqnt. Here, in the image on the left, you can see the guitar's D fingering at the fifth fret which, due to the effect of the capo is actually a G chord.
The image on the right shows the uke's D chords. Shortly, I'll introduce you to a tranpositional trick that lets you 'think guitar' while playing ukulele. Though this 'chord chart transposing' technique is a handy shortcut, if you're serious about ukulele, eventually you should memorize the ukulele chord names for the various guitar shapes.
Ukulele Chords: Chart and Free PDF For Beginners
This may come naturally in short order; it may take some conscious effort over time. Once you know ukulele chords by name, you'll be able to read ukulele chord charts directly, without transposing them, and you'll be able follow a spoken list of chords. Shortcuts and raw understanding are great, but there is the all-important element of musical style. Learning chords and applying a pocketful of familiar guitar strums to ukulele makes not a lu'au-ready player. There are many stylistic forms in traditional ukulele playing. Traditional players possess a treasure chest of interesting rhythmic strumming patterns, specific chord voicings, cohesive chord progressions, and other nuances worthy of attention.
There are delicate regional stylistic nuances. You might feel all pumped up after mastering your first song or two on ukulele. But before you bust in on a smokin' Hawaiian session, quietly join the circle, sit an listen, notice the type of repertoire, observe the elders And once invited, tread softly as you go, and don't try to play on every song. Aside from traditional Hawaiian styles, people frequently play ukulele to accompany American swing, jazz music from the 20' through 40's While there's a lot to learn from the pros in this arena, you should feel relatively free to innovate.
Oh, and as a newbie in a new land, be sure you pronounce ukulele correctly: That's why we say 'an ukulele' instead of 'a ukulele. So let's jump in! But please note that I've really dashed off the following discussion, and it surely needs editing and improving. So proceed with caution. Here's a side-by-side comparison of a guitar D chord and a Ukulele G chord. Physically they look the same. The colored fingering positions are identical. However the letter names are different:. On the left, we have the guitar D grip.
When we apply a guitar 'D grip' to ukulele, the result is an ukulele G chord. We'll use the term 'grip' throughout this article to refer to a fingering shape, without respect to note names, letter names or key. When we examine at that same finger shape or grip in the ukulele G diagram we see that the notes are G, B, and D, and indeed those are the notes in a G chord. Conversely, from a ukulelist's point of view, when we apply an ukulele 'G grip' to guitar, we get a guitar D chord. Why is this so?
Each ukulele string is tuned a perfect 4th higher than guitar four letter names higher:. Accordingly, since each string is four letter names higher, each individual chord tone is a 4th higher than on guitar Add four letter names to any guitar grip and you know the real ukulele name for that grip. In order to easily explore the ukulele, we're going employ some tranpositional magic and set aside the music theory. We'll get back to those nitty gritty theoretical details in due course You may already understand this Get ready to take the easiest possible route to get you playing uke. Let's transpose some ukulele chord charts.
After we do, ukulele chords will make perfect sense. If you transpose the chords of any ukulele chord chart you can play ukulele as if it was a guitar, except of course you have two less strings, and many previously untenable chords are now manageable. Transposer will perform the transpositional calculations for us in a split second. First you need to find or create some text-based ukulele chord charts, run them through Transposer. String instruments like the ukulele have tuning pegs, which can be turned in both directions to either raise or lower the pitch that corresponds to one of the ukulele strings.
Below, we'll go through more details of the common ukulele tunings.
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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 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 you. The most popular ukulele tuning is known as gCEA. The vast majority of song tabs, chord charts, and other ukulele resources, are written with the assumption of gCEA tuning. This makes it the easiest tuning option for playing along to songs, or when jamming with other uke players. This key makes it very easy to play in the key of C major, which is a popular song key for a lot of music.
D Tuning, which uses the notes aDF B, just takes the original standard tuning and shifts everything up by one whole tone two frets. Just like how standard tuning makes it easy to play in the key of C major, this D tuning makes it simple to play in the key of D major. This tuning was more popular during the s and s, so it will match up better against songs from that era. 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.
The tuning matches up exactly with the top 4 strings of the guitar. Because of this, dGBE tuning works very well when translating songs and chords between guitar and ukulele.