You’re ready to play your uke, but your strings are not. What do you do? Tune it up, of course!
Here’s how to tune your ukulele by using an electronic tuner, which you can purchase in just about any music store.
To tune your ukulele:
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1. Make sure all the strings are BELOW the notes that you want them. This way, we tune UP into the notes, which will help them stay in tune.
2. Turn on your tuner and place it somewhere that allows you to see the readout easily.
3. Pluck any of the strings on your uke, one at a time, and monitor the tuner. It will show the pitch of the current string.
4. Turn the tuning mechanism to raise the pitch of the string until it reaches the desired tension. For standard ukulele tuning, the notes from the top-down are:
G-C-E-A
Not that the C is the lowest note, even through it’s the second from the top. There is such a thing as ‘low-G- tuning,’ where the G-string is an octave lower and is therefore, the lowest string.
5. Continue tuning each string by plucking the strings and adjusting them according to the tuner readout.
That’s it! Pretty simple.
Here’s a video that shows you exactly what this process looks like. This is a sample from the PLAY UKULELE DVD