does a tenor guitar = a baritone ukulele

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So does a tenor guitar equal a baritone uke when it comes to the seasons? What thinketh the seasoned seasonistas
 
I say it does if it is tuned in fourths and has four strings...what those strings are made out of does not seem to be the deal breaker, but what do I know? Seems my electric solid tenor counts, and it has steel strings.
 
I have an old tenor banjo set up with nylonish strings that I call a baritone banjo uke. Now t b at I have a National tenor guitar I want to use it
 
I have an old tenor banjo set up with nylonish strings that I call a baritone banjo uke. Now t b at I have a National tenor guitar I want to use it

I think you need to post us a tune, so we have some evidence to go on (and not be one little bit jealous, no not one little bit at all!)

Edit: Hey! Guess what I ran across on YT! Still want to hear from your National, John!

 
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I play tenor banjo and tenor guitar as well as ukulele. The tenors are tuned in 5ths like a mandolin while the ukulele is not. I, as well as others, have taken ukulele strings and put them on a tenor banjo and have called this ukeifying or ukeified. You can search youtube for "ukeifying" or "ukeified". It creates an interesting instrument. I have not done this with my tenor guitar for I have a baritone ukulele already. I don't know why you couldn't ukeify a tenor guitar except the grooves in the nut might be to small, fixable.

I would call it a ukeified tenor guitar.
 
I have the National tenor guitar tuned DGBE , that's the same as the Lanikai baritone
 
Seems legit to me. After all, some folks play guitarleles tuned like guitars so I don't think you'll get much push back.

FWIW, I bought a set of strings for my bari to tune it like a high g uke and feel that it makes a different and agreeable sound that way. It's different anyway and folks sometimes want to know why it sounds the way it does.

I have the National tenor guitar tuned DGBE , that's the same as the Lanikai baritone
 
In banjo circles it's called Chicago Tuning when you tune a 4 string banjo like the 4 high strings of a guitar (DGBE).

My first ukulele was a baritone that I tuned like my tenor banjo (CGDA) because I was doing a lot of tenor banjo playing. I liked the sound so much I decided to start playing Ukuleles.

I've since tuned the baritone back but I still think about getting another baritone and tuning it like a tenor banjo to capitalize on all the songs I know on the banjo .
 
I'd say any flavor instrument tuned in 4ths would qualify, no matter the shape or size or scale. I mean come on, a tenor guitar tuned Chicago is just a steel stringed jumbo uke with a skinny neck.
 
I'd say "No" to this. Not from being a "purist", but because of scale length and sound. For example, you take a small tenor guitar, like a Martin T-16 or T-18 or a Stella or Stromberg-Voisinet venetian and their scale length is about 21 inches - nearly the same as a baritone ukulele. Tune it with nylon in 4ths and it's going to sound very much like a baritone uke. But, take a Gibson or Epiphone tenor with a 24-inch scale length and a big jazz guitar body and what you get when you tune in 4ths is, well, lousy sounding. Doesn't sound like a uke or a tenor guitar. What happens is you get a muddy sound with either variety of string.

So I'd say it really depends on the instrument as to whether or not 'uki-fying' the instrument is going to work. One other point - tenor guitars were tuned in Chicago tuning LONG before the baritone ukulele was even invented in the late 40's. Our orientation is very uke oriented, but to a guitar player, tuning in tenor in fourths is nothing novel, and it's not something you'd ever classify as a 'ukulele'. I started on uke and tenor guitar simultaneously in the early 80's and alternated between both tunings; tenor tuning with steel strings is bright and high-pitched, great for punching through the noise and taking solos - chicago tuning has a lower tension and it's good for backing strums in a quieter setting. I used whatever the gig demanded.

So I say tune how you want with the strings you want, but a tenor guitar with nylon strings tuned in 4ths is still a tenor guitar.
 
Okay, please don't laugh at the newbie, okay? (New to uke and all things stringed August 31, 2013.)
But why is GCEA or DGBE called "tuned in 4ths"? The middle interval is a third, no? Am I missing something?

Okay, please stop laughing now and explain it to me.

- Wendy
 
Okay, please don't laugh at the newbie, okay? (New to uke and all things stringed August 31, 2013.)
But why is GCEA or DGBE called "tuned in 4ths"? The middle interval is a third, no? Am I missing something?
Okay, please stop laughing now and explain it to me.
- Wendy
You are absolutely right.
 
Okay, please don't laugh at the newbie, okay? (New to uke and all things stringed August 31, 2013.)
But why is GCEA or DGBE called "tuned in 4ths"? The middle interval is a third, no? Am I missing something?

Okay, please stop laughing now and explain it to me.

- Wendy

Because "mostly tuned in fourths" is awkward to say? :)

A guitar is tuned in fourths, except for the B string, which is a major third, as you observe. So somewhere along the way, I think the world said, "5 out of 6 ain't bad" and referred to it as tuning in fourths, while we all quietly said to ourselves "except for the B!"

In ukes, it's a bit more apparent, since we only have four strings. So we're still mostly tuned in fourths, but now it's 3 out of 4 instead of 5 out of 6.

But 3 out of 4 ain't bad. :)
 
Because "mostly tuned in fourths" is awkward to say? :)

A guitar is tuned in fourths, except for the B string, which is a major third, as you observe. So somewhere along the way, I think the world said, "5 out of 6 ain't bad" and referred to it as tuning in fourths, while we all quietly said to ourselves "except for the B!"

In ukes, it's a bit more apparent, since we only have four strings. So we're still mostly tuned in fourths, but now it's 3 out of 4 instead of 5 out of 6.

But 3 out of 4 ain't bad. :)

Or, as Meatloaf said, 2 out of 3, because it's intervals we're counting, not strings. (Or 4 out of 5 for guitar.) Okay, I feel better now. I guess "tuned in 4ths" is just shorthand for "-ish". Thanks for explaining!
 
Okay, please don't laugh at the newbie, okay? (New to uke and all things stringed August 31, 2013.)
But why is GCEA or DGBE called "tuned in 4ths"? The middle interval is a third, no? Am I missing something?

Okay, please stop laughing now and explain it to me.

- Wendy

Oh Wendy, Wendy, Wendy, that G-B interval is not a 3rd, it's a flattened 4th! ;) Just kidding! More below.

Because "mostly tuned in fourths" is awkward to say? :)

A guitar is tuned in fourths, except for the B string, which is a major third, as you observe. So somewhere along the way, I think the world said, "5 out of 6 ain't bad" and referred to it as tuning in fourths, while we all quietly said to ourselves "except for the B!"

In ukes, it's a bit more apparent, since we only have four strings. So we're still mostly tuned in fourths, but now it's 3 out of 4 instead of 5 out of 6.

But 3 out of 4 ain't bad. :)

To follow up on Rich's post. It's really to emphasise that a uke is not tuned in 5ths, which is the most common form of chordophone tuning (violins, violas, cellos, mandolins, mandolas, tenor guitars† and tenor banjos etc are all tuned in 5ths). The technical, and more accurate, description for how a 6-coursed* guitar and 4-coursed ukulele is tuned, is that they're 'close tuned'; but to say "it's 'close tuned'" is not exactly self-explanatory. Hence, as Rich says, we say 'tuning in 4ths', for short.

It's noteworthy that the guitar is the only chordophone of any significance in the Western tradition that uses more than 4 courses (the 5th string on a 5-string banjo is really just a drone - and I'm not sure either if you can classify a banjo as being in the Western tradition; or even a chordophone: there's a fairly strong case to be made for classifying it as a tuned percussion instrument).

The modern guitar evolved from a 5-coursed predecessor tuned ADGBe. In other words, the low E string was the last to be added‡. But in any case, guitar (and uke) tuning is unusual for not being 'symmetrical', as you (Wendy) rightly noted. A bass (guitar or double) is, of course, tuned symmetrically, purely in 4ths, EADG, and is the only widely used close and symmetrically tuned chordophone.

The opposite of 'close tuning', intuitively, would be 'open tuning', but as we know, that's come to mean any one of a number of non-standard tunings for guitar that allows you to play a major chord simply by strumming the open strings. Which is why tuning in 5ths is referred to as 'wide tuning'. HTH

Conventionally, tenor guitars are tuned in 5ths, either CGDA or GDAE (Irish tuning). If they're close tuned, to DGBE, they're in Chicago tuning.
*A 12-string guitar is double-coursed 6 times. A 6-string uke has 2 double and 2 single courses. A 6-coursed ukulele is a guitarlele.
And Keith Richards, famously plays his Telecaster without that lower E. He says he's heard lots of bands trying to cover 'Start Me Up', but none of them get it right because their guitarists hang on to that low E string.
 
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Thanks, Paul! You made my head spin, but that's a very helpful overview. This is my first stringed instrument (except for extremely brief long-ago bouts with viola and guitar ... too short to have gotten curious about the tunings, or even remembered them). So it's helpful to understand a bit more about how it fits into the larger family. Especially since people talk about it All The Time. ("People" being, now that I think about it, mostly FiL. And other people talking with FiL.) And ... I'm around a lot more guitars and other non-uke-y stringed things than ukes. And I will one day (soon, probably) need to learn to read chords off guitar fingers.

Thank you so much!

- Wendy

Oh, and "flattened 4th" ... very funny! (I was trying to think in what key that would be a 4th. :))
 
Thanks, Paul! You made my head spin, but that's a very helpful overview. This is my first stringed instrument (except for extremely brief long-ago bouts with viola and guitar ... too short to have gotten curious about the tunings, or even remembered them). So it's helpful to understand a bit more about how it fits into the larger family. Especially since people talk about it All The Time. ("People" being, now that I think about it, mostly FiL. And other people talking with FiL.) And ... I'm around a lot more guitars and other non-uke-y stringed things than ukes. And I will one day (soon, probably) need to learn to read chords off guitar fingers.

Thank you so much!

- Wendy

Oh, and "flattened 4th" ... very funny! (I was trying to think in what key that would be a 4th. :))

Next time FiL asks, you can tell him that you're playing a 4 by single coursed chordophone in asymmetrical, close, re-entrant tuning. :cool:
 
Next time FiL asks, you can tell him that you're playing a 4 by single coursed chordophone in asymmetrical, close, re-entrant tuning. :cool:

I think I'm way out of my depth trying to top FiL about that stuff. I'll just teach him a few new jazz chords. That usually works.
 
Back to the original question. Just my 2 cents. I think, when it comes to the seasons, it should be a uke and not a ukefied instrument. That being said, I so want, want, want a tenor guitar :)
So does a tenor guitar equal a baritone uke when it comes to the seasons? What thinketh the seasoned seasonistas
 
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