The ukulele is a popular stringed instrument that is known for its fun and cheerful sound. However, in order to produce the best sound from your ukulele, it’s important to tune it properly. Tuning a ukulele can seem daunting for beginners, but with the right tools and techniques, it can be a quick and easy process.
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How to Tune a Ukulele
Here are the steps to tune a ukulele:
- Get a Tuner: The first step to tuning a ukulele is to get a tuner. There are many different types of tuners available, including clip-on tuners, smartphone apps, and electronic tuners. No matter which type of tuner you choose, make sure that it’s designed for ukuleles and has an accurate display.
- Understand the Strings: A standard ukulele has four strings, and each string is tuned to a different note. The strings are numbered from top to bottom, with the first string being the highest pitched string and the fourth string being the lowest pitched string.
- Tune the Strings: The most common tuning for a ukulele is GCEA, with the G string being the highest pitched string. To tune the ukulele, pluck the first string and adjust the tuning peg until the tuner shows that the string is in tune. Repeat this process for each of the other strings.
- Use Your Ear: While using a tuner is the most accurate way to tune a ukulele, it’s also important to train your ear to recognize when the ukulele is in tune. Once you’ve tuned the ukulele using a tuner, play a few chords and listen carefully to the sound. If the chords sound off, use the tuner to adjust the tuning until the ukulele sounds right to your ear.
- Keep Your Ukulele in Tune: It’s important to tune your ukulele regularly, as changes in temperature and humidity can cause the strings to go out of tune. Make a habit of checking the tuning of your ukulele before each practice session or performance.
In addition to these basic steps, there are a few tips and tricks that can help you tune your ukulele more easily. For example, when tuning the ukulele, it’s a good idea to pluck the string lightly and slowly, rather than plucking it quickly and forcefully. This will help you to hear the note more clearly and adjust the tuning more accurately.
Another helpful tip is to use a reference pitch to help you tune the ukulele. A reference pitch can be any note that you know is in tune, such as a piano or guitar. Play the reference pitch and then tune the ukulele string to match that pitch.
Overall, tuning a ukulele is a simple process that can greatly improve the sound and playability of your instrument. With the right tools and techniques, you can quickly and easily tune your ukulele and keep it in tune for optimal performance.
Video text:
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hey everyone how’s it going so i was just about to uh tune my ukulele in prep for filming a couple of video tutorials for you guys and i realized i hadn’t actually done a how to tune your ukulele video yet so uh that’s what i’m going to be showing you how to do and then i’m going to film some tutorials i’m using the free boss app which is a chromatic tuner so it’s just going to show whatever note is playing at the time so we’ll need to remember our tuner notes for that i’m sure there are plenty of other apps available and i encourage you to find your favorite find the one that you like to use but this is the most professional one is the same as my chromatic tuner that i use for all my electronic instruments and if you get used to using this you’ll be able to tune anything in the future so the tuner notes we need to remember are g c e and a they’re what we need to remember and that goes from string number four to string number one and i’m demoing this on my new journey instruments ukulele which there’s a link about in the
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description below so apps tell you in what note is playing by listening it’s got a microphone on it so we need to stay quiet while we’re playing and if i just play there you can see it was saying an f so this is going to need to go anti-clockwise and it’s this string four if we count it from the bottom that i’m tuning this needs to go higher i need to go past f that is now on g and keep going up until we get that green in the middle any adults that remember knight rider from the 80s it’s kind of like kit isn’t it from the uh night rider car so you can see how that’s just a little bit over and i was actually turning it then and the string wasn’t going down too
0:02:00.1 –>
much so it does tend to always be best to come up to the note always tends to be the best way to tune uh stringed instruments so make sure you’re coming from a lower point to a higher point which will normally be the case and that is our g note in tune next up is a c and what do we have at the moment oh we have an a so if we know our alphabet we know we need to go a b c so that’s on a that’s now a lowercase b now notice i keep playing the string now really we want to play this about once every second stay quiet yourself and pick about or just play with your thumb about once every second and there we go now did you see again i went a little bit over i overshot it so you come a little bit too low and then
0:03:00.8 –>
up to the notes and again this is something you want to do every time you pick up your ukulele it can go out of tune um quite easily so it’s just one of those things that anytime you pick up a string instrument we need to give it a quick tune-up the next note is an e on string two and that’s on a d lowercase d so now we’re turning this clockwise because we’ve gone around the outside keep going up until we get to e still on d and there it is and sometimes it will show you’re a little bit high or a little bit low when you pick or when you’re not picking so just you want it to average out in the middle is all you’re looking for if it’s saying green we are good and finally we need an a
0:04:02.4 –>
that’s currently on g so not too far that’s g sharp there’s the a and then it’s always best to just have a quick check and you’re listening for that sound i like to think of it as this you sounds great there we go and then it does sound great and then we can get on with playing our song so that’s with the boss app you can tune ukuleles by ear so by listening to the tuner notes and then adjusting accordingly but you need a bit of experience before you start doing that hope that’s helped some of you guys check out my free 10-day ukulele start of course on youtube if you haven’t already and i hope to see you in another tutorial
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