Eac#f# ukulele tuning

DCM123

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Great sound does anyone have a cord chart for the tuning:
 
Great sound does anyone have a cord chart for the tuning:

I use this tuning on my koa tenor Fluke with Martin M620 strings, and NEVER EVER EVER tune them higher and then tune down, otherwise the strings are already too stretched and your intonation is shot.

ONLY tune UP to EAC#F# and NEVER higher and you are fine.

I do not have a chord chart because I use this only for myself and not to play with others, and I play the standard C6 chord shapes but KNOW that I am actually in an A6 tuning

If you wanted to, you could easily transpose the NAMES of all the C6 chord shapes down a minor-third, and then these transposed names are the NAMES of your A6-tuned chords

Doing the opposite and trying to spell out chord shapes to match C6 tuning is a lot of work and does not yield anything different compared to my suggestion, but will require HOURS of work instead of minutes, via just crossing out the chord names on the C6 chart and re-writing them with A6 chord names.

Having a Circle of Fifths wheel diagram or piano keyboard diagram might prove useful if you have trouble reading standard notation.

Both are easily found via google image searching. :)
 
E,A,C#,F# is my standard tuning but I don't worry about chords shapes. I don't play with other people either so no problems there. I transpose. Either ukulele shapes down 3 semitones or guitar shapes up 2 semitones. Its really common for guitarists to put a capo on the second fret and play songs in the key of E with D chord shapes.

You can play in the Key of D with Guitar C shapes. Play in the key of A with Guitar G shapes and the above key of E with guitar D shapes.
 
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I use this tuning on my koa tenor Fluke with Martin M620 strings, and NEVER EVER EVER tune them higher and then tune down, otherwise the strings are already too stretched and your intonation is shot.

ONLY tune UP to EAC#F# and NEVER higher and you are fine.

Booli, that's not entirely true. You can tune down and I've done it successfully more than once.

It's a characteristic of polymers that they take time to react to a change in tension unlike metals which react instantly. That's why it takes time for ukulele strings to eventually settle and hold their tune. With metal strings the settling in is purely in the attachments at each end of the string taking up but with polymer strings it's also a property of the polymers themselves.

If you tune down, they will appear to go to the new tension but they have not properly relaxed, so they will feel floppy. If you leave them overnight, you will find they have gone up in pitch - they are responding to the reduced stress but are reverting some way towards their previous state, so you have to retune as you do with new strings. Over time, they will relax properly and settle into the new tuning but like with new strings, it takes time.

That said it's still good practice, when you retune to take them slightly below the desired pitch then bring them back up. Also it's not a good idea to continually retune strings the way guitarists often do with steel strings as they will never settle properly and you tend to shorten their life. The only string break I ever had was on a soprano I had switched between GCEA and ADF#B and I took it up to ADF#B once too often and broke the A(B) string! I now keep them all in GCEA and use a capo if I want ADF#B - saves retuning. I would do the same with EAC#F#, tune to DGBE and use a capo to get the A tuning.
 
If anyone was interested I could add a notefinder ("which note is where?") to this page.
 
If you tune down, they will appear to go to the new tension but they have not properly relaxed, so they will feel floppy. If you leave them overnight, you will find they have gone up in pitch - they are responding to the reduced stress but are reverting some way towards their previous state, so you have to retune as you do with new strings. Over time, they will relax properly and settle into the new tuning but like with new strings, it takes time.

I don't believe polymers or plastics having any big memory like that. What happens is that what you have in past the nut, possibly also in bridge, will take time to compensate the tension.

I'm not talking about the initial creep that is of course also considerable.
 
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I don't believe polymers or plastics having any big memory like that. What happens is that what you have in past the nut, possibly also in bridge, will take time to compensate the tension.

I'm not talking about the initial creep that is of course also considerable.

Believe what you want, but some years ago I did a post graduate course in polymer engineering so I think I know what I'm talking about.

Polymers actually flow, they behave partially like elastic solids and partially like extremely visccous liquid so when you change the force you apply to a ukulele string, it takes time to react which is why ukulele strings take time to properly settle and that is why they take so much longer than metal guitar strings as metals are pure elastic materials. You will find the same is true of classical guitar strings. It's not just about the fastenings at the nut and the bridge, it's about the physical proerties of the materials the strings are made of. The fastenings will have taken up when you first installed the strings and if you retune the strings the effect on them will be minimal.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creep_(deformation)

When you tune down, it is mainly about tension compensation in head and bridge part that gives the "instability". Of course plastic strings creep all the time but it settles after a while.
And tuning down instability should not have much to do with creep at all.

About when initially putting a new string, the creep is also a big part in that.

Yes, there are some memory materials, but the materials our ukulele's strings are made of are not such. I just wanted to point out that memory has nothing to do with plastic strings tuning problems, thats all :)
It is a sort of illusion easy to get though.
 
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I like also to tell this. When I put new strings to my re-entrant ukulele. With plain unwound strings.
I always tune my uke a semitone higher than gCEA. And keep it that way for a few days after playing. It will help the tension being forced also to the tuning pegs part and also what with the initial stretching taking place.
Takes only maybe a day or 2 and then the strings start keeping them in tune much sooner than if only tuning the ukulele to standard pitch.

With guitar or you uke players with low G wound string, this is maybe not such a good idea I don't know. Classical guitar's D string being so fragile. So I have never tried that with wound strings.
 
Great sound does anyone have a cord chart for the tuning:

Below is the Bible of Ukulele chord books. Not just basic chords, it's as comprehensive as anything I've ever see. Then it goes on to offer that huge selection of chords over the whole range of common tunings: E flat / D / C / B flat / A / G .

https://www.melbay.com/Products/Default.aspx?bookid=99789EB

Axel (haven't spoken to him in years - hope he's still around) is a wonderful fellow. In regards to your A tuning it was something he said he came up with on his own. All his jam friends were guitarists, and he found A tuning a snap to transpose with.
 
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