Tunings, Low-to-high vs high-to-low...

I see a thread here about someone who's got some uke strings & it says on the packet they're for BF#DA tuning...(?)
(By the way, I use ADF#B tuning on uke, with regular GCEA strings)
Is it normal for uke tunings to be spelled out in a certain order?

It gets confusing when folks spell the tuning the other way round...
Or is there an actual "BF#DA" tuning?

Coming from guitar, it's normal to spell out a tuning starting out with the lowest note,
eg: EADGBE=standard tuning, DADF#AD=open D etc...
For guitar newbies this is confusing because the 6th string comes first in the tuning, if you see what I mean...

Then I got into steel guitar & a lot of "traditional" steel players spell out the tuning high-to-low, which is kinda confusing for folks who've come to steel guitar from regular "armpit guitar".
It's got so that on steel guitar forums where tunings are discussed (and tunings are discussed a lot) people will specify "high-to-low" or "low-to-high" whenever they spell out a tuning to avoid confusion.

Also, how come folks don't spell uke tunings like:
gCEA for re-entrant C tuning, GCEA for low C tuning with a low G...?
(To me this seems easier than having to specify "re-entrant" or "low G")

The way I learned is to look at the fretboard as being in the vertical position and refer to the string positions left to right.

Chris D said:

Also, how come folks don't spell uke tunings like:
gCEA for re-entrant C tuning, GCEA for low C tuning with a low G...?
(To me this seems easier than having to specify "re-entrant" or "low G")

Click to expand...

The short answer is. Yes we do.

After you've been at UU for awhile, you will see a variety of ways of referring to strings/tuning. gCEA is fairly common as is Gcea and gcea, most frequently you will see capital letters used because it's easier to pick them out of a typed page. No mystery there. As with anything, once we've become overly familiar, the slang and shorthand is part and parcel of the game. Folks say low-G because there is no convention ofr using a lower case G when typing it out. Rather than use a couple of sentences to explain (as I have!), we cut to the chase with low-G.

To keep it clear, the "top" string is the one closest to your chin (as opposed to the one with the highest tone).

Keep playing and don't sweat it.

Kanaka916 said:

The way I learned is to look at the fretboard as being in the vertical position and refer to the string positions left to right.

Click to expand...

Regardless of "low to high" getting confused with a high "G" messing up the flow, this^ is the best way to think about it.